It was a smart call. To make the Apple II successful required more than just Wozniak’s awesome circuit design. It would need to be packaged into a fully integrated consumer product, and that was Jobs’s role.

这是个明智的决定。要想让AppleII取得成功，需要的不仅仅是沃兹尼亚克杰出的电路设计能力。AppleII需要成为一台完整的全功能消费产品，这就需要乔布斯施展拳脚了。

He began by asking their erstwhile partner Ron Wayne to design a case. “I assumed they had no money, so I did one that didn’t require any tooling and could be fabricated in a standard metal shop,” he said. His design called for a Plexiglas cover attached by metal straps and a rolltop door that slid down over the keyboard.

他第一步便是请以前的合伙人罗恩·韦恩设计一个箱子。“我想他们没什么钱，于是我就做了一款不需要使用工具加工的箱子，普通的五金商店就能制造出来。”他说。他的设计结果出来了：一个有机玻璃制成的壳子，附带有金属条以及一扇可以盖住键盘的卷门。

Jobs didn’t like it. He wanted a simple and elegant design, which he hoped would set Apple apart from the other machines, with their clunky gray metal cases. While haunting the appliance aisles at Macy’s, he was struck by the Cuisinart food processors and decided that he wanted a sleek case made of light molded plastic. At a Homebrew meeting, he offered a local consultant, Jerry Manock, $1,500 to produce such a design. Manock, dubious about Jobs’s appearance, asked for the money up front. Jobs refused, but Manock took the job anyway. Within weeks he had produced a simple foam-molded plastic case that was uncluttered and exuded friendliness. Jobs was thrilled.

乔布斯并不喜欢这个箱子。他想要的是筒单又精致的设计，可以让苹果电脑从那些配有笨重的灰色金属箱的电脑中脱颖而出。有一次他在梅西百货的家用电器通道闲逛时，厨艺公司（Cuisinart）的食品加工机触发了他的灵感，他决定要一个光滑的机箱，由轻便的模制塑料制成。在一次家酿计算机俱乐部的会议上，他出价1500美元，请一名当地的技术顾问杰里·马诺克（JerryManock）将这个设计制造出来。乔布斯的着装形象让马诺克有些半信半疑，他要求乔布斯预支报酬。乔布斯拒绝了，但马诺克还是接受了这份工作。几个星期后，他就做出了一个简单的发泡成型的塑料箱，整齐简洁，看上去很友好。乔布斯十分激动。

Next came the power supply. Digital geeks like Wozniak paid little attention to something so analog and mundane, but Jobs decided it was a key component. In particular he wanted—as he would his entire career—to provide power in a way that avoided the need for a fan. Fans inside computers were not Zen-like; they distracted. He dropped by Atari to consult with Alcorn, who knew old-fashioned electrical engineering. “Al turned me on to this brilliant guy named Rod Holt, who was a chain-smoking Marxist who had been through many marriages and was an expert on everything,” Jobs recalled. Like Manock and others meeting Jobs for the first time, Holt took a look at him and was skeptical. “I’m expensive,” Holt said. Jobs sensed he was worth it and said that cost was no problem. “He just conned me into working,” said Holt, who ended up joining Apple full-time.

接下来是电源的问题。像沃兹尼亚克这样的数字极客是不大会关注电源这种不起眼的部分的，但乔布斯认为这是一个关键部件。具体地说，他想要的——也是他整个职业生涯一直追求的——是在不使用风扇的情况下供电。计算机内部的风扇有悖于禅意，它们的噪音会让人无法集中精神。乔布斯去雅达利公司咨询奥尔康，他了解老式的电气工程。“奥尔康把一个叫罗德·霍尔特（RodHolt）的聪明家伙介绍给我，这是个烟不离手的马克思主义者，结过多次婚，精通所有事物。”乔布斯回忆。和马诺克以及其他第一次见到乔布斯的人一样，霍尔特打量了他一番，满腹狐疑。“我收费很髙的。”霍尔特说。乔布斯感觉到此人一定物有所值，于是说钱不是问题。“他就这么说服我为他工作了。”霍尔特说，他后来加入苹果公司，成为了一名全职员工。

Instead of a conventional linear power supply, Holt built one like those used in oscilloscopes. It switched the power on and off not sixty times per second, but thousands of times; this allowed it to store the power for far less time, and thus throw off less heat. “That switching power supply was as revolutionary as the Apple II logic board was,” Jobs later said. “Rod doesn’t get a lot of credit for this in the history books, but he should. Every computer now uses switching power supplies, and they all rip off Rod’s design.” For all of Wozniak’s brilliance, this was not something he could have done. “I only knew vaguely what a switching power supply was,” Woz admitted.

霍尔特并没有使用传统的线性电源，而是制造了一个与示波器等仪器上使用的相类似的开关电源。这就意味着，在一秒钟之内，通断电的次数不是60次，而是上千次，这样电源存储电能的时间就大大减少，散热量也随之减少。“那个开关电源和AppleII电脑上的逻辑电路板一样，都是革命性的发明，”乔布斯后来说，“罗德并没有因此得到太多的赞誉，但他应该名垂青史。现在所有的电脑都使用开关电源，而这都是盗用了罗德的设计。”尽管沃兹尼亚克天赋异禀，电源设计却非他能力所及。“我只大概知道开关电源是个什么东西。”他说。

Jobs’s father had once taught him that a drive for perfection meant caring about the craftsmanship even of the parts unseen. Jobs applied that to the layout of the circuit board inside the Apple II. He rejected the initial design because the lines were not straight enough.

乔布斯的父亲曾经教导过他，追求完美意味着：即便是别人看不到的地方，对其工艺也必须尽心尽力。乔布斯将这一理念应用到了AppleII的内部电路板布局上。他否决了最初的设计，理由是其中的线路不够直。

This passion for perfection led him to indulge his instinct to control. Most hackers and hobbyists liked to customize, modify, and jack various things into their computers. To Jobs, this was a threat to a seamless end-to-end user experience. Wozniak, a hacker at heart, disagreed. He wanted to include eight slots on the Apple II for users to insert whatever smaller circuit boards and peripherals they might want. Jobs insisted there be only two, for a printer and a modem. “Usually I’m really easy to get along with, but this time I told him, ‘If that’s what you want, go get yourself another computer,’” Wozniak recalled. “I knew that people like me would eventually come up with things to add to any computer.” Wozniak won the argument that time, but he could sense his power waning. “I was in a position to do that then. I wouldn’t always be.”

这种完美主义的激情也让乔布斯更加放纵自己的控制欲。大多数的黑客和业余爱好者都喜欢定制和改装自己的电脑，往上面插上各种部件。对乔布斯来说，这会威胁到无缝的用户体验。骨子里还是一名黑客的沃兹尼亚克并不同意。他想要AppleII带上8个扩展槽，可以让用户随心所欲地插上小型电路板或者外接设备。乔布斯坚持只能有两个扩展槽，一个给打印机，另一个给调制解调器。“通常我是个很好说话的人，但这一次我告诉他：你要是只想要两个扩展槽的话，就自己去做一台吧。’”沃兹回忆道，“我知道，像我这样的人最终总是会想出点儿东西来加到电脑上的。”这场争执以沃兹的胜利告终，但他能感觉到自己的影响力正在减弱。“当时我还能有那样的话语杈，但我不会一直都有。”