托尼·法德尔：早期编程与创造工具的神奇之处

你第一次爱上计算机，或者说计算机工程与设计，是什么时候？

When did you first fall in love with computers or let's say computer engineering and design?

我第一次爱上计算机和编程是在密歇根州格罗斯波因特农场五年级的一个暑期学校课程。那是一堂简单的 BASIC 编程课，但不像你想的那样——是用穿孔卡片。literally，你有一叠卡片，用 2 号铅笔一行一行地写程序。你必须确保卡片叠放完美，没有错误。然后你把那叠卡片放在读卡器上，它会传到后面某处的 IBM 微型计算机——当时的“云”。然后你坐在德州仪器的纸终端前，它会打印出结果。我可以写东西，编程让这台机器做事。它一点也不性感——没有图形，对吧？《俄勒冈之旅》全是文字。卡片非常笨重，如果你弄错一个地方、顺序不对，或者掉了一张卡片，一切就都完了。所以光是做那个——打印语句，我甚至记不清具体的 BASIC 命令了——但那是在编程。你在纸上写 BASIC，并称之为编程。你在编程一台远程的计算机，然后结果回来。从某种意义上说，这真的是云计算——基于终端的计算。输入和程序是分开的；你放入卡片叠来把程序加载到内存，然后输入 RUN。神奇之处在于你可以创造——你有一种语言，可以创造你想要的东西。你可以创造一个世界，进行交互，计算东西，处理数字。我在玩《俄勒冈之旅》，所以你可以玩文字游戏，然后在脑海中想象。我最近看到一个 meme：如果你想对自己作为程序员感到沮丧，想想有一个人用汇编语言从零写出了《铁路大亨》——一个很酷的建造类游戏。对于不知道的人来说，它看起来像《模拟城市》类型的游戏，以铁路为中心，有漂亮的 3D 图形和所有丰富多彩的东西。全部用汇编语言编写，这是最接近二进制的低级代码。你必须注意到那种低层次的神奇。没有图形，没有 API，没有示例代码，没有 Stack Overflow，没有互联网。你必须知道寄存器、操作码，并在脑海中想象内存结构的世界。没有可视化——你自己可视化一切。那就是神奇之处。但让我更上瘾的下一步是当艺电（Electronic Arts）为 Apple II 推出游戏时。我买了一台 Apple II，用 BASIC 编程，自己做游戏。然后有两个游戏让我大开眼界：《弹球建造套件》和《音乐建造套件》。它们让我可以创建弹球游戏和音乐乐谱——我热爱音乐——然后演奏它们。所以我可以自己创造，但别人创造了工具，让你可以在视觉层面创造。我会阅读背后的故事，因为当年的艺电每个游戏只有一个程序员，你可以读到他们的故事——就像音乐家一样。有一个人 16 岁时用汇编语言写了《音乐建造套件》。我当时大概 12 或 13 岁，我想，如果他能做到并出版，我能做什么？所以从那以后不断积累。那些开创性的事情——先是入门，然后是通过编程将东西变成你想要的力量——而且你不需要 40 或 50 岁，不需要博士学位。我觉得这真的很酷。我希望我们像对待艺术家一样对待程序员，了解他们的背景故事。今天，不仅仅是程序员，还有工程师和设计师——我们喜欢的产品中的所有小细节，背后可能都有一个带着自己天才灵感的人。我希望我们知道那些故事。当我不知道的时候，我总是感到难过。

