1996-02-22 Steve Jobs.Interview with Terry Gross
“One of the things I always tried to coach myself on was not being afraid to fail.”
“我一直试图提醒自己的一件事就是不要害怕失败。”
In 1996, Steve and the Fresh Air radio host Terry Gross looked back on his time at Apple and ahead to the future of the computer industry. They spoke shortly after Pixar’s release of Toy Story and its successful initial public offering. NeXT, meanwhile, continued to struggle.
在 1996 年，史蒂夫和新鲜空气电台主持人特里·格罗斯回顾了他在苹果公司的时光，并展望了计算机行业的未来。他们在皮克斯发布《玩具总动员》及其成功的首次公开募股后不久进行了交谈。与此同时，NeXT 仍在挣扎。
Terry Gross: How do you think that the web might change in the near future with the help of the type of software that you are producing now?
特里·格罗斯：您认为您现在正在开发的软件将如何在不久的将来改变网络？
Steve Jobs: I think most large companies and medium-size companies (and even small companies) are starting to look at the web as the ultimate direct-to-customer distribution chain, bypassing all middlemen, going directly from the supplier to the consumer. That’s a pretty powerful concept when you think about it. One of the things that I love is that a very small company, if they invest a lot in their website, can look just as formidable and just as solid on the web as a very large company can. As a matter of fact, some of the smaller companies are more hip on the web, getting more hip to the web sooner, and so they actually look better than some of the large companies do right now. It’s going to be this very leveling phenomenon, but I think a tremendous amount of goods and services is going to be sold, or at least the demand created for such things, over the web.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：我认为大多数大型公司和中型公司（甚至小型公司）都开始将网络视为最终的直接面向客户的分销链，绕过所有中介，直接从供应商到消费者。当你考虑这个问题时，这是一个相当强大的概念。我喜欢的一件事是，如果一家非常小的公司在其网站上投入大量资金，它在网络上的形象可以与一家非常大的公司一样强大和稳固。事实上，一些小公司在网络上更具时尚感，更早适应网络，因此它们的形象实际上比一些大型公司现在看起来更好。这将是一个非常平衡的现象，但我认为大量的商品和服务将通过网络销售，或者至少会创造对这些商品和服务的需求。
Terry Gross: What else do you see in the near future for the web, besides the ability to shop in a more kind of complete way through the web?
特里·格罗斯：除了通过网络以更完整的方式购物之外，你还看到未来网络还有什么其他可能性？
Steve Jobs: It’s not just shopping for goods and services. It’s shopping for information. I mean, you’re going to find out … Already, when I want to find out the movies that are playing around Silicon Valley, I just go up on the local web page and check it out. It’s a lot faster than going through the newspaper, and a lot faster than calling the theaters, et cetera. More and more, we’re shopping for information on the web. I just recently bought a Sony, one of the new Sony camcorders. I went on Sony’s web page, and I found out all about the ones they offer and picked the one I wanted right from that web page before I even called the store to try to find it physically. The demand to get me to buy that thing was created from Sony’s web page. I think we’re going to see more and more of that. You’re going to be buying information or finding information, and really making a lot of decisions about what you’re going to do with your life, or what you’re going to purchase, from the web.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：这不仅仅是购物商品和服务。这是信息购物。我的意思是，你会发现……已经，当我想了解硅谷周围正在放映的电影时，我只需上当地网页查看。这比翻阅报纸快得多，也比打电话给电影院快得多。我们越来越多地在网上购物信息。我最近买了一台索尼的新款摄像机。我上了索尼的网页，了解了他们提供的所有型号，并在甚至还没打电话去商店找之前，就从那个网页上选择了我想要的那一款。促使我购买那东西的需求是来自索尼的网页。我认为我们会看到越来越多这样的情况。你将会在网上购买信息或寻找信息，实际上会对你生活中的决策，或者你将要购买的东西做出很多决定。
Terry Gross:Is the whole idea of going to the store to buy software going to become obsolete, too? Do you think we’ll be downloading our software from the web?
