One of Atkinson’s amazing feats (which we are so accustomed to nowadays that we rarely marvel at it) was to allow the windows on a screen to overlap so that the “top” one clipped into the ones “below” it. Atkinson made it possible to move these windows around, just like shuffling papers on a desk, with those below becoming visible or hidden as you moved the top ones. Of course, on a computer screen there are no layers of pixels underneath the pixels that you see, so there are no windows actually lurking underneath the ones that appear to be on top. To create the illusion of overlapping windows requires complex coding that involves what are called “regions.” Atkinson pushed himself to make this trick work because he thought he had seen this capability during his visit to Xerox PARC. In fact the folks at PARC had never accomplished it, and they later told him they were amazed that he had done so. “I got a feeling for the empowering aspect of na?veté,” Atkinson said. “Because I didn’t know it couldn’t be done, I was enabled to do it.” He was working so hard that one morning, in a daze, he drove his Corvette into a parked truck and nearly killed himself. Jobs immediately drove to the hospital to see him. “We were pretty worried about you,” he said when Atkinson regained consciousness. Atkinson gave him a pained smile and replied, “Don’t worry, I still remember regions.”

阿特金森的伟大功绩之一（时至今日我们已经对它习以为常，感觉不到它的神奇）就是实现了屏幕上窗口间的重叠，这样一来“上面的”窗口就叠在了“下面的”窗口上。这一功能让人们可以像堆疊桌子上的文件纸张一样移动屏幕上的窗口，在你移动上面的窗口时，下面的窗口就会被隐藏起来或者被显示出来。当然，在电脑屏幕上，并没有层层像素隐藏在你看到的画面下，所以在你看到的“上面的”窗口之下，并没有隐藏的窗口。制造窗口重叠的假象，需要编写复杂的代码，其中运用到了“区域”（Region）这样一个概念。阿特金森强迫自己一定要做出这个效果，因为他觉得自己在施乐PARC见过这个功能。而实际上，施乐PARC的人从来没能实现这个功能，他们后来还阿特金森完成这一壮举表示了震惊。“我终于知道什么叫无知者无畏了，”阿特金森说，“正因为我不知道这个任务是如此困难，我才得以完成它。”阿特金森拚命工作，以至于一天早上，他在恍惚之中开着自己的克尔维特撞上了一辆停在路边的卡车，差点儿送命。乔布斯立刻驱车前往医院探望。阿特金森恢复意识后，乔布斯对他说：“我们很担心你。”阿特金森苦笑了一下，回答道：“不用担心，我还记得那些‘区域’。”

Jobs also had a passion for smooth scrolling. Documents should not lurch line by line as you scroll through them, but instead should flow. “He was adamant that everything on the interface had a good feeling to the user,” Atkinson said. They also wanted a mouse that could easily move the cursor in any direction, not just up-down/left-right. This required using a ball rather than the usual two wheels. One of the engineers told Atkinson that there was no way to build such a mouse commercially. After Atkinson complained to Jobs over dinner, he arrived at the office the next day to discover that Jobs had fired the engineer. When his replacement met Atkinson, his first words were, “I can build the mouse.”

乔布斯还狂热地追求页面滚动的平滑。当你滚动浏览一个文件时，文件内容不应该一行一行地滚动，而应该十分平滑地予以呈现。“他固执地认为，界面上的任何东西都要给使用者留下好印象。”阿特金森说。他们还想要一个可以操纵光标向任意方向移动的鼠标，而不仅仅是上下左右。这就需要使用一个滚球，而不是通常使用的两个轮子。一个工程师告诉阿特金森，这样的鼠标是不可能批量生产的。阿特金森在吃晚饭的时候向乔布斯抱怨了这件事，等他第二天上班时，发现那名工程师已经被乔布斯解雇了。接任的工程师见到阿特金森的第一句话就是：“我能做出那种鼠标。”

Atkinson and Jobs became best friends for a while, eating together at the Good Earth most nights. But John Couch and the other professional engineers on his Lisa team, many of them buttoned-down HP types, resented Jobs’s meddling and were infuriated by his frequent insults. There was also a clash of visions. Jobs wanted to build a VolksLisa, a simple and inexpensive product for the masses. “There was a tug-of-war between people like me, who wanted a lean machine, and those from HP, like Couch, who were aiming for the corporate market,” Jobs recalled.

阿特金森和乔布斯在一段时间内成为了挚友，大多数晚上都在美好地球餐厅一起吃饭。但约翰·库奇和丽萨团队中的其他专业工程师们（大多都是惠普工程师那种类型的传统保守之人），痛恨乔布斯插手丽萨项目，也被他不断的侮辱所激怒。双方在观念上也有冲突。乔布斯想要制造大众电脑，操作简单、价格低廉，适合普通人使用。他回忆说：“像我这样的人，我们想要制造适合大多数人的电脑，而那帮和库奇一样在惠普干过的人，他们的目标是企业市场，我们之间进行了激烈的拉锯战。”

Both Mike Scott and Mike Markkula were intent on bringing some order to Apple and became increasingly concerned about Jobs’s disruptive behavior. So in September 1980, they secretly plotted a reorganization. Couch was made the undisputed manager of the Lisa division. Jobs lost control of the computer he had named after his daughter. He was also stripped of his role as vice president for research and development. He was made non-executive chairman of the board. This position allowed him to remain Apple’s public face, but it meant that he had no operating control. That hurt. “I was upset and felt abandoned by Markkula,” he said. “He and Scotty felt I wasn’t up to running the Lisa division. I brooded about it a lot.”

斯科特和马库拉一心要给苹果公司带来秩序，也越来越担心乔布斯制造分裂的行为。于是，1980年9月，他们秘密策划了公司的重组。库奇成为了丽萨项目不容置疑的管理者。乔布斯失去了对以自己女儿命名的电脑的控制。他同时还被解除了研发部门副总裁的职务，被任命为董事会的非执行主席，也就是说，他依然代表苹果公司的公众形象，但手中再无实权。这深深刺痛了乔布斯的心。“我很难过，感觉被马库拉遗弃了，”他说，“他和斯科蒂觉得我无法胜任丽萨项目的管理工作。这件事让我郁闷地思考了很久。”