I first fell in love with computers and programming in a summer school class in fifth grade in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. It was a simple BASIC programming class, but not like you might think—it was with punch cards. Literally, you had a stack of cards, and you'd use a number two pencil to write your program line by line. You had to make sure it was perfectly stacked with no errors. Then you'd take that set of cards, put it on a reader, and it would go off to an IBM microcomputer somewhere in the back—the cloud of that time. Then you'd sit at a Texas Instruments paper terminal, and it would print out the results. I could write things and program this machine to do stuff. It was nowhere near sexy—no graphics, right? Oregon Trail was all text. The cards were so cumbersome that if you got one thing wrong, out of order, or dropped a card, it would all fall apart. So just doing that—print statements, I can't even remember the exact BASIC commands—but it was programming. You're writing BASIC on paper and calling it programming. You're programming this computer in a remote location, and it came back. It was truly cloud computing in a way—terminal-based computing. The input and the program were separate; you'd put in the stack of cards to load the program into memory, then type RUN. The magic was that you could create—you had a language and you could create what you wanted. You could create a world, have interaction, compute things, do numbers. I was playing Oregon Trail, so you could play text games and imagine them in your brain. There's a meme I saw recently: if you want to feel bad about yourself as a programmer, realize that one person wrote Railroad Tycoon—a cool little builder game—in assembly, from scratch. For people who don't know, it looks like a Sim City type game, centered on railroads, with nice 3D graphics and all that rich, colorful stuff. All written in assembly, the lowest level code next to binary. You had to notice the magic at that low level. No graphics, no APIs, no sample code, no Stack Overflow, no internet. You had to know registers, op codes, and imagine the world of memory structures in your brain. There was no visualization—you visualized it yourself. That was magic. But the next part that hooked me even further was when Electronic Arts came out for the Apple II. I got an Apple II, and I was programming in BASIC, making my own games. Then two games blew my mind: Pinball Construction Set and Music Construction Set. They let me create pinball games and musical scores—I loved music—and then play them. So I could create myself, but others created tools so you could create at a visual level. I'd read the backstories because Electronic Arts back then had one programmer per game, and you could read their stories—like a musician. One guy wrote Music Construction Set all in assembly at 16 years old. I was probably 12 or 13, and I thought, if he could do this and publish it, what could I do? So it kept building from there. Those seminal things—first the introduction, then the power through programming to turn things into what you wanted—and you didn't have to be 40 or 50 with a PhD. I thought, this is really cool. I wish we treated programmers like artists, knowing their backstories. Today, not just programmers but engineers and designers—all the little details in a product we love probably have a human being behind them with their own inkling of genius. I wish we knew those stories. It always makes me sad when I don't.

显然，我热爱工程，也跟很多公司打交道。自动驾驶是我非常感兴趣的东西，我发现公司们通常——我们可能也会聊到——它们似乎想把工程师藏起来，好像工程师掌握着秘密，像那种不能说的天大秘密。但结果就是，你听不到他们的故事，听不到工程师背后的激情，也看不到他们的天才。专利保护的东西，比如想法的核心，和想法那些美妙的附带效应，是有区别的。我希望公司能多展示那些美妙的附带效应。好了，抱歉跑题了。

Obviously I love engineering and I interact with companies and they, you know, autonomous vehicles something I'm really interested about, and I see that companies generally—and will probably talk about this—but they seem to want to hide their engineers, like engineers hold the secrets, like the great secret we did not speak of. But then the result of that is you don't get to hear their stories, the passion that is there behind the engineers, and also the genius. There's a difference between the stuff that's patented, like the kernel of the idea, and the beautiful sort of side effects of the idea. And I wish companies revealed the beautiful side effects a little bit more. But yeah, so sorry for the distraction.

那么，你提到了 Apple II。你爱上的第一台电脑是什么？就是那个产品，你面前的那台个人电脑。

So what, you mentioned Apple II. What was the first computer you fell in love with? Like the product, the thing before you that was a personal computer.

就是 Apple II。Apple II 是我朝思暮想的东西。你知道，当时——我记得它好像被《时代》杂志评为年度人物，具体年份我记不清了，但大概是那个时候。我当时很小，但我知道工具，因为祖父教了我所有关于工具和创造的知识。我看到这个东西，又有了之前用 IBM 终端机的体验，我就想：“哦，我可以在家里拥有这个！”所以我必须在家拥有一台。我们圈子里唯一被热议的就是 Apple II，我就觉得：“就是它了。”于是我上蹿下跳地要买。它非常贵。我必须拥有它。我父母说：“什么？”当时是 1981 年，要 2500 美元，简直疯了。所以我说：“我今年夏天要拼命赚钱。”祖父说——因为他帮我学了所有工具知识，我们一起造东西——“你赚多少，我就补多少，这样你就能买这台电脑了。”于是那个夏天我非常努力地工作，在我们镇上的乡村俱乐部给那些家庭当高尔夫球童，做了一切我能做的事。夏天结束时，我们买到了我的 Apple II。从此它就离不开我了。它是我的朋友，它就是一切。