特里·格罗斯：去商店购买软件的整个想法也会变得过时吗？你认为我们会从网上下载软件吗？
Steve Jobs: Of course. Yeah, there’s no question about it. There’s no question that that will happen, and I think it will happen in the next twenty-four months. There’s some software right now that’s still very large. The web on-ramps and off-ramps to corporations are now very fast, but the off-ramps to the consumers’ homes are still not so fast. For buying large software, such as CD-ROM games and stuff, they’ll still be distributed on physical media for a while, but when the off-ramps to the consumer get faster, possibly with cable modems in the near future, then that could possibly go fully electronic as well.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：当然。是的，毫无疑问。这将会发生，我认为在接下来的二十四个月内会发生。目前有一些软件仍然非常庞大。企业的网络上行和下行现在非常快速，但消费者家庭的下行速度仍然不够快。对于购买大型软件，比如 CD-ROM 游戏等，它们仍然会在物理介质上分发一段时间，但当消费者的下行速度变得更快，可能在不久的将来通过电缆调制解调器实现时，这也可能完全转为电子形式。
Terry Gross:Tell me what else you see for the web beyond the world of retail.
特里·格罗斯：告诉我除了零售世界之外，你还看到网络上有什么。
Steve Jobs: There’s a lot of things happening with the web right now, in terms of allowing people access to information that they would just never have before. What this does is, of course, it lets special-interest groups get together. I know people who have had, as an example, a stroke, and have gotten on the web and found that there are several web pages now devoted to information for stroke victims where they can learn about some of the latest treatments. They can learn about avoidance, the latest in avoidance advice, and things like that. Those things didn’t exist before, as well.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：现在网络上发生了很多事情，让人们能够获取以前根本无法获得的信息。这当然让特殊利益团体聚集在一起。我认识一些人，比如说，有人中风后上网发现现在有几个网页专门提供中风患者的信息，他们可以了解一些最新的治疗方法。他们可以了解预防、最新的预防建议等等。这些东西以前是不存在的。
Terry Gross: Do you think that when you were ousted from Apple that people kind of wrote you off? I mean, here you are with these big successes now.
特里·格罗斯：你认为当你被苹果公司驱逐时，人们是否有点看不起你？我的意思是，现在你取得了这些巨大的成功。
Steve Jobs:Oh golly, I don’t know. I’m sure that a lot of people did, and that was fine. It was a very painful time, as you might imagine.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：哦，天哪，我不知道。我相信很多人都这样做了，这没问题。这段时间非常痛苦，正如你可能想象的那样。
Terry Gross: What, to be forced out of the company you created?
特里·格罗斯：什么，竟然被迫离开你自己创办的公司？
Steve Jobs:Oh, of course. That was a very painful time, but you just march forward, and you try to learn from it. One of the things I always tried to coach myself on was not being afraid to fail. When you have something that doesn’t work out, a lot of times, people’s reaction is to get very protective about never wanting to fall on their face again. I think that’s a big mistake, because you never achieve what you want without falling on your face a few times in the process of getting there. I’ve tried to not be afraid to fail, and, matter of fact, I’ve failed quite a bit since leaving Apple.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：哦，当然。那段时间非常痛苦，但你只能向前走，努力从中学习。我一直试图提醒自己不要害怕失败。当你遇到不顺利的事情时，很多时候，人们的反应是非常保护自己，不想再摔倒。我认为这是一个大错误，因为在实现目标的过程中，你不可能不摔几次跤。我努力不害怕失败，事实上，自从离开苹果以来，我确实失败了不少。
Terry Gross: Are you surprised at the problems Apple is having now, or did you see that coming?
特里·格罗斯：你对苹果现在遇到的问题感到惊讶吗，还是早就预料到了？
Steve Jobs:I try not to talk about Apple too much. What I will say is that the day I left Apple, we had a ten-year lead over Microsoft. In the technology business, a ten-year lead is really hard to come by. It happens, maybe a company has that once every few decades, whether it be Xerox or IBM with mainframes. Apple had that with the graphical user interface. The problem at Apple was that they stopped innovating. If you look at the Mac that ships today, it’s 25 percent different than the day I left, and that’s not enough for ten years and billions of dollars in R&D.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：我尽量不多谈苹果。我想说的是，当我离开苹果的那天，我们在微软面前有十年的领先优势。在科技行业，十年的领先优势是非常难得的。这种情况发生过，也许一个公司每几十年才会有一次，无论是施乐还是 IBM 的主机。苹果在图形用户界面方面有这样的优势。苹果的问题在于他们停止了创新。如果你看看今天出货的 Mac，它与我离开时相比只有 25%的不同，这对于十年和数十亿美元的研发来说是不够的。
It wasn’t that Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac. It’s that the Mac was a sitting duck for ten years. That’s Apple’s problem, is that their differentiation evaporated. Unlike Compaq, or others who play in the Intel-Microsoft standard space, where they only … Compaq only has to be 5 percent better than its competitors for everyone to want to buy their computers.
