CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

第十八章

NeXT

NeXT

Prometheus Unbound

自由的普罗米修斯

The Pirates Abandon Ship

海盗弃船

Upon his return from Europe in August 1985, while he was casting about for what to do next, Jobs called the Stanford biochemist Paul Berg to discuss the advances that were being made in gene splicing and recombinant DNA. Berg described how difficult it was to do experiments in a biology lab, where it could take weeks to nurture an experiment and get a result. “Why don’t you simulate them on a computer?” Jobs asked. Berg replied that computers with such capacities were too expensive for university labs. “Suddenly, he was excited about the possibilities,” Berg recalled. “He had it in his mind to start a new company. He was young and rich, and had to find something to do with the rest of his life.”

在一次由斯坦福大学校长唐纳德·肯尼迪（DonaldKennedy）举办的午宴上，乔布斯结识了生物学家保罗·伯格（PaulBerg）。伯格是诺贝尔奖得主，闲谈中对他讲述了基因拼接和重组领域取得的进展。乔布斯喜欢摄取信息，尤其是和知识渊博的人在一起的时候。1985年8月，乔布斯从欧洲回来，正在琢磨接下来要做些什么。他打电话给伯格，询问能否再聚一次。他们在斯坦福大学的校园里散步，最后在一个小咖啡店里吃午饭，探讨问题。伯格向乔布斯解释了在生物实验室做实验的困难程度，做一个实验并获得结果可能需要数周时间。“为什么不在计算机上进行模拟实验呢？”乔布斯问道，“这样不仅你自己能够更快地开展实验，而且，有一天，美国的微生物学新生都会用到保罗·伯格的基因重组软件。”伯格解释说，对于大学实验室来说，具备这种能力的计算机太贵了。“突然间，乔布斯就为这种现状所蕴含的可能性兴奋起来，”伯格回忆说，“他想到要创办一家新企业。他年轻、富有，要为自己今后的生活找点儿事做。”

Jobs had already been canvassing academics to ask what their workstation needs were. It was something he had been interested in since 1983, when he had visited the computer science department at Brown to show off the Macintosh, only to be told that it would take a far more powerful machine to do anything useful in a university lab. The dream of academic researchers was to have a workstation that was both powerful and personal. As head of the Macintosh division, Jobs had launched a project to build such a machine, which was dubbed the Big Mac. It would have a UNIX operating system but with the friendly Macintosh interface. But after Jobs was ousted from the Macintosh division, his replacement, Jean-Louis Gassée, canceled the Big Mac.

乔布斯一直以来都在拜访学者，询问他们对计算机工作站的潜在需求。自1983年以来，他就开始对此产生兴趣。当时，他造访布朗大学计算机科学系，向他们展示麦金塔电脑，却被告知，在大学实验室里要比这强大得多的机器才能做出些有用的东西。学术研究人员的梦想是拥有一台强大的个人工作站。作为麦金塔部门的负责人，为了生产这种计算机，乔布斯推出了一个新项目。该项目被戏称为“大Mac”（BigMac）,将采用Unix操作系统和友好的麦金塔界面。但是1985年夏天乔布斯被逐出麦金塔部门后，他的继任者让-路易·加西便取消了这一项目。

When that happened, Jobs got a distressed call from Rich Page, who had been engineering the Big Mac’s chip set. It was the latest in a series of conversations that Jobs was having with disgruntled Apple employees urging him to start a new company and rescue them. Plans to do so began to jell over Labor Day weekend, when Jobs spoke to Bud Tribble, the original Macintosh software chief, and floated the idea of starting a company to build a powerful but personal workstation. He also enlisted two other Macintosh division employees who had been talking about leaving, the engineer George Crow and the controller Susan Barnes.

事情发生后，乔布斯接到了里奇·佩奇悲愤的控诉电话，佩奇之前一直在设计大Mac的芯片组。乔布斯被解除管理职务后，不满的苹果员工曾陆续找他谈话，力劝他创办一家新企业来拯救他们，佩奇正是其中之一。劳工节的周末，创办新公司的计划开始酝酿。乔布斯同原麦金塔软件主管巴德·特里布尔谈话，并说出了自己的想法——创建一家公司，专门生产强大的个人工作站。他还联系到其他两位麦金塔部门员工，工程师乔治·克罗（GeorgeCrow）和总监苏珊·巴恩斯，邀请他们加盟；这两人一直都在考虑辞职。

That left one key vacancy on the team: a person who could market the new product to universities. The obvious candidate was Dan’l Lewin, who at Apple had organized a consortium of universities to buy Macintosh computers in bulk. Besides missing two letters in his first name, Lewin had the chiseled good looks of Clark Kent and a Princetonian’s polish. He and Jobs shared a bond: Lewin had written a Princeton thesis on Bob Dylan and charismatic leadership, and Jobs knew something about both of those topics.

新团队还有一个关键的职位空缺：一个可以向高校营销新产品的人。很明显，这一职位的合适人选是丹·卢因，他曾在索尼工作，乔布斯研究过那家公司的宣传手册。早在1980年乔布斯就聘请了卢因。卢因后来组织了一个高校联盟，向多家大学批量出售麦金塔电脑。丹·卢因的名字虽然比丹尼尔·卢因（DanielM.Lewin）①少了两个字母，但却拥有克拉克·肯特②般轮廓鲜明的外貌、普林斯顿式的优雅，以及大学游泳队明星成员的魅力。尽管背景不同，卢因和乔布斯却有着共同的兴趣：卢因的大学毕业论文对鲍勃·迪伦和魅力型领导力进行了研究，而乔布斯对这两个话题都有所了解。

Lewin’s university consortium had been a godsend to the Macintosh group, but he had become frustrated after Jobs left and Bill Campbell had reorganized marketing in a way that reduced the role of direct sales to universities. He had been meaning to call Jobs when, that Labor Day weekend, Jobs called first. He drove to Jobs’s unfurnished mansion, and they walked the grounds while discussing the possibility of creating a new company. Lewin was excited, but not ready to commit. He was going to Austin with Campbell the following week, and he wanted to wait until then to decide. Upon his return, he gave his answer: He was in. The news came just in time for the September 13 Apple board meeting.

卢因的高校联盟对麦金塔团队来说是个天赐良机。但是，乔布斯离开后，卢因很泄气，比尔·坎贝尔也将营销部门进行了重组，降低了高校直销的重要性。劳工节那个周末，卢因本打算给乔布斯打电话，结果乔布斯先打了过来。他驱车来到乔布斯的空旷豪宅，与他一边散步一边讨论创办新公司的可能性。卢因对此很兴奋，不过还没准备好作出任何承诺。之后一周，他要同比尔·坎贝尔前往奥斯汀，他想在那之后再作决定。从奥斯汀回来后，卢因给出了自己的答案：他决定加入。这个消息来得正是时候——9月13日，苹果公司即将召开董事会会议。