2006-10-16 Steve Jobs.Good for the Soul
With iPod’s fifth birthday around the corner, Steve Jobs discusses the MP3 player’s design, the cool factor and the impact on how we listen to music.
随着 iPod 五周年纪念日的临近，史蒂夫·乔布斯讨论了这款 MP3 播放器的设计、酷炫因素以及对我们聆听音乐方式的影响。
By Steven Levy 作者：史蒂文·莱维
Oct. 14, 2006 – Oct. 23 marks the fifth anniversary of Apple’s iPod. CEO Steve Jobs reflected with NEWSWEEK’s Steven Levy (author of “The Perfect Thing,” a book about the iPod out this month) about the past, present and future of the device that changed Apple—and the world.
2006 年 10 月 14 日——10 月 23 日标志着苹果 iPod 的五周年纪念日。首席执行官史蒂夫·乔布斯与《新闻周刊》的史蒂文·莱维（本月出版的关于 iPod 的书《完美之物》的作者）一起回顾了这一改变了苹果公司和世界的设备的过去、现在和未来。
NEWSWEEK: During the iPod’s development process did you get a sense of how big it would become?
新闻周刊：在 iPod 的开发过程中，您是否意识到它会变得多么受欢迎？
Steve Jobs: The way you can tell that you’re onto something interesting is if everybody who knows about the project wants one themselves, if they can’t wait to go out and open up their own wallets to buy one. That was clearly the case with the iPod. Everybody on the team wanted one.
史蒂夫·乔布斯： 你可以判断你是否在做一些有趣的事情的方法是，如果知道这个项目的每个人都想要一个，如果他们迫不及待地想要掏出自己的钱包去买一个。iPod 显然就是这种情况。团队中的每个人都想要一个。
Other companies had already tried to make a hard disk drive music player. Why did Apple get it right?
其他公司已经尝试制作硬盘驱动器音乐播放器。为什么苹果做对了？
We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise and the software expertise, including iTunes. One of the biggest insights we have was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless.
我们拥有硬件专业知识、工业设计专业知识和软件专业知识，包括 iTunes。我们最大的见解之一是，我们决定不在 iPod 上管理您的音乐库，而是在 iTunes 中管理它。其他公司试图在设备本身上完成所有操作，结果变得如此复杂，以至于毫无用处。
What was the design lesson of the iPod?
iPod 的设计教训是什么？
Look at the design of a lot of consumer products—they’re really complicated surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.
看看许多消费产品的设计——它们的表面非常复杂。我们试图做一些更整体和简单的东西。当你刚开始尝试解决一个问题时，你想到的第一个解决方案通常非常复杂，而大多数人就停在那里。但如果你继续努力，与问题共处，并剥去更多层次，你常常可以找到一些非常优雅和简单的解决方案。大多数人只是没有投入时间或精力去达到这一点。我们相信顾客是聪明的，他们想要经过深思熟虑的物品。
Some people say that iPod might lose its cache because it’s too popular—how can it be cool when Dick Cheney and Queen Elizabeth have one?
有人说，iPod 可能会失去其魅力，因为它太受欢迎了——当迪克·切尼和伊丽莎白女王都有一个时，它怎么还能酷呢？
That’s like saying you don’t want to kiss your lover’s lips because everyone has lips. It doesn’t make any sense. We don’t strive to appear cool. We just try to make the best products we can. And if they are cool, well, that’s great.
这就像说你不想亲吻你爱人的嘴唇，因为每个人都有嘴唇。这没有任何意义。我们不追求看起来很酷。我们只是尽力制作最好的产品。如果它们很酷，那就太好了。
What products, maybe outside technology, do you consider cool?
你认为哪些产品（可能不包括科技产品）很酷？
I like things that do the job and kind of disappear into my life. Like Levis. They just kind of get faded and disappear, and you don’t think about it much. If you look, you appreciate the design, but you feel something from them, too. A lot of quality is communicated through a feeling that people have. They don’t understand exactly why, but they know that a lot of care and love was put into the designing of the product.
我喜欢那些能完成工作并融入我生活的东西。比如李维斯。它们会逐渐褪色并消失，你不会多想。如果你仔细看，你会欣赏它们的设计，但你也能从中感受到一些东西。很多品质是通过人们的感觉传达的。他们不完全明白为什么，但他们知道在产品设计中投入了很多心血和爱。
Let’s talk about the iTunes store. How did you get the record labels, which had been resisting digital music, to sign up?
让我们谈谈 iTunes 商店。你是如何让一直抵制数字音乐的唱片公司签约的？
It was a process over 18 months. We got to know these folks and we made a series of predictions that a lot of things they were trying would fail. Then they went and tried them, and they all failed, for the reasons that we had predicted. We kept coming back to visit them every month or two, and they started to believe that we might actually have some insight into this, and our credibility grew with them to the point where they were willing to take a chance with us. Now, remember, it was initially just on the Mac, so one of the arguments that we used was, “If we’re completely wrong and you completely screw up the entire music market for Mac owners, the sandbox is small enough that you really won’t damage the overall music industry very much.” That was one instance where Macintosh’s [small] market share helped us. Then about six months later we were able to successfully persuade them to take down the barriers and let us move it out to the whole market.
