1998-07-08 Steve Jobs.Apple is coming back in a very big way.

Speech at Macworld

在 Macworld 的演讲

“Apple is coming back in a very big way.”

“苹果正大举回归。”

Steve was still interim CEO of Apple when he gave the keynote address at Macworld in New York City in July 1998.

史蒂夫在 1998 年 7 月于纽约市的 Macworld 大会上发表主题演讲时仍是苹果公司的临时首席执行官。

Thank you very much. This is good. I just got off a red-eye to get here. I didn’t think I could be here today, and I managed to make it, so this is good. We’ve got some great stuff to talk about today, so let’s get into it.

非常感谢。这很好。我刚刚乘坐红眼航班到达这里。我没想到今天能来这里，但我成功了，所以这很好。我们今天有一些很棒的内容要讨论，所以让我们开始吧。

An American named Abraham Maslow came up with a theory that he called the human hierarchy of needs. And this theory was a simple one in concept, [though] somewhat profound in its implications. This theory was that humans have needs that must be met, and these needs can be stratified into certain levels. [Humans] need the bottom needs to be met first, and then they progress to the next level. And when those [needs] are met, they progress to the next level.

一个名叫亚伯拉罕·马斯洛的美国人提出了一种他称之为人类需求层次的理论。这个理论在概念上很简单，但其含义却颇为深刻。这个理论认为，人类有必须满足的需求，这些需求可以分为不同的层次。人类需要首先满足最底层的需求，然后才能进入下一个层次。当这些需求得到满足时，他们就会进入下一个层次。

So, you start off with the physiological needs: food, clothing, and shelter, let’s say. If those are met, or once those are met, you then start to be concerned more with the safety of your environment—and eventually with love, with esteem, with self-actualization. I don’t know if this is true or not, but this is what Abraham believed.

所以，你首先满足生理需求：食物、衣服和住所，假设是这样。如果这些需求得到满足，或者一旦满足，你就会开始更加关注环境的安全——最终关注爱、尊重和自我实现。我不知道这是否真实，但这是亚伯拉罕的信念。

通过降低预期向更高层次迁移。

And I thought this was a good model, so I borrowed it today to construct … Steve Jobs’s version of this [audience laughs], which I call the Apple Hierarchy of Skepticism.

我认为这是一个很好的模型，所以我今天借用了它来构建……史蒂夫·乔布斯的版本 [观众笑]，我称之为苹果怀疑层级。

Let me explain this to you. When I came to Apple a year ago, all I heard was, “Apple is dying. Apple can’t survive.”

让我给你解释一下。当我一年前来到苹果时，我听到的都是“苹果正在衰亡。苹果无法生存。”

And it turns out that every time we convince people that we’ve accomplished something at one level, they come up with something new.

结果是，每当我们说服人们相信我们在某个层面上取得了成就时，他们就会提出新的要求。

I used to think this was a bad thing. I thought, “Oh, jeez, when are they ever going to believe that we’re going to be able to turn this thing around?” But actually, now I think it’s great, because what it means is we’ve now convinced them that we’ve taken care of last month’s question—and they’re onto the next one.

我以前认为这是一件坏事。我想，“哦，天哪，他们什么时候才能相信我们能够扭转局面？”但实际上，现在我觉得这很好，因为这意味着我们已经说服他们我们解决了上个月的问题——他们已经开始关注下一个问题。

So I thought, “Well, let’s get ahead of the game. Let’s try to figure out what all the questions are going to be and map out where we are.” So that’s what the Apple Hierarchy of Skepticism is. And it borrows from Dr. Maslow.

所以我想，“好吧，让我们抢先一步。让我们试着弄清楚所有的问题会是什么，并绘制出我们的位置。”这就是苹果怀疑层级的意义。它借鉴了马斯洛博士的理论。

So the first level, what we encountered a year ago, was survival. [Audience applauds.] A lot of people thought Apple was in some sort of death spiral, which I think there was some truth to. What did we do? We did many, many things, but the three things that stood out in people’s minds were: we brought in a new management team to run the company, a new board of directors that’s got some phenomenally experienced people on it, and we did a deal with Microsoft. The largest software company in the world want[ing] to help Apple was a fact that didn’t escape very many people, and it added a lot of credibility to what we were doing.

所以，第一个层级是我们一年前所面临的生存问题。【观众鼓掌】很多人认为苹果陷入了一种死亡螺旋，我认为这其中确实有一些道理。我们做了什么？我们采取了很多措施，但在人们心中最突出的三件事是：我们引入了一个新的管理团队来运营公司，组建了一个拥有极其丰富经验的新董事会，并且我们与微软达成了一项协议。全球最大的软件公司希望帮助苹果，这一事实并没有被很多人忽视，并且为我们正在做的事情增添了很多可信度。

The combination of these three things and a lot of other medium-sized things, I think, convinced people fairly rapidly that survival, at least in the short term, was not an issue. And it gave us some time to demonstrate that we could accomplish some other things.

