经济学人228:魔术大师"乔布斯"

 　　The magician

　　魔术大师

　　The revolution that Steve Jobs led is only just beginning

　　乔布斯领导的革命只是刚刚开始

　　WHEN it came to putting on a show, nobody else in the computer industry, or any other industry for that matter, could match Steve Jobs. His product launches, at which he would stand alone on a black stage and conjure¹ up an “incredible” new electronic gadget² in front of an awed³ crowd, were the performances of a master showman. All computers do is fetch and shuffle⁴ numbers, he once explained, but do it fast enough and “the results appear to be magic”. Mr Jobs, who died this week aged⁵ 56, spent his life packaging that magic into elegantly designed, easy-to-use products.

　　就表现力而言，整个电脑行业，以及其它与之相关的产业都无能出乔布斯右者。在他的产品发布会上，乔布斯独自一人站在黑色的舞台上，在满怀敬畏之情的观众面前召唤出一件“不可思议”的新型电子设备，就像是一个大师级的魔术师在表演。乔布斯曾说过，所有的电脑都是用来读取和处理数字的，但要它足够快，要让结果就像魔法般显现出来。这个终其一生投入将魔术与设计雅致、宜于操作的产品相融合的男人，本周离开了人间，终年56岁。

　　The reaction to his death, with people leaving candles and flowers outside Apple stores and the internet humming with tributes from politicians, is proof that Mr Jobs had become something much more significant than just a clever money-maker. He stood out in three ways—as a technologist, as a corporate⁶ leader and as somebody who was able to make people love what had previously⁷ been impersonal⁸, functional⁹ gadgets¹⁰. Strangely, it is this last quality that may have the deepest effect on the way people live. The era of personal technology is in many ways just beginning.

　　对于乔布斯的逝世，人们在苹果专卖店门外留下的蜡烛和鲜花和互联网上发布的各国政要的颂词足以证明，他不仅仅只是个精明会赚钱的人。乔布斯的杰出在于三个方面，他既是一个技术专家、企业领导，同时还是一个能让人们对以前就有的非个性化、功能型的小玩意着迷的人。不可思议的是，乔布斯的第三个特点对人们的生活影响最为深远。在许多领域，技术个性化的大时代只是刚刚开始。

　　Apple of his eye

　　他眼中的苹果

　　As a technologist, Mr Jobs was different because he was not an engineer—and that was his great strength. Instead he was obsessed¹¹ with product design and aesthetics¹², and with making advanced technology simple to use. He repeatedly took an existing but half-formed idea—the mouse-driven computer, the digital music player, the smartphone, the tablet computer—and showed the rest of the industry how to do it properly. Rival firms scrambled¹³ to follow where he led. In the process he triggered upheavals¹⁴ in computing¹⁵, music, telecoms and the news business that were painful for incumbent¹⁶ firms but welcomed by millions of consumers.

　　作为一名技术专家，乔布斯的与众不同之处在于他并非工程师---而这正是其伟大之处。他真正迷恋的是产品设计、美学和先进技术的直接应用。他不断拿出已经存在但应用没有完全成形的产品---鼠标驱动电脑，数码音乐播放器，智能手机，平板电脑---来展示电子行业应如何将其发展完善。竞争对手们总是抢着跟随他指引的方向。在这个进程里，他打响了对计算、音乐、电信和新闻业升级发令枪让各家厂商都痛苦不已，但却受到了数以百万计的消费者的热捧。

　　Within the wider business world, a man who liked to see himself as a hippy, permanently¹⁷ in revolt against big companies, ended up being hailed by many of those corporate giants as one of the greatest chief executives of his time. That was partly due to his talents: showmanship, strategic vision, an astonishing attention to detail and a dictatorial¹⁸ management style which many bosses must have envied. But most of all it was the extraordinary trajectory¹⁹ of his life (see article). His fall from grace in the 1980s, followed by his return to Apple in 1996 after a period in the wilderness²⁰, is an inspiration to any businessperson whose career has taken a turn for the worse. The way in which Mr Jobs revived the ailing²¹ company he had co-founded and turned it into the world’s biggest tech firm (bigger even than Bill Gates’s Microsoft, the company that had outsmarted Apple so dramatically in the 1980s), sounds like something from a Hollywood movie—which, no doubt, it soon will be.

