The most visible decision he made was to kill, once and for all, the Newton,
乔布斯作的最高调的决定,就是彻底地扼杀牛顿项目,
the personal digital assistant with the almost-good handwriting-recognition system.
就是那个带有不错的手写识别系统的个人数字助理。
Jobs hated it because it was Sculley's pet project,
乔布斯讨厌它,因为它是斯卡利最喜欢的项目,
because it didn't work perfectly, and because he had an aversion to stylus devices.
因为它不完美,也因为他讨厌手写设备。
He had tried to get Amelio to kill it early in 1997 and succeeded only in convincing him to try to spin off the division.
早在1997年初他就试图让阿梅里奥砍掉它,但只成功地说服他解散了这个部门。
By late 1997, when Jobs did his product reviews, it was still around.
到1997年末,乔布斯作产品评估时,发现它还在。
He later described his thinking: If Apple had been in a less precarious situation,
他后来这样描述这个决定:如果苹果当时的处境没有那么危险,
I would have drilled down myself to figure out how to make it work.
我可能会钻进去研究怎么改进它。
I didn't trust the people running it.
我不信任这个项目的负责人。
My gut was that there was some really good technology, but it was fucked up by mismanagement.
我强烈地感觉到它有真正优秀的技术,但是因为管理不善槁砸了。
By shutting it down, I freed up some good engineers who could work on new mobile devices.
停掉它,我就解放了一些优秀的工程师,他们可以去开发新的移动设备。
And eventually we got it right when we moved on to iPhones and the iPad.
最终我们走对了路,做出了iPhone和iPad。