It was the Apple II. So the Apple II was something I was just lusting over. You know, it was—I think it was at the time, it was the Person of the Year maybe, I don't remember what, but well, Apple II was the Person of the Year for Time magazine back then. I don't remember when, but it was around that same time. I was so young, but I had—there was the Apple II and I didn't know what it was, but I knew about tools because my grandfather taught me all about tools and creating things. And I saw this thing, and I had that IBM experience, that terminal experience, and I'm like, "Oh, I could have that at home!" And so I need to have that at home. And the only thing that was really talked about in our circles was the Apple II, and I was just like, "That's it." So I went, jumped up and down. It was very expensive. I have to have this. My parents were like, "What?" It was $2,500 back then, yeah, in 1981, which was crazy. So I was like, "I'm gonna make as much money as I can this summer." And my grandfather said—because he helped me learn all about tools and build things together—"I will match whatever you make, so you can get this computer." So I worked very, very hard as a caddy, golf caddy, caddying actually for the families at the country clubs in the town where we lived, and did whatever I could. And at the end of that summer, we got my Apple II. And now you couldn't tear it away from me. It was my friend. It was everything.

从产品角度看，你觉得哪些地方很出色？是设计选择、背后的理念？还是仅仅因为它存在，或者个人电脑这个概念本身就是出色的设计选择？

From a product perspective, what do you remember that was brilliant? The design choices, the ideas behind it? Or is it just that it exists, or the very idea of a personal computer is the brilliant design choice?

是的，关键在于我能在家里拥有这种工具，随时使用，随意编程。没有互联网连接，什么都没有——全靠你自己。你要么加载别人给的软件，要么自己写。然后还发生了另一件事，我们也在做，有点像 MP3 那种——我们分享软件。于是你建立了一个分享社区。你会去“盗版”——当时就这么叫——盗版所有这些软件。你根本用不完，但乐趣就在于：“我要搞到所有这些，然后拆开它，反汇编，看看背后是什么。”所以你真正感觉到这是你的世界，你拥有它。你可以直接操作每一个寄存器。我们没有现在这么多安全层。你真的能触碰比特，拨弄比特，让灯亮起来。那种极客的满足感瞬间被点燃。现在太抽象了，人们甚至不理解——有些程序甚至不理解内存，以为它是无限的。至于安全，现在有各种安全措施，但就像大人们都来参加派对了，你就不能尽情玩了。不，不。以前是这样的：如果停电，你整个程序就丢了。你可能写了一整天，如果没隔几行就按保存，而且一直保存、保存、保存，磁盘驱动器或磁带驱动器会发出声音——每一步都得考虑，因为如果不保存，你可能丢掉大量工作。所以很多魔力在于软件：你能拥有软件，能分享软件，以及围绕软件的社区。并不一定是硬件。

Yeah, it was that I could actually have this kind of tool in my house and I could use it anytime I wanted. I could program it any way. There was no internet connection, there was no—it was all just you. You either loaded software that you got from someone, or you created yourself. And then there was a whole other thing which started happening, which we were doing, and this was kind of like MP3s and stuff—we were sharing software. So you built this community of sharing stuff. You would go in, pirate—that was what it was called—pirate all this software. You'd never use it all, but it was just that fun thing of like, "I'm gonna get all this other stuff and then tear it apart and do disassembly on it and see behind the scenes." So you really had a sense that this was your world and you owned it. And you could like literally go into every register. We didn't have all those security layers like we do now. You could really touch bits and you could poke bits and you can make this light turn on. And the geek assignment just lit up. Now it's so abstract, people don't even understand—usually some programs don't even understand memory, they just think it's unlimited. And security, it's like now there's all this security you should have, but it's like the adults all showed up to the party and now you can't have all the fun. It's like, "No, no." This was the thing where if the power went out, you lost your whole program. You might have worked a whole day on it, and if you didn't press save at every other line and you were save, save, save, and it would like growl the word—the disk drive or the tape drive—every single step was contemplated because if you didn't, you lost maybe a ton of work. So a lot of the magic was in the software: the fact that you could have software, the fact that you could share software, the community around the software. It wasn't necessarily the hardware.