这是一个长达 18 个月的过程。我们逐渐了解了这些人，并做出了一系列预测，认为他们尝试的很多事情都会失败。然后他们去尝试了这些事情，结果都失败了，原因正如我们所预测的那样。我们每隔一两个月就回去拜访他们，他们开始相信我们可能确实对这件事有一些见解，我们在他们心中的信誉也因此增长到他们愿意和我们一起冒险的地步。现在，请记住，最初这仅限于 Mac，所以我们使用的一个论点是，“如果我们完全错了，并且你完全搞砸了 Mac 用户的整个音乐市场，沙盒足够小，你实际上不会对整个音乐产业造成太大损害。”这是 Macintosh 的[小]市场份额帮助我们的一个例子。大约六个月后，我们成功说服他们拆除障碍，让我们将其推广到整个市场。
Now people at some labels think that iTunes, with its dominant market share has too much power.
现在一些唱片公司的人认为，拥有主导市场份额的 iTunes 权力过大。
We’ve never once gone to them and asked them to lower their prices.
我们从未去找过他们并要求他们降低价格。
No, but you’ve asked them not to raise their prices, when some of them wanted to.
不，但你已经要求他们不要涨价，尽管有些人想要涨价。
Our core initial strategy on the store was that if you want to stop piracy, the way to stop it is by competing with it, by offering a better product at a fair price. In essence, we would make a deal with people. If they would pay a fair price, we would give them a better product and they would stop being pirates. And it worked. If we go back now and we raise prices—this is what we told the record companies last year—we will be violating that implicit deal. Many [users] will say, “I knew it all along that the music companies were gonna screw me, and now they’re screwing me.” And they would never buy anything from iTunes again.
我们在商店的核心初始策略是，如果你想阻止盗版，阻止的方法是通过竞争，提供更好的产品和合理的价格。实质上，我们会与人们达成协议。如果他们愿意支付合理的价格，我们就会给他们更好的产品，他们就会停止盗版行为。而这确实奏效了。如果我们现在回过头来提高价格——这就是我们去年告诉唱片公司的——我们将违反这一隐含的协议。许多用户会说：“我早就知道音乐公司会坑我，现在他们果然坑我了。”他们将再也不会从 iTunes 购买任何东西。
Do you think that it’s fair to the customer that the songs they buy from Apple will only work on iTunes and the iPod?
你认为顾客从苹果购买的歌曲只能在 iTunes 和 iPod 上使用，这对他们公平吗？
Well, they knew that all along.
好吧，他们一直都知道。
At one point you were saying, “When our customers demand it, that’s when we’ll consider interoperability.”
“当我们的客户要求时，那就是我们会考虑交互性的时候。”
Nobody’s ever demanded it. People know up front that when they buy music from the iTunes music store it plays on iPods, and so we’re not trying to hide anything there.
从来没有人要求过。人们在购买 iTunes 音乐商店的音乐时就知道它只能在 iPod 上播放，所以我们并没有试图隐瞒什么。
Microsoft has announced its new iPod competitor, Zune. It says that this device is all about building communities. Are you worried?
微软宣布了其新的 iPod 竞争产品 Zune。它表示，这款设备的重点是建立社区。你担心吗？
In a word, no. I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable.
总之，不。我在网上看过关于如何使用 Zune 找到另一个人并给他们一首可以播放三次的歌曲的演示。那太费时间了。当你完成这一切时，女孩已经起身离开了！你还不如把一个耳塞拿出来放到她的耳朵里。这样你们就通过大约两英尺的耳机线连接在一起了。
平常心不常有，平常人极其罕见，都以为自己是正常的。
IPods now have video, games, audio books and podcasts. Will iPods always be about the music?
iPod 现在有视频、游戏、有声书和播客。iPod 会一直与音乐有关吗？
Who knows? But it’s hard to imagine that music is not the epicenter of the iPod, for a long, long, long, long, long time. I was very lucky to grow up in a time when music really mattered. It wasn’t just something in the background; it really mattered to a generation of kids growing up. It really changed the world. I think that music faded in importance for a while, and the iPod has helped to bring music back into people’s lives in a really meaningful way. Music is so deep within all of us, but it’s easy to go for a day or a week or a month or a year without really listening to music. And the iPod has changed that for tens of millions of people, and that makes me really happy, because I think music is good for the soul.
谁知道呢？但很难想象音乐不是 iPod 的中心，长久以来都是如此。我很幸运在一个音乐真正重要的时代成长。音乐不仅仅是背景中的东西；对成长中的一代孩子来说，它真的很重要。它真的改变了世界。我认为音乐的重要性曾经有所减弱，而 iPod 帮助音乐以一种真正有意义的方式重新回到人们的生活中。音乐深深植根于我们每个人的内心，但很容易在一天、一周、一个月或一年中不真正听音乐。iPod 改变了数千万人的这种状况，这让我非常高兴，因为我认为音乐对心灵有益。
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