微软并不是在复制 Mac 时如此聪明或聪慧，而是 Mac 在十年间一直处于被动状态。这是苹果的问题，他们的差异化消失了。与在英特尔-微软标准领域竞争的康柏等公司不同，康柏只需比竞争对手好 5%，就能让所有人都想购买他们的电脑。
Apple has to be 50 percent or 100 percent better, because when you buy something that is out of the mainstream a little bit, you take a risk, and you want a much bigger reward for taking that risk. […] That differentiation has not completely evaporated, but for the most part it has. That’s the predicament Apple’s in now. That’s why cost-cutting and other things at Apple are not going to be the cure. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament. There’s a lot of good people left at Apple that are capable of doing that with the proper leadership, which is what’s been missing.
苹果必须比其他产品好 50%或 100%，因为当你购买一些稍微偏离主流的东西时，你会承担风险，而你希望为承担这个风险获得更大的回报。[……] 这种差异化并没有完全消失，但在大多数情况下，它确实消失了。这就是苹果目前所处的困境。这就是为什么苹果的成本削减和其他措施不会成为解决方案。苹果的解决方案是通过创新来摆脱当前的困境。苹果还有很多优秀的人才，他们能够在适当的领导下做到这一点，而这正是缺失的。
Terry Gross: Some Mac users are afraid that the Mac operating system is in danger of becoming obsolete in the way that Beta video became obsolete because it was outdone by VHS. What do you think?
特里·格罗斯：一些 Mac 用户担心 Mac 操作系统会像 Beta 视频因被 VHS 超越而变得过时一样。你怎么看？
Steve Jobs: I think with the appropriate leadership at Apple, that’s not going to happen, but I think we have to wait and see.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：我认为在苹果公司有适当的领导下，这不会发生，但我认为我们需要拭目以待。
Terry Gross: Do you care? How still involved, invested, do you feel in the future of Apple, the company you co-created?
特里·格罗斯：你在乎吗？你对你共同创办的苹果公司未来的参与感和投入感有多强？
Steve Jobs:I’m happy every time a Mac gets shipped. I still have people sending me emails, telling me how much they love their Macs. It’s sort of … how do you explain it? It’s like the first person you were ever in love with. You know? It’s like your first love, and there will never be another one like it. In my case, we were together for ten years, and that’s a long time. But if you move on in your life, you can’t always stay in love with your first girlfriend. Right?
史蒂夫·乔布斯：每次有 Mac 出货我都很开心。我仍然有很多人给我发邮件，告诉我他们有多喜欢他们的 Mac。这有点……怎么说呢？就像你第一次爱上的人。你知道吗？就像你的初恋，永远不会再有第二个像它一样的。在我看来，我们在一起十年，那是很长的时间。但如果你在生活中继续前进，你不能总是爱着你的初恋女友。对吧？
Terry Gross: What do you think the state of the computer would be if it weren’t for Apple? This is a chance, I guess, for a really self-serving answer. But, I mean, I’m really curious what you think.
特里·格罗斯：如果没有苹果，你认为计算机的状态会是什么样的？我想这是一个非常自私的回答的机会。但是，我真的很想知道你怎么想。
Steve Jobs:I usually believe that if one group of people didn’t do something, within a certain number of years, the times would produce another group of people that would accomplish similar things. We happened to be at the right place, at exactly the right time, with the right group of people. We did some wonderful work. I’m extraordinarily proud of the work that the team at Apple did when I was there. I think that, personally, our major contribution was a little different than some people might think. I think our major contribution was in bringing a liberal arts point of view to the use of computers.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：我通常认为，如果一群人没有做某件事，在一定的年份内，时代会产生另一群人来完成类似的事情。我们恰好在正确的地方，恰好在正确的时间，和正确的人在一起。我们做了一些精彩的工作。我对我在苹果公司时团队所做的工作感到非常自豪。我认为，个人而言，我们的主要贡献与一些人可能认为的有所不同。我认为我们的主要贡献是在计算机使用中引入了人文学科的视角。
Terry Gross: Yeah, explain what you mean by that.