　　这个在更为宽广的商业世界里，更喜欢将自己当成一个嬉皮士，永远坚持向大公司挑战，被这些商业巨头们赞誉为当代最杰出的首席执行官的男人现在不在了。之所以拥有这样的赞誉部分源于他的天赋：表演能力，战略眼光，对细节惊人的洞察力，还有那一定让许多老板们都嫉妒的独裁式管理模式。不过最重要的还有他无以伦比的人生轨迹。80年代乔布斯在苹果失宠， 1996年又在沉寂之后重返，对于任何一个职业生涯走向颓势的生意人来说这都是一个很好的激励。乔布斯复兴他共同创建的境遇不佳的苹果公司，并将其发展成为全球最大的高科技公司（苹果现已全面超越曾在80年代里戏剧性地超越自己的比尔 盖茨的微软）的方法，听起来就像是好莱坞电影里的东西---毫无疑问，这样的影片很快就会有了。

　　But what was perhaps most astonishing about Mr Jobs was the fanatical loyalty²² he managed to inspire in customers. Which other technology brand do you ever see on bumper²³ stickers? Many Apple users feel themselves to be part of a community, with Mr Jobs as its leader. And there was indeed a personal link. Apple’s products were designed to accord with the boss’s tastes and to meet his obsessively²⁴ high standards. Every iPhone or MacBook has his fingerprints²⁵ all over it. His great achievement was to combine an emotional spark with computer technology, and make the resulting product feel personal. And that is what put Mr Jobs on the right side of history, as the epicentre of technological²⁶ innovation has moved into consumer electronics over the past decade.

　　然而最让人惊讶的还是乔布斯对启发消费者理念狂热的忠诚。谁曾在保险杠贴纸上看到过其它技术品牌？许多苹果用户都感觉自己是乔布斯领导的团体的一部分。而实际上苹果的确存在着一个独特的关联性。苹果的产品都是根据乔老板的品味设计的，并能够满足其苛刻的高标准。每一部iPhone电话和苹果笔记本电脑上都有他的印迹。乔布斯最伟大的成就在于将思想的火花与计算机技术融合在了一体，使产品更加个性化。还有，就是在技术创新涌入消费电子产品时代的大潮中，把乔布斯放置到了历史正确的一边，

　　A world without Jobs

　　乔布斯离去后的世界

　　As our special report in this week’s issue (printed before Mr Jobs’s death) explains, innovation used to spill over from military and corporate laboratories to the consumer market, but lately this process has gone into reverse. Many people’s homes now have more powerful, and more flexible, devices than their offices do; consumer gizmos and online services are smarter and easier to use than most companies’ systems. Familiar consumer products are being adopted by businesses, government and the armed forces.

　　按照我们本期发行版（乔布斯逝世着印刷）特别报道中的解释，创新过去常常是从军事和企业实验室向消费市场传导，但是最近这个过程开始反转。现在很多人的家比起他们的办公室，变得更有能量，更灵活；消费类的小物品和在线服务比起大多数公司系统更加智能，更便于操作。相似的消费产品也被公司、政府和军队采购。

　　Companies are employing in-house versions of Facebook and creating their own “app stores” to deliver software to smartphone-toting employees. Doctors use tablet computers for their work in hospitals. Meanwhile, the number of consumers hungry for such gadgets continues to swell²⁷. Apple’s products are now being snapped up in Delhi and Dalian just as in Dublin and Dallas.

　　很多公司正在使用脸谱网站的内部版本，并建立自己的“应用程序商店”用以向持有智能手机的雇员传输软件。医生们在其工作的医院内使用平板电脑。而同时，对此类设备如饥似渴的消费者队伍仍在膨胀。位于德里和大连的苹果专卖店与位于都伯林和达拉斯的一样，都被抢购一空。

　　Mr Jobs had a reputation as a control freak, and his critics complained that the products and systems he designed were closed and inflexible²⁸, in the name of greater ease of use. Yet he also empowered millions of people by giving them access to cutting-edge technology. His insistence²⁹ on putting users first, and focusing on elegance³⁰ and simplicity³¹, has become deeply ingrained in his own company, and is spreading to rival firms too. It is no longer just at Apple that designers ask: “What would Steve Jobs do?”

　　乔布斯有着限制狂人的名号，对其批评主要是指他所设计的产品和系统在更宜于使用的名义下，被封闭和不可修改。然而他同时也让几百万人触及到了尖端科技。他坚持用户首先，致力于雅致和简捷的做法已经在苹果公司根深蒂固，并感染到了竞争对手。现在，不仅仅只是在苹果公司才能听到设计师们这样问：“乔布斯会怎么做？”

　　The gap between Apple and other tech firms is now likely to narrow. This week’s announcement of a new iPhone by a management team led by Tim Cook, who replaced Mr Jobs as chief executive in August, was generally regarded as competent but uninspiring. Without Mr Jobs to sprinkle his star dust on the event, it felt like just another product launch from just another technology firm. At the recent unveiling of a tablet computer by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, whose company is doing the best job of following Apple’s lead in combining hardware, software, content and services in an easy-to-use bundle, there were several swipes at Apple. But by doing his best to imitate Mr Jobs, Mr Bezos also flattered him. With Mr Jobs gone, Apple is just one of many technology firms trying to invoke³² his unruly spirit in new products.