这三件事以及许多其他中等规模的事物的结合，我认为，迅速让人们相信，至少在短期内，生存不是问题。这给了我们一些时间来证明我们可以完成其他一些事情。

Immediately, once we did these things, then everybody moved up a level. […] If it wasn’t about survival, it was, “Well, but there’s no stable business in the Mac market.” That was the next level of the hierarchy. So we had to start demonstrating that we had a stable business, and that one could be made from the Macintosh market, because it’s a great market.

一旦我们做了这些事情，大家就都提升了一个层次。 […] 如果不是关于生存，那就是，“好吧，但在 Mac 市场没有稳定的业务。” 这就是层级的下一个层次。因此，我们必须开始证明我们有一个稳定的业务，并且可以从 Macintosh 市场中建立一个，因为这是一个很好的市场。

So what did we do? Well, the most important thing was profits. In the end, that’s what a lot of people look at. And the first full quarter of the new management team, Apple delivered profits of $47 million […]. And in the next fiscal quarter […] Apple delivered a quarter with $55 million of profits. [Audience applauds.] This went a long way to convincing a lot of the skeptics. And we will be announcing the results of our third fiscal quarter, the one that just ended at the end of June, a week from today. And I’m very pleased to tell you that it will be our third consecutively profitable quarter. […]

那么我们做了什么呢？最重要的事情是利润。最终，这就是很多人关注的焦点。在新管理团队的第一个完整季度，苹果公司实现了 4700 万美元的利润……在下一个财政季度……苹果公司实现了 5500 万美元的利润。[观众鼓掌。] 这在很大程度上说服了许多怀疑者。我们将在今天一周后宣布我们第三个财政季度的结果，也就是刚刚在六月底结束的那个季度。我很高兴地告诉你，这将是我们连续第三个盈利的季度……

In terms of people, our retention has gone way up. We’re losing hardly any people from the company now, and we’re hiring incredibly good people into the company. We also realigned our distribution channels […] and we began an advertising campaign for brand—around “Think Different”—and for some very specific product advertising. […] We invested in an online store. […] We are one of the largest ecommerce sites now on the internet. […] And that’s terrific.

在人员方面，我们的留存率大幅上升。我们几乎没有失去任何员工，现在我们正在招聘非常优秀的人才。我们还重新调整了我们的分销渠道……并开始了一项以“Think Different”为主题的品牌广告活动，以及一些非常具体的产品广告……我们投资了一个在线商店……我们现在是互联网上最大的电子商务网站之一……这真是太棒了。

So the aggregate of all of these things was that the market value of Apple’s risen from about $1.8 billion a year ago, to about $4 billion yesterday. I don’t know what it is today.

所以所有这些事情的总和是，苹果公司的市场价值从一年前的约 18 亿美元上升到昨天的约 40 亿美元。我不知道今天是多少。

What this means is that people are seeing a stable business, which is good, and a business that is under control, which is also good.

这意味着人们看到一个稳定的业务，这是好的，并且一个在控制之中的业务，这也是好的。

So what do they do, then? Well, they don’t send us a card or anything. They just go onto the next one. What’s the next one? “Well, if you’ve survived and you’ve got a stable business, well, what’s your product strategy? You’re a product-driven company; you better have a doggone good product strategy.”

那么，他们接下来做了什么呢？他们不会给我们送张卡片或其他什么东西。他们只是继续关注下一个问题。下一个问题是什么？“好吧，如果你们已经生存下来并且拥有一个稳定的业务，那么你们的产品战略是什么？你们是一家以产品为导向的公司，你们最好有一个非常出色的产品战略。”

When we got to the company a year ago, there were a lot of products. There were the product platforms—fifteen product platforms—and a zillion variants of each one. I couldn’t even figure this out myself. After about three weeks, I said, “How are we going to explain this to others when we don’t even know which products to recommend to our friends?” There was no way to do it.

当我们一年前接手公司时，产品种类繁多。产品平台有十五个，每个平台还有无数的变种。我自己都搞不清楚这些。大约三周后，我说：“当我们自己都不知道该向朋友推荐哪款产品时，我们怎么向别人解释这些产品？”根本没办法做到。

So we went back to Business School 101 and said, “What do people want?” Well, they want two kinds of products. They want consumer products […] and we need pro products because our design and publishing market wants pro products. […] And in each of those two categories, we need desktop and portable models.