嗯，那是第一步。第二步关于硬件，我买了像 Mockingboard 这样的东西，它配合音乐指令集，可以生成各种音调和音符，相当于 Apple II 里的合成器。你插上这块卡，就会惊叹：“天哪，看看这个！”然后就能开始制造酷炫的声音。有点像 Moog，早期的 Moog。那是哪一年？大概是 82 年，81、82 年。你能做出 80 年代所有那种很酷的合成音效，8 位芯片音乐。然后，当你想加一个摇杆时，你得拔掉一个芯片，插上一个 DIP 插座来连接摇杆。接着我又想：“哦，我还需要更多内存。怎么弄？”我还想加速产品。后来这甚至催生了一家公司，不过那是软硬件都涉及。但核心就是，用各种方式改造这个东西。先是软件，然后你有了信心，再后来我有了点钱，就能涉足硬件，自己接线。而且 Apple II 附带了所有电路图。早期 Apple II 的背面，你打开就能看到所有电路图。你买 Apple II，电路图就随附。

Well, that was the first step. The second step around the hardware was I got things like the Mockingboard, which paired with the music instruction set. You could now generate all kinds of tones and notes, and it was a synthesizer in the Apple II. So you would plug in this card and go, "Oh my god, look at this!" And it would—you know, you could start generating cool sounds. You're like—it was like a Moog, in a way, early Moog. What year are we talking about? This is '82, I think, '81, '82. And you could make all the kind of synthetic sounds that are very cool in the '80s. Yeah, 8-bit chip tunes. And then, when you wanted to add a joystick, you had to pull a chip out and you had to plug in a DIP socket to put in a joystick. And then I was like, "Oh, and then I had to get more memory. How do we do that?" And I wanted to speed up products. So that turned into a company actually from that, but it was in hardware and software at that. But it was all about modifying this thing in every way. First was software, and then you started gaining confidence, and then I got a little bit more money and stuff, and then you could get into the hardware and wire things. And the Apple II came with all the schematics. So in the back of the early Apple IIs, you could open up and all the schematics were there. You purchased the Apple II and the schematics come with it.

从公司角度看，这是个有趣的选择。这就像真正的创客风格。我想知道他们——这是有意为之的吗？

That's an interesting choice from a company perspective. So it's like a real maker kind of thing. I wonder what they—so that was intentional?

这绝对是故意的。这也是为前沿用户准备的，或者说，它本来就是给前沿用户的。这是极客为极客打造的。所以我们就会想：“哦，他们是怎么做的？”然后通过这个来学习。Apple I 也是同样的做法。只是 Apple II 包装得更完整，软件也好一点，附带了 BASIC。所以它真的有点像我们今天说的树莓派之类的，但没那么多软件。实际上——所有芯片都裸露在外，你可以检查——

This is absolutely intentional. This is the work for the cutting-edge folks too, or especially if it was only the cutting edge. It was geeks for geeks. So we were like, "Oh, how did they make it?" And then we got to learn through that. Apple I did the same thing. It just Apple II became more packaged up and had a little bit better software, came with BASIC. So it was really what we might think of as a Raspberry Pi today or something like that, but not with so much software. It was literally—and all the chips were out there, so you could inspect the—

总线什么的，因为所有东西都是开放的。所以我觉得这就是开源大项目背后的理念，比如 GitHub 上那些，你把原理图放在那里，它也算是一种产品。但我想知道为什么没有更多公司这么做——比如我们把产品发布给一小部分自选的人，可能是创客、前沿用户、建造者、家庭工程师。某种程度上，特斯拉在完全自动驾驶测试版上就是这么做的，他们选择了一群人，但这更多取决于你的驾驶安全性，而不是你有多爱捣鼓，因为你没法自己改装。我想知道，对于真正前沿的技术，尤其是你感兴趣的硬件领域，这么做是不是很疯狂？为什么没有更多公司这么做？

Buses and the right because everything was just broken out. So I guess that's the idea behind stable big projects in open source like on GitHub that you have the schematics there and it's kind of a product. But I wonder why more companies don't do that kind of thing like we're going to release this to a small set of people self-selected perhaps that are kind of the makers, the cutting edge folks, the builders, the at-home engineers. In some way what Tesla is doing with the beta for the full self driving it's kind of like that, it's like selecting a group of people but that has to do more with how safe of a driver you are versus how much of a tinkerer you are because you don't get to tinker. I wonder is that a crazy idea to do for really cutting-edge technologies especially you're interested in like hardware stuff? Is that crazy? Why don't more companies do that kind of thing?