　　苹果和其竞争对手间的距离现在并不大。本周的新iPhone发布会是由Tim Cook为首的管理团队主办，Tim Cook于8月接替乔布斯的首席执行官职务，人们普通认其富有能力但缺乏创意。没有乔布斯上洒下星尘，苹果的发布会就像是其它公司在发布另一款产品。最近，Jeff Bezos的亚马逊公司也发布了一款平板电脑，亚马逊公司正尽全力跟随苹果倡导的集硬件、软件、内容和服务于一体使之宜于使用的理念，这给了苹果公司极大的压力。然而除了全力模仿之外，Jeff Bezos也在吹捧乔布斯。乔布斯走了，苹果成了只不过是众多尽力将其不受约束的理念导入自己产品中高科技公司之一。

　　Mr Jobs was said by an engineer in the early years of Apple to emit a “reality distortion field”, such were his powers of persuasion³³. But in the end he conjured³⁴ up a reality of his own, channelling the magic of computing into products that reshaped entire industries. The man who said in his youth that he wanted to “put a ding in the universe” did just that.

　　早年在苹果时，曾有位工程师评价乔布斯散发出“将现实扭曲的气场”，即他的说服力。然而最终乔布斯编织了一个自己的现实，并将计算的魔力引入到了重塑整个工作的产品中去。这个年轻时曾扬言要“生而有番作为”的男人，实现了他的许诺。

1 conjure   

v.恳求，祈求；变魔术，变戏法

参考例句：

• I conjure you not to betray me.我恳求你不要背弃我。
• I can't simply conjure up the money out of thin air.我是不能像变魔术似的把钱变来。

2 gadget   

n.小巧的机械，精巧的装置，小玩意儿

参考例句：

• This gadget isn't much good.这小机械没什么用处。
• She has invented a nifty little gadget for undoing stubborn nuts and bolts.她发明了一种灵巧的小工具用来松开紧固的螺母和螺栓。

3 awed   

adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The audience was awed into silence by her stunning performance. 观众席上鸦雀无声，人们对他出色的表演感到惊叹。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I was awed by the huge gorilla. 那只大猩猩使我惊惧。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 shuffle   

n.拖著脚走，洗纸牌；v.拖曳，慢吞吞地走

参考例句：

• I wish you'd remember to shuffle before you deal.我希望在你发牌前记得洗牌。
• Don't shuffle your feet along.别拖着脚步走。

5 aged   

adj.年老的，陈年的

参考例句：

• He had put on weight and aged a little.他胖了，也老点了。
• He is aged,but his memory is still good.他已年老，然而记忆力还好。

6 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

7 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。

8 impersonal   

adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的

参考例句：

• Even his children found him strangely distant and impersonal.他的孩子们也认为他跟其他人很疏远，没有人情味。
• His manner seemed rather stiff and impersonal.他的态度似乎很生硬冷淡。

9 functional   

adj.为实用而设计的，具备功能的，起作用的

参考例句：

• The telephone was out of order,but is functional now.电话刚才坏了，但现在可以用了。
• The furniture is not fancy,just functional.这些家具不是摆着好看的，只是为了实用。

10 gadgets   

n.小机械，小器具（ gadget的名词复数 ）

参考例句：

• Certainly. The idea is not to have a house full of gadgets. 当然。设想是房屋不再充满小配件。 来自超越目标英语 第4册
• This meant more gadgets and more experiments. 这意味着要设计出更多的装置，做更多的实验。 来自英汉非文学 - 科学史

11 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。

12 aesthetics   

n.(尤指艺术方面之)美学，审美学

参考例句：

• Sometimes, of course, our markings may be simply a matter of aesthetics. 当然，有时我们的标点符号也许只是个审美的问题。 来自名作英译部分
• The field of aesthetics presents an especially difficult problem to the historian. 美学领域向历史学家提出了一个格外困难的问题。

13 scrambled   

v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞

参考例句：

• Each scrambled for the football at the football ground. 足球场上你争我夺。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• He scrambled awkwardly to his feet. 他笨拙地爬起身来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 upheavals   