特里·格罗斯： 是的，解释一下你的意思。
Steve Jobs: What I mean by that is that if you really look at the ease of use of the Macintosh, the driving motivation behind that was to bring—not only ease of use to people so that many, many more people could use computers for nontraditional things at that time—but it was to bring beautiful fonts and typography to people. It was to bring graphics to people, not for plotting laminar flow calculations, but so that they could see beautiful photographs, or pictures, or artwork, et cetera, to help them communicate what they were doing, potentially. Our goal was to bring a liberal arts perspective and a liberal arts audience to what had traditionally been a very geeky technology and a very geeky audience.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：我所说的意思是，如果你真正关注 Macintosh 的易用性，其背后的驱动力是为了让人们不仅能够轻松使用计算机进行当时非传统的事情，还为了将美丽的字体和排版带给人们。目的是将图形带给人们，不是为了绘制层流计算，而是让他们能够看到美丽的照片、图片或艺术作品等，以帮助他们潜在地传达他们所做的事情。我们的目标是将人文学科的视角和人文学科的受众带入传统上非常极客的技术和极客的受众中。
Terry Gross: What made you think that that more liberal arts direction was the direction to head in?
特里·格罗斯：是什么让你认为更偏向人文学科的方向是要走的方向？
Steve Jobs: Because in my perspective, and the way I was raised, was that science and computer science is a liberal art. It’s something that everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It’s not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It’s something that everybody should be exposed to, everyone should have a mastery of, to some extent, and that’s how we viewed computation, or these computation devices.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：因为在我的观点中，以及我成长的方式，科学和计算机科学是一种文科。这是每个人都应该知道如何使用，至少，在生活中驾驭的东西。它不应该是被限制在5%的人口角落里的东西。这是每个人都应该接触的，每个人都应该在某种程度上掌握的，这就是我们看待计算，或者这些计算设备的方式。
Terry Gross: And you think that concept really caught on in the whole industry, eventually?
特里·格罗斯：你认为这个概念最终在整个行业中真的流行起来了吗？
Steve Jobs:That’s the seed of Apple: computers for the rest of us. I think the liberal arts point of view still lives at Apple. I’m not so sure that it lives that many other places. I mean, one of the reasons I think Microsoft took ten years to copy the Mac was because they didn’t really get it at its core.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：这就是苹果的种子：为我们其他人提供的计算机。我认为人文艺术的观点在苹果仍然存在。我不太确定它在其他地方是否还存在。我是说，我认为微软花了十年时间来模仿 Mac 的原因之一是因为他们并没有真正理解它的核心。
Terry Gross: Do you think the PC, as we know it, is on the road of changing?
特里·格罗斯：你认为我们所知道的个人电脑正在发生变化吗？
Steve Jobs:That’s a really big question. I think the PC as we know it is going to be around for quite some time, but the heart of the question is, are we entering a time window where we might see the first successful post-PC devices? Personal digital assistants, or PDAs, attempted to be that and failed.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：这是一个非常大的问题。我认为我们所知道的个人电脑将会存在相当长的一段时间，但问题的核心是，我们是否进入了一个时间窗口，在这个窗口中我们可能会看到第一个成功的后 PC 设备？个人数字助理，或称 PDA，曾试图成为这一点，但失败了。
The next attempt, I think, is going to be these very low-cost consumer internet appliances. Can somebody make a three-hundred-dollar box that hooks up to your television on one side and maybe hooks up to ISDN or a cable modem on the other side and allows you for, three hundred dollars, to have a web browser on your TV and to access the entire internet? I think that’s entirely possible, and I think that we’re going to see those devices soon, hopefully some innovative marketing and distribution techniques surrounding those devices so that a lot of people can all of a sudden have an internet browser in their living room. I think that’s going to be very exciting, and I think that could be the beginning of the first real post-PC market.