我认为过去这关乎一个社区，服务于那个建造者社区。而现在，这关乎那些想要体验、想要简单易用的人。所以，受众是存在的，或者说他们认为看重我们刚才讨论的那些东西的受众很小。但如果我们看看树莓派和其他那些小板子，你会发现一个比我见过的任何东西都更广阔的世界。现在用这些小套件和创建的软件能做的事情太惊人了。所以我认为，还有另一批创客和建造者正在崛起。如果我们看看 YouTube 频道之类的，他们拿这些小板子，破解它们，然后用 3D 打印机打印零件，组装起来，创造出机器人等等。所以我认为这正在发生。只是不像以前那么原始了，但它确实存在，并且在全世界范围内扩展。这真的很令人欣慰，因为这是一代被赋能的年轻人。我认为在数百万人中存在着半休眠的天才。树莓派就揭示了一点。我猜树莓派已经卖出了几百万台，我不会感到惊讶。我觉得它应该如此，而且这是一场酝酿中的天才工程师的静默风暴。我们听不到他们的声音，因为他们没有组织起来。我的意思是，我们偶尔能听到他们的只言片语，比如 YouTube，还有一些本地的小社区等等。但如果他们组织起来，如果有一个领导者出现。

I think back then it was about a community and serving that community of builders. And now this is about people who want to get the experience and want it really simple and easy. And so there is the audience or they believe the audience is small who would value those other things that we're just talking about. But if we look at things like Raspberry Pi and all of these other little boards, right, there's a whole world more than any that I've seen. It's amazing what you can do now with these little kits and the software that's created. And so there's a whole other, I think, another batch of makers and builders that are coming up through the ranks. And if we look at YouTube channels and stuff, right, they take these little boards, they hack them, then they print out parts on their 3D printer, assemble them, and they create robots and what have you. So I think it's happening. It's just not as raw as it used to be, but it's there and it's really expanding around the world. And that's really nice to see because it's a whole new generation who are empowered. I think there's a semi-dormant genius amongst millions. So like Raspberry Pi is revealing that a little bit. It's probably, I wouldn't be surprised if it's several million Raspberry Pis that have been sold. I think it should, and it's kind of this quiet storm of genius brewing of engineers. We don't get to hear it because they're not organized. I mean, we get to hear their inklings here and there like I said, YouTube, there's little communities that are local and so on. But if they were organized, if a leader would emerge.

那么你是什么时候开始梦想建造自己的东西、设计自己的产品、设计自己的系统和软硬件的？

So when did you first start to dream about building your own things, designing your own products, designing your own systems and software and hardware?

嗯，高中时有一家公司，是我一个朋友创立的，我是第二个员工。公司叫 Quality Computers，是做邮购的——邮购，因为当时没有电子商务，也没有互联网。是的，你要么邮寄一张小优惠券，写上你想订什么，要么写信索取目录，然后等着送货上门。周转时间之类的，从你想要到买到手大概要八到十二周。这就是当时买东西的正常方式。所以 Quality Computers 是做 Apple II 邮购的，卖软件和各种配件，比如硬件配件、硬件插卡、操纵杆之类的。我们注意到有加速卡或内存卡，但要用这些卡，你必须去修改访问新内存的软件。所以你实际上得拿着你的程序，比如 AppleWorks，那就像早期的 Microsoft Office 之类的，然后你必须修改代码，安装所有这些补丁才能利用新硬件。所以我们开始创建上层软件来自动安装所有这些补丁。这样，使用新硬件和现有软件并扩展到新世界就变得容易多了。所以我们在创建工具并提供非常好的客户支持。我们开始接到很多订单，因为我们的软件让安装更容易，给了他们超能力。同时，他们能够修改软件，进入一个最初产品公司不提供的新世界。后来硬盘也出现了类似情况。我为 Apple II 写了一个硬盘优化器，因为硬盘会变得非常碎片化，所以我写了那个软件，通过公司连同我们从第三方购买的硬盘一起销售。这一切都发生在十二年级和大学一年级期间。