突然的巨变( upheaval的名词复数 )； 大动荡； 大变动； 胀起

参考例句：

• the latest upheavals in the education system 最近教育制度上的种种变更
• These political upheavals might well destroy the whole framework of society. 这些政治动乱很可能会破坏整个社会结构。

15 computing   

n.计算

参考例句：

• to work in computing 从事信息处理
• Back in the dark ages of computing, in about 1980, they started a software company. 早在计算机尚未普及的时代（约1980年），他们就创办了软件公司。

16 incumbent   

adj.成为责任的，有义务的；现任的，在职的

参考例句：

• He defeated the incumbent governor by a large plurality.他以压倒多数票击败了现任州长。
• It is incumbent upon you to warn them.你有责任警告他们。

17 permanently   

adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地

参考例句：

• The accident left him permanently scarred.那次事故给他留下了永久的伤疤。
• The ship is now permanently moored on the Thames in London.该船现在永久地停泊在伦敦泰晤士河边。

18 dictatorial   

adj. 独裁的，专断的

参考例句：

• Her father is very dictatorial.她父亲很专横。
• For years the nation had been under the heel of a dictatorial regime.多年来这个国家一直在独裁政权的铁蹄下。

19 trajectory   

n.弹道，轨道

参考例句：

• It is not difficult to sketch the subsequent trajectory.很容易描绘出它们最终的轨迹。
• The path followed by a projectile is called its trajectory.抛物体所循的路径称为它的轨道。

20 wilderness   

n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

21 ailing   

v.生病

参考例句：

• They discussed the problems ailing the steel industry. 他们讨论了困扰钢铁工业的问题。
• She looked after her ailing father. 她照顾有病的父亲。

22 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

23 bumper   

n.(汽车上的)保险杠；adj.特大的，丰盛的

参考例句：

• The painting represents the scene of a bumper harvest.这幅画描绘了丰收的景象。
• This year we have a bumper harvest in grain.今年我们谷物丰收。

24 obsessively   

ad.着迷般地，过分地

参考例句：

• Peter was obsessively jealous and his behaviour was driving his wife away. 彼得过分嫉妒的举止令他的妻子想离他而去。
• He's rude to his friends and obsessively jealous. 他对他的朋友很无礼而且嫉妒心重。

25 fingerprints   

n.指纹( fingerprint的名词复数 )v.指纹( fingerprint的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Everyone's fingerprints are unique. 每个人的指纹都是独一无二的。
• They wore gloves so as not to leave any fingerprints behind (them). 他们戴着手套，以免留下指纹。 来自《简明英汉词典》

26 technological   

adj.技术的；工艺的

参考例句：

• A successful company must keep up with the pace of technological change.一家成功的公司必须得跟上技术变革的步伐。
• Today,the pace of life is increasing with technological advancements.当今， 随着科技进步，生活节奏不断增快。

27 swell   

vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强

参考例句：

• The waves had taken on a deep swell.海浪汹涌。
• His injured wrist began to swell.他那受伤的手腕开始肿了。

28 inflexible   

adj.不可改变的，不受影响的，不屈服的

参考例句：

• Charles was a man of settled habits and inflexible routine.查尔斯是一个恪守习惯、生活规律不容打乱的人。
• The new plastic is completely inflexible.这种新塑料是完全不可弯曲的。

29 insistence   

n.坚持；强调；坚决主张

参考例句：

• They were united in their insistence that she should go to college.他们一致坚持她应上大学。
• His insistence upon strict obedience is correct.他坚持绝对服从是对的。

30 elegance   

n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙

参考例句：

• The furnishings in the room imparted an air of elegance.这个房间的家具带给这房间一种优雅的气氛。
• John has been known for his sartorial elegance.约翰因为衣着讲究而出名。

31 simplicity   

n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯

参考例句：

• She dressed with elegant simplicity.她穿着朴素高雅。
• The beauty of this plan is its simplicity.简明扼要是这个计划的一大特点。

32 invoke   

v.求助于(神、法律)；恳求，乞求

参考例句：

• Let us invoke the blessings of peace.让我们祈求和平之福。
• I hope I'll never have to invoke this clause and lodge a claim with you.我希望我永远不会使用这个条款向你们索赔。

33 persuasion   

n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派

参考例句：

• He decided to leave only after much persuasion.经过多方劝说，他才决定离开。
• After a lot of persuasion,she agreed to go.经过多次劝说后，她同意去了。

34 conjured   

用魔术变出( conjure的过去式和过去分词 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现

参考例句：

• He conjured them with his dying breath to look after his children. 他临终时恳求他们照顾他的孩子。
• His very funny joke soon conjured my anger away. 他讲了个十分有趣的笑话，使得我的怒气顿消。