下一个尝试，我认为，将是这些非常低成本的消费互联网设备。有没有人能做一个三百美元的盒子，一边连接到你的电视，另一边可能连接到 ISDN 或有线调制解调器，并让你以三百美元的价格在电视上拥有一个网页浏览器，访问整个互联网？我认为这是完全可能的，我认为我们很快就会看到这些设备，希望围绕这些设备有一些创新的营销和分销技术，这样很多人就可以突然在他们的客厅里拥有一个互联网浏览器。我认为这将是非常令人兴奋的，我认为这可能是第一个真正的后 PC 市场的开始。
Terry Gross: I know at Apple there was, at least early on, a very informal, non-corporate type of atmosphere. I wonder if there are any lessons you learned about what worked and didn’t work in the corporate lifestyle at Apple that you’ve applied to your current companies, NeXT and Pixar.
特里·格罗斯：我知道在苹果公司，至少早期，有一种非常非正式、非企业化的氛围。我想知道你在苹果公司的企业生活中学到了哪些有效和无效的经验教训，并将其应用到你现在的公司，NeXT 和皮克斯。
Steve Jobs: Well, I don’t know what a corporate lifestyle is. I mean, Apple was a corporation; we were very conscious of that. We were very driven to make money so that we could continue to invest in the things we loved. I would say Apple was a corporate lifestyle, but it had a few very big differences to other corporate lifestyles that I’d seen. The first one was a real belief that there wasn’t a hierarchy of ideas that mapped onto the hierarchy of the organization. In other words, great ideas could come from anywhere and that we better sort of treat people in a much more egalitarian sense, in terms of where the ideas came from.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：嗯，我不知道什么是企业生活方式。我的意思是，苹果是一家企业；我们对此非常清楚。我们非常努力地赚钱，以便能够继续投资于我们所热爱的事物。我会说苹果是一种企业生活方式，但与我见过的其他企业生活方式有几个很大的不同。第一个是真正相信没有与组织层级相对应的思想层级。换句话说，伟大的想法可以来自任何地方，我们最好以一种更加平等的方式对待人们，无论这些想法来自哪里。
And Apple was a very bottoms-up company when it came to a lot of its great ideas. And we hired truly great people and gave them the room to do great work. A lot of companies—I know it sounds crazy—but a lot of companies don’t do that. They hire people to tell them what to do. We hired people to tell us what to do. We figured we’re paying them all this money, their job is to figure out what to do and tell us. And that led to a very different corporate culture, and one that’s really much more collegial than hierarchical.
苹果在很多伟大想法上是一个非常自下而上的公司。我们雇佣了真正优秀的人，并给他们空间去做伟大的工作。很多公司——我知道这听起来很疯狂——但很多公司并不这样做。他们雇佣人来告诉他们该做什么。我们雇佣人来告诉我们该做什么。我们认为既然支付了他们这么多钱，他们的工作就是找出该做什么并告诉我们。这导致了一个非常不同的企业文化，更加同事间合作而非等级分明。
Terry Gross: In spite of this kind of different approach to the corporate hierarchy, it was probably still a very high-stress place.
特里·格罗斯：尽管采取了这种不同的公司层级方法，但这可能仍然是一个压力很大的地方。
Steve Jobs: Well, we were very young, and most of the folks were not married, and so they could work fifteen-hour days. You didn’t have a typical situation where you worked so that you can support your life. Your work was your life, in many cases.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：嗯，我们当时很年轻，大多数人都没有结婚，所以他们可以工作十五个小时一天。你没有那种典型的情况，就是为了养活自己而工作。在很多情况下，你的工作就是你的生活。
Terry Gross:Right. Do you feel you’ve changed from that? Is that still your life?
特里·格罗斯：对。你觉得你从中改变了吗？那仍然是你的生活吗？
Steve Jobs: I feel it is still my life, but it’s not all my life. It’s less of a percentage, but I still don’t really … I’ve never been able to think of my work and my life as different things. They’re the same thing. Where it used to be 99 percent of my life, it’s maybe 50 percent of my life now.
史蒂夫·乔布斯：我觉得这仍然是我的生活，但这并不是我生活的全部。它所占的比例减少了，但我仍然不太……我从来没有办法把我的工作和我的生活看作是不同的东西。它们是同一件事。以前占我生活的 99%，现在可能只占我生活的 50%。
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