喬布斯傳翻譯筆記:老喬對蘋果痛心疾首

在老喬離開蘋果後，這家曾經具有強大革新力和創造力的公司，已經毫無創新可言並陷入了停滯不前的狀態。喬布斯曾希望蘋果成爲一家出色的消費品公司，("to become a wonderful consumer products company")將喬布斯趕出蘋果的約翰。斯卡利卻發表言論稱："蘋果永遠不會是一家消費品公司。" 更甚的是，面對微軟，蘋果節節敗退。這一切都讓喬布斯對個人電腦產業沮喪失望不已，(he despaired about the personal computer industry)甚至說出了"臺式電腦進入黑暗時代"的話。("The desktop market has entered the dark ages")且讓我們看他是如何評價蘋果的現狀的吧！

Jobs was appalled, and he became angry and contemptuous as Sculley presided over a steady decline in market share for Apple in the early 1990s. "Sculley destroyed Apple by bringing in corrupt people and corrupt values," Jobs later lamented. "They cared about making money-for themselves mainly, and also for Apple-rather than making great products。" He felt that Sculley's drive for profits came at the expense of gaining market share. "Macintosh lost to Microsoft because Sculley insisted on milking all the profits he could get rather than improving the product and making it affordable。"As a result, the profits eventually disappeared. It had taken Microsoft a few years to replicate Macintosh's interface, but by 1990 it had come out with Windows 3.0, which began the company's march to dominance in the desktop market. Windows 95, which was released in 1995, became the most successful operating system ever, and Macintosh sales began to collapse。"Microsoft simply ripped off what other people did," Jobs later said. "Apple deserved it. After I left, it didn't invent anything new. The Mac hardly improved. It was a sitting duck for Microsoft."

喬布斯十分震驚。同時他對於20世紀90年代初，蘋果在斯卡利的管理下市場份額持續下降變得愈加氣憤和蔑視。喬布斯惋嘆道："斯卡利給蘋果引進了惡劣的人 和低下的價值觀，這毀了蘋果。他們只顧着讓公司賺錢，更多的是讓自己賺錢，而非造出上乘的產品。" 喬布斯感到斯卡利對利益的追逐是以市場份額的減少作爲代價的。"麥金塔在與微軟對決中敗下陣來正是因爲斯卡利堅持榨取能夠得到的每一分利潤，卻沒有想過 改進產品和降低價格。" 結果自然是利潤全無。 微軟用了好些年來模仿麥金塔的圖形用戶界面，直到1990年它推出了Windows 3.0系統，從此走上了統領檯式電腦市場的征程。1995年發行的Windows95系統成爲了有史以來最成功的操作系統，然而麥金塔此時的銷量已幾近崩 盤。"微軟只會抄襲別人的東西。" 喬布斯後來說："但是蘋果活該被打敗。我離開之後，它再也沒發明什麼新的東西，Mac操作系統幾乎沒有任何改進，面對微軟，它只能坐以待斃。"