Well, in high school there was a company that a friend of mine founded and I was the second employee. It was called Quality Computers and it was a mail order — mail order because there's no e-commerce then, there was no internet again. Yeah, you either mailed in your little coupon and said this is what I wanted to order, or you wrote in to get a catalog and deliver to you. Turnaround time and this stuff was like from the time you wanted the time you bought it was maybe eight to twelve weeks. That was just the normal way of getting things. So Quality Computers was a mail order for Apple II and it was software and all kinds of accessories, so hardware accessories, hardware plug-in cards, joysticks, all this stuff. And what we noticed was there were accelerator cards or memory cards, and to be able to use those cards you had to actually go and change the software you used to access this new memory. So you literally have to go and you took the program that you had, let's say was AppleWorks which was like an early Microsoft Office or something like that, and you had to literally change the code and you would install all these patches to then take advantage of the hardware. So what we started creating was software on top of it to do the automatic installation of all of these patches. So we made it much easier to take new hardware and the existing software you have and expand it into this new world. So it was creating tools and that really great customer support. And we started getting a lot of orders because we had the software make it easier to install, to give them the superpower. And at the same time, they would be able to change their software and have a new world that wasn't existing from the companies that were creating the initial products. And so it was more of that. And then that happened with hard drives. So I wrote a hard drive optimizer for the Apple II to read because you could get really fragmented, so I wrote that piece of software and we sold that through the company along with the hard drives that we sold from third parties. So that all happened in 12th grade, freshman year of college.

你十二年级就写硬盘优化器了？

You're a hard drive optimizer in 12th grade?

是的，在十二年级和大学一年级之间。

Yeah, between 12th and freshman year.

你记得用什么编程语言吗？是汇编吗？

What programming language do you remember? Is it assembly?

有些内循环是汇编，其他循环实际上是早期的 Pascal，没有 C。C 编译器？

It was, there were certain inner loops were assembly and other loops actually there were really early Pascal, no C. C compilers?

这些背后的动机是什么？是为了让人们的生活更轻松吗？是为了创造一种越来越简单的体验，从而让更多人能够使用？还是你只是喜欢捣鼓？

What was the motivation behind these? Is it to make people's lives easier? Is it to create a thing experience that is simpler and simpler and simpler thereby more accessible to a larger number of people? Or did you just like to tinker?

不，不，其实是两件事。第一，我们想卖更多硬件和软件，对吧？所以就是让用户更容易使用。第二，因为我还要接客服电话。人们会打电话说，这个不行，我就得去修硬件和软件，或者修改软件让硬件和安装过程更好。所以从高中开始，我的整个世界就是开箱体验，因为我得接客服电话、打包盒子、写一些代码。我们做得不错的时候，Quality Computers 的创始人 Joe Gleason 负责营销，为邮购业务投放广告，确保信用卡处理正确。是的，就我们两个人，后来变成三个人，然后我们从高中又雇了一个人来打包，这样我就能继续接客服电话或做软件。所有工作都在他父母的地下室里。是的，就在你指数级扩张的时候。扩张，没错。白手起家。

No, no, it was two things really. Because one, we wanted to sell more hardware and software, right? So it was like, oh, make it easier for the user. And then the other thing was because I was also manning the customer support line. People would call and go, this doesn't work, and I'm like, oh, I gotta go fix the hardware and software, right? Or I gotta fix the software to make the hardware and the installation process better. So my whole world was out of box experience from when I was in high school because I had to man the customer support line, pack the boxes, and write some of the code. While we were doing well, Joe Gleason who was the founder of Quality Computers, he was off doing the marketing, placing the ads for the mail order, making sure we were running the credit cards right. Yeah, it was two of us, and then it turned into a third, and then we hired another person from high school to pack boxes so I could stay on the customer support line or doing the software. And it was all in his parents' basement. Yeah, right as you were scaling exponentially. Scaling right, yeah exactly. Bootstrapping.

那我们稍微跳转一下。但你说过你喜欢音乐——如果我们跳到后面，是什么想法催生了 iPod？这些想法可以追溯到多远？你知道，如果你看技术史，我的意思是，不仅仅是产品，这个想法本身确实是革命性的。也许它的时机到了，但如果你看历史的弧线而不是……

So we'll jump around a little bit. But what were the — you said you loved music — what were the ideas that gave birth to the iPod if we jump forward? And how far back do those ideas stretch? You know, if you look at the history of technology, there's I mean not just the product but the idea is truly revolutionary. Maybe its time has come, but just if you look at the arc of history instead of...