所以我们回到了商学院 101，问道：“人们想要什么？”好吧，他们想要两种产品。他们想要消费品……而我们需要专业产品，因为我们的设计和出版市场需要专业产品……在这两类产品中，我们需要桌面和便携式型号。

What this told us was if we had four great products, that’s all we need. And as a matter of fact, if we only had four, we could put the A team on every single one of them. And if we only had four, we could turn them all every nine months instead of every eighteen months. And if we only had four, we could be working on the next generation or two of each one as we’re introducing the first generation. So that’s what we decided to do—to focus on four great products.

这告诉我们，如果我们有四个优秀的产品，那就足够了。事实上，如果我们只有四个产品，我们可以把 A 团队分配到每一个产品上。如果我们只有四个产品，我们可以每九个月更新一次，而不是每十八个月更新一次。如果我们只有四个产品，我们可以在推出第一代产品的同时，开始研发每个产品的下一代或两代产品。所以我们决定专注于四个优秀的产品。

And the first one that we introduced, of course, was the desktop pro product, which was the Power Mac G3. […] The next product was the pro portable. And as you know, that is our new PowerBook G3. […] Now, we also announced on May 6th that we are developing a consumer portable product, and that we will announce it in the first half of next year. And we’re hard at work on that, and I think it’s going to be quite nice.

我们首先介绍的当然是桌面专业产品，即 Power Mac G3。 […] 下一个产品是专业便携式产品。正如你所知道的，那就是我们的新 PowerBook G3。 […] 现在，我们还在 5 月 6 日宣布我们正在开发一款消费级便携产品，并将在明年上半年发布。我们正在全力以赴地进行这项工作，我认为它会非常不错。

Which brings us to our consumer desktop product and something we’re going to spend a fair bit of time on today, which, of course, is the iMac, which combines the excitement of the internet with the simplicity of a Macintosh. And that was our goal in this product.

这使我们来到了我们的消费级桌面产品，以及我们今天将花费相当多时间讨论的内容，当然就是 iMac，它将互联网的兴奋与 Macintosh 的简单性结合在一起。这就是我们在这个产品中的目标。

When we got to Apple a year ago, it was very clear within the first month that Apple was walking away from the consumer market because Apple didn’t have a compelling product under $2,000 and had not had one for some time. We immediately began a program to build the most kickass consumer product we knew how to do—and that’s the iMac.

当我们一年前到达苹果时，在第一个月内很明显苹果正在放弃消费市场，因为苹果没有一款售价低于 2000 美元的吸引人的产品，并且已经有一段时间没有这样的产品了。我们立即开始了一项计划，打造我们所能做到的最出色的消费级产品——那就是 iMac。

So we’re really, really happy with this thing. It’s gorgeous. We believe it’s going to change the way computers look and should look.

所以我们对这个东西非常非常满意。它太美了。我们相信它将改变电脑的外观和应该有的样子。

So we’ve survived. We’ve demonstrated that we’ve got a really great, stable business. We’ve laid out the road map of a fantastic product strategy. And we’re getting apps back on the Mac in unprecedented numbers. So, what more could you ask for?

所以我们活下来了。我们证明了我们有一个非常出色、稳定的业务。我们制定了一个出色的产品战略路线图。我们在 Mac 上以空前的数量重新推出应用程序。那么，你还想要什么呢？

Well, there’s always something, right? The last one is growth! “Well, if all this stuff’s so good, show me some growth. How are you going to grow?”

好吧，总是会有一些事情，对吧？最后一个是增长！“好吧，如果这些东西都这么好，那就给我看看增长。你打算怎么增长？”

正确的事实。

Right. And again: when I hear these things, I think it’s great, because what it means is we’re building the layers below and people are looking at the next layer. […] What’s the next thing to be skeptical about? Growth. So what are we going to do about growth?

没错。再说一次：当我听到这些事情时，我觉得很棒，因为这意味着我们正在构建基础层，而人们在关注下一层。 […] 下一个值得怀疑的是什么？增长。那么我们要如何应对增长呢？

A year ago, when the new management team got to Apple, we looked at the marketplace and we said that although Apple’s market share has declined, it’s still extraordinarily strong in the design and publishing market, where Apple’s market share is between 50 and 90, depending on what segment you look at. And [market share is also strong] in the education market, where Apple owns over half of the installed base and about 35 percent of the new selling units—bigger than anybody else.

一年前，当新管理团队接手苹果时，我们审视了市场，并得出结论，尽管苹果的市场份额有所下降，但在设计和出版市场上，苹果的市场份额依然非常强劲，取决于具体的细分市场，份额在50%到90%之间。而在教育市场，苹果拥有超过一半的现有设备份额以及大约35%的新售出设备份额——比其他任何公司都要大。

What we didn’t say was that Apple had declined rapidly in the consumer market, a market that it invented. Apple invented the market for selling computers to consumers, and yet it had failed to come out with compelling products at consumer price points for several years. So even though we didn’t talk about it, we began a program to get back into the consumer market with a vengeance. And this is where we see a tremendous amount of growth for ourselves. We are doing extremely well in the design and publishing market, and starting to do much better in the education market—but adding the consumer market to that will make both of those even stronger. And we’re going to do it with the iMac.

