Afterward, as he sped his Mercedes down the freeway toward Cupertino, Jobs fumed to Rossmann about Madame Mitterrand’s attitude. At one point he was going just over 100 miles per hour when a policeman stopped him and began writing a ticket. After a few minutes, as the officer scribbled away, Jobs honked. “Excuse me?” the policeman said. Jobs replied, “I’m in a hurry.” Amazingly, the officer didn’t get mad. He simply finished writing the ticket and warned that if Jobs was caught going over 55 again he would be sent to jail. As soon as the policeman left, Jobs got back on the road and accelerated to 100. “He absolutely believed that the normal rules didn’t apply to him,” Rossmann marveled.

事后，乔布斯开着奔驰车驶上高速公路，准备回库比蒂诺，一路上依然对密待朗夫人的态度感到很生气。不安的罗斯曼后来回忆说，车速超过每小时100英里后，一个警察拦下了车，准备开票。几分钟后，警察正潦草地书写罚单，乔布斯按起了喇叭。“有什么问题吗？”警察问道。乔布斯回答说：“我赶时间。”令人惊讶的是，那位警察并没有生气，而只是照常开完罚单，并警吿，如果乔布斯的车速再超过每小时55英里并被抓住，就要进监狱。结果警察刚离开，乔布斯就重新回到高速路上，再次加速到每小时100英里。“他肯定认为常规对自己无效。”罗斯曼对此惊叹不已。

His wife, Joanna Hoffman, saw the same thing when she accompanied Jobs to Europe a few months after the Macintosh was launched. “He was just completely obnoxious and thinking he could get away with anything,” she recalled. In Paris she had arranged a formal dinner with French software developers, but Jobs suddenly decided he didn’t want to go. Instead he shut the car door on Hoffman and told her he was going to see the poster artist Folon instead. “The developers were so pissed off they wouldn’t shake our hands,” she said.

在麦金塔电脑发布几个月后，罗斯曼的妻子乔安娜·霍夫曼陪同乔布斯前往欧洲，她见识到了同样的情形。“他非常令人讨厌，觉得自己可以不受任何事情的束缚。”她回忆说。在巴黎的时候，她已经安排好同法国的软件开发商们进行正式晚宴，结果乔布斯突然决定不想去了。他扔下霍夫曼独自上车，说自己要去拜访艺术家福隆（Folon）。“结果他的缺席让开发商们很生气，都不愿意跟我们握手。”她说道。

In Italy, he took an instant dislike to Apple’s general manager, a soft rotund guy who had come from a conventional business. Jobs told him bluntly that he was not impressed with his team or his sales strategy. “You don’t deserve to be able to sell the Mac,” Jobs said coldly. But that was mild compared to his reaction to the restaurant the hapless manager had chosen. Jobs demanded a vegan meal, but the waiter very elaborately proceeded to dish out a sauce filled with sour cream. Jobs got so nasty that Hoffman had to threaten him. She whispered that if he didn’t calm down, she was going to pour her hot coffee on his lap.

在意大利的时候，乔布斯打一见面就不喜欢苹果公司在当地的总经理——一位肉乎乎圆嘟嘟的男士，他以前在传统行业工作。乔布斯直截了当地对他说，自己对其团队及销售策略都不以为然。“你不配销售Mac。”乔布斯冷冷地说。不过，这位倒霉的经理受到的对待还算是好的了，他挑选的餐厅更惨。乔布斯点了一份素食，但服务员还是煞费苦心地往他的盘子里倒上了含有酸奶油的酱料。乔布斯的反应令人讨厌至极，以至于霍夫曼不得不靠威胁来阻止他。她低声对乔布斯说，如果他再不冷静下来，就把自己的热咖啡倒在他腿上。

The most substantive disagreements Jobs had on the European trip concerned sales forecasts. Using his reality distortion field, Jobs was always pushing his team to come up with higher projections. He kept threatening the European managers that he wouldn’t give them any allocations unless they projected bigger forecasts. They insisted on being realistic, and Hoffmann had to referee. “By the end of the trip, my whole body was shaking uncontrollably,” Hoffman recalled.

欧洲之行中，最根本的分歧集中在销售预测上。在其现实扭曲力场的影响下，乔布斯总是让自己的团队作出更髙的预测。在最初撰写麦金塔商业计划时，他这样做过，但这份计划最后又反过来给他带来了麻烦。在欧洲的时候他又故伎重演，不停地威胁欧洲的经理们，只有拿出更髙的预测数据，才能得到他的拨款。经理们坚持实事求是，霍夫曼不得不从中进行调和。“行程最后，我整个身子都不自主地颤抖。”霍夫曼回忆道。

It was on this trip that Jobs first got to know Jean-Louis Gassée, Apple’s manager in France. Gassée was among the few to stand up successfully to Jobs on the trip. “He has his own way with the truth,” Gassée later remarked. “The only way to deal with him was to out-bully him.” When Jobs made his usual threat about cutting down on France’s allocations if Gassée didn’t jack up sales projections, Gassée got angry. “I remember grabbing his lapel and telling him to stop, and then he backed down. I used to be an angry man myself. I am a recovering assaholic. So I could recognize that in Steve.”

此次欧洲之行，他第一次见到了让-路易·加西（Jean-LouisGassée）——苹果公司的法国经理。加西是少数几个成功对抗乔布斯的人。“他对事实有自己的见解，”加西后来评论道，“对付他的唯一方法就是以其人之道还治其人之身，反过来更狠地威胁他。”当乔布斯像通常一样，威胁说如果不调高销售预测，他就会削减对法国公司的拨款，加西彻底怒了。“我记得自己当时抓住他的衣领，叫他少来这套，然后他就退缩了。”加西说道，“我以前也是个火气大的人，是个浑球。所以我也能看出史蒂夫身上的这种性格。”

Gassée was impressed, however, at how Jobs could turn on the charm when he wanted to. Fran?ois Mitterrand had been preaching the gospel of informatique pour tous—computing for all—and various academic experts in technology, such as Marvin Minsky and Nicholas Negroponte, came over to sing in the choir. Jobs gave a talk to the group at the Hotel Bristol and painted a picture of how France could move ahead if it put computers in all of its schools. Paris also brought out the romantic in him. Both Gassée and Negroponte tell tales of him pining over women while there.

不过，乔布斯能游刃有余地收放自己的个人魅力，这让加西印象深刻。密特朗发起了“大众信息技术计划”（Informatiquepourtous）——宣扬普及大众电脑，技术领域的各种学术专家都前来参与其中，如马文·明斯基（MarvinMinsky）和尼古拉斯·尼葛洛庞帝（NicholasNegroponte）。在法国时，乔布斯在布里斯托酒店面向该计划的参与者发表了讲话，向人们描绘了一幅图景一如果法国所有的学校都配备电脑，这个国家将会出现多大的进步。巴黎也唤醒了乔布斯的浪漫心情。加西和尼葛洛庞帝都曾讲过乔布斯在那里为伊人憔悴的故事——

注释：

①伊卡洛斯，希腊神话中的人物，忘记父亲的告诫，飞得太髙，太阳将他羽毛上的蜡熔化而掉到海中死去。

②美国著名雕塑家、艺术家，动态雕塑的发明者。