音乐对我们人类来说如此根本，对吧？而能够把它放进口袋，让它真正便携，这很迷人。以真正便携的方式，所以它是数字化的，而不是像随身听那样的东西。那么，是什么想法催生了 iPod？

Music is so fundamental to who we are as a humanity, right? And to be able to put that in your pocket, make it truly portable, is fascinating. In a way that's truly portable, so it's digital as opposed to sort of like a Walkman or something like that. So what were the ideas that gave birth to the iPod?

你知道吗，我从小就热爱音乐。从二年级我拿到第一张专辑开始就爱上了音乐。

You know, I was in love with music since I was a kid. Just loved music from, I think, second grade when I got my first albums and stuff like that.

我们说的是哪种音乐？

What kind of music are we talking about?

有齐柏林飞艇、滚石、亨德里克斯、史密斯飞船、廉价把戏、泰德·纽金特。就是那种真正的美国和英国摇滚乐。现在有很多人在听，他们会问：“那是谁？齐柏林飞艇？那是什么？”这把我父母逼疯了。没错，就是放得超大声，刚刚好。那是二、三、四年级的时候。我彻底爱上了。后来我们搬回底特律，我喜欢听电台，因为那里有各种疯狂的音乐。你会听到摇滚、放克和 R&B 的混合。我喜欢晚上听，所以我有一个钟控收音机。但如果我开着收音机，父母就会说：“去睡觉，别听了，关掉。”所以我改装了收音机，加了一个耳机插孔。不错吧？然后我就可以整晚听，没人能听到。我就坐在那里，蜷在收音机旁，跟着齐柏林飞艇的《天堂阶梯》摇摆。

So this was Led Zeppelin, this was the Stones, Hendrix, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Ted Nugent. You know, just the real American and British rock and roll. There's a bunch of people listening right now who are like, "Who's that? Zeppelin? What is that?" It drove my parents crazy. Yeah, just blasted loud, loud, just right. And this was second, third, fourth grade. I just fell in love. And then we moved back to Detroit, and I loved listening to the radio station because there was all kinds of crazy music. You'd have an amalgam of rock, funk, and R&B. I loved to listen at night, so I had a clock radio. But if I had the clock radio on, everyone, like the parents, would say, "Go to sleep, stop that, turn that stuff off." So I hacked the clock radio and put a headphone jack in it. Nice, right? So I said, "Oh, they're like, wow, okay." And then I could listen to it all night and no one could hear me. I could just sit there, huddling around the radio, grooving out, just listening to Zeppelin, "Stairway to Heaven."

你觉得有史以来最伟大的经典摇滚歌曲是什么？

What would you say is the greatest classic rock song of all time?

嗯，它突然出现在我脑海里……不，你懂我的意思吗？这必须是……这真的很难选，老兄。这是一个严肃的新闻采访。你不会回避这类问题吧？哦天哪，不。我不知道。挑战。是的，很难选。但对我来说，《天堂阶梯》是一个安全的选择。它经常被认为是有史以来最伟大的歌曲之一，以至于你几乎不想选它，对吧？没错。但你一次又一次地回到它，然后觉得，是的，这真的很特别。这有点像摇滚歌剧。嗯，真正让我震撼并且至今仍然震撼的摇滚歌剧是整张《月之暗面》。我喜欢那张。是的，我喜欢齐柏林飞艇。我不能说哪个更好，但对我来说，《月之暗面》是一种音频体验，从头到尾，加上所有合成器之类的东西。

Well, it pops into my mind... Well, no, you know what I mean? This has to be... That's just really hard, dude. This is a serious journalistic interview. You're not going to back down from these kinds of questions? Oh my god, no. I don't know. Challenge. Yeah, it's hard to pick. But to me, "Stairway to Heaven" is a safe bet. It's so often considered one of the greatest songs of all time that you almost don't want to pick it, right? Exactly. But you've returned to it time and time again, and it's like, yeah, this is something pretty special. This is a rock opera of sorts. Well, the rock opera that really blew me away and still continues to blow me away is all of "Dark Side of the Moon." Like, I love that. Yeah, I love Zeppelin. I can't say which one's better, but "Dark Side of the Moon" for me was an audio experience, the whole thing from soup to nuts, plus all the synthesizers and all of those things.

好的，回到 iPod。所以那是你从小时候开始。你热爱音乐，绝对热爱。而且你总是围绕着它，一直播放。

Okay, so back to the iPod. So that's you from an early age. You loved music, absolutely loved it. And you know, always was just around it and always playing.

你知道吗，我放得那么大声，以至于我的右耳听力受损，至今仍受影响。但我毫不后悔，绝不后悔。去底特律市中心听演唱会，做那些疯狂的事情。所以后来，在大学里我是一名 DJ，我会做 DJ，闲逛，为人群播放我喜欢的音乐。毕业后我搬到硅谷，继续做这件事。所以我随身带着所有这些 CD，一千张 CD，对吧？同时，我在做飞利浦 Nino 和 Velo，那些是基于 Windows CE 的移动计算产品。Nino 是第一个真正把 Audible 有声书放上去的设备。所以我和 Audible 合作。我们在一次会议上见面，他们说：“我们不想做硬件，我们只想做内容。”我说：“嗯，我们有这个设备，我们把它整合起来。”然后我们就把 Audible 放上去了。那是在 96 或 97 年，第一批 Audible 有声书。然后我想：“哦天哪，那是音频。那如果我们把音乐放上去呢？”对吧？然后我去做，当时内存非常小。几乎没有闪存，全是 DRAM。当你做 Audible 时，你从 DRAM 开始，对吧？这可能没问题，因为你需要多少本书呢？就是这个想法。顺便说一句，这很聪明。我的意思是，仅仅把书放在移动设备上就是一个聪明的步骤。我不知道，有时候你无法衡量一项发明带来了多少人类进步。有那些性感的大产品，但你永远不知道。也许维基百科就是那种没有得到足够认可其变革性影响的东西之一。它不被视为最性感的产品，但当你审视人类历史时，也许它是。维基百科可以说是解锁人类知识的重大事物之一。人类知识，还有人类编辑，以及人类共同构建事物的本性。是的，这很迷人。有时候直到几十年后你才能衡量这些东西。总之，抱歉。那就是 Nino。那是存在的。然后有了 Audible。你放了书，为什么不放音乐？而我正带着音乐去 DJ 演出，然后你想：“等等，把二和二加起来。”对吧？比如，让我们摆脱这个。然后 MP3 出现了。实际的编码性能，MP3 格式，出现在 97、98 年左右。所以 MP3 是压缩的，所以你可以大幅减少存储空间。对吧？所以你可以从一个大的、完整的、无损的数字音轨变成可以存储在四到八兆字节的东西，差不多。现在，那是降低了质量，但你可以把它压缩到那里。然后你想：“哦，好吧。”现在如果我们有足够的闪存或 DRAM，我们可以放 10、15 首，随便多少，都在同样的内存里。它开始复制 CD。最终，如果你把它放在硬盘上，你可以开始放几千首歌。

You know, I played it so loud that I actually hurt the hearing in my right ear, and I still suffer from that today. No regrets, no regrets whatsoever. Going to concerts in downtown Detroit and all that crazy stuff. So moving forward, in college I was a DJ, so I would DJ and hang out and play all the tunes I love for the crowd. And then I continued to do that in Silicon Valley when I moved right after school. And so I was lugging all of these CDs around with me, a thousand CDs, right? And at the same time, I was doing the Philips Nino and Velo, those are Windows CE based mobile computing products. The Nino was the first device to actually put Audible books on tape. So I worked with Audible. We met in a conference and they were like, "We don't want to do hardware, we just want to do content." I was like, "Well, we have this device, let's get it together." And we got Audible on that. And this was in '96 or '97, first Audible books. And you know, I was like, "Oh my god, that's audio. Well, what if we put music on it?" Right? And so I go, and the memory was very small at the time. There was almost no flash, it was all DRAM. When you did Audible, you started in DRAM, right? Which was okay probably because, how much books do you need? Is the idea. By the way, brilliant. I mean, just putting books on a mobile device is a brilliant step. I don't know, sometimes can't measure how much human progress occurred because of an invention. There's the sexy big products, but you never know. Maybe like Wikipedia is one of those things that doesn't get enough credit for the transformational effects it has. It's not seen as the sexiest of products, but maybe it is when you look at human