我们没有提到的是，苹果在消费市场上迅速衰退，而这个市场正是它所创造的。苹果创造了向消费者销售计算机的市场，但在过去几年中，它未能推出具有吸引力的产品，且价格适合消费者。因此，尽管我们没有谈论这个问题，但我们开始了一项计划，决心重新进入消费市场。这是我们看到巨大增长的地方。我们在设计和出版市场表现非常出色，并且在教育市场的表现也开始好转——但将消费市场纳入其中将使这两个市场更加强大。我们将通过 iMac 来实现这一目标。

There is no brand in the computer industry that is remotely as strong as Apple’s. Apple’s brand around the world is right up there with Disney and Sony and Nike in terms of recognition and in terms of consumer loyalty. Now, it’s also worth pointing out that the other three brands on this slide have all had serious problems. Look at Disney when Michael Eisner got there. Look at Nike and Sony over the last half-dozen years. But when these companies have straightened out their problems, their brands have come back stronger than ever. Brands take decades to build. And we think we have one of the best in the world.

在计算机行业，没有哪个品牌能与苹果的品牌相提并论。苹果的品牌在全球范围内与迪士尼、索尼和耐克的知名度和消费者忠诚度不相上下。现在，值得指出的是，这张幻灯片上的其他三个品牌都曾面临严重问题。看看迈克尔·艾斯纳接手时的迪士尼，看看耐克和索尼在过去六年中的表现。但是，当这些公司解决了他们的问题后，他们的品牌比以往任何时候都更强大。品牌的建立需要几十年时间。我们认为我们拥有世界上最好的品牌之一。

有人说，一个机构往往是一个人的延伸影子……我们在某种程度上，致力于投资于正确人选的延伸影子。

We believe that as the price points come down, as the consumer market blossoms, design and fashion become even more important. Let me give you an example. This is [an image of] the most popular watch in the world. And it’s popular not because it tells time better than any other watch. It’s popular because of its design. I’ll give you an interesting statistic: ten years ago, the average American owned one watch. Because of design entering the watch market, today the average American owns seven watches. OK? Seven watches because of design. Because of fashion.

我们相信，随着价格的下降，消费者市场的繁荣，设计和时尚变得更加重要。让我给你举个例子。这是世界上最受欢迎的手表。它之所以受欢迎，并不是因为它比其他手表更能准确地显示时间，而是因为它的设计。我给你一个有趣的统计数据：十年前，平均每个美国人拥有一只手表。由于设计进入手表市场，如今平均每个美国人拥有七只手表。明白了吗？七只手表，都是因为设计，都是因为时尚。

Now, when we dream, we dream of this. Right? [Audience laughs.] And one of the great joys that I found at Apple a year ago was the best industrial design team I’ve ever seen in my life. The designs for the new PowerBook G3 and the iMac—they’re all done inside Apple by some brilliant, brilliant, super hardworking people. And you’re going to see a continual stream of very innovative design out of Apple—I think the best in the industry by a mile.

现在，当我们做梦时，我们梦到的就是这个，对吧？[观众笑。] 而我在一年前在苹果公司发现的最大乐趣之一就是我见过的最优秀的工业设计团队。新款 PowerBook G3 和 iMac 的设计——都是由一些聪明、出色、非常努力的人在苹果内部完成的。你将会看到苹果不断推出非常创新的设计——我认为在行业中遥遥领先。

These are four incredibly powerful, unique, compelling assets: the brand, the installed base, especially in the consumer and education markets, the ability of our design to really take these products into that consumer space of fashion, and the fact that our products are dramatically simpler to set up and use than our competition’s. […]

这些是四个极其强大、独特且引人注目的资产：品牌、已安装的用户基础，特别是在消费和教育市场、我们设计的能力能够将这些产品真正带入时尚消费领域，以及我们的产品在设置和使用上比竞争对手的产品简单得多。

聪明的假设。

So, again, going back to Abraham Maslow: he created his hierarchy of needs, and we’ve borrowed it today to take a look at a hierarchy of skepticism that’s followed us for the last year as we’ve slowly demonstrated, step by step, that Apple is coming back in a very big way.

所以，再次回到亚伯拉罕·马斯洛：他创建了需求层次理论，而我们今天借用了它来看看过去一年一直伴随我们的怀疑层次，因为我们一步一步地慢慢展示出苹果正大举回归。

1998-07-08 Steve Jobs.Apple is coming back in a very big way.

1998-07-08 Steve Jobs.Apple is coming back in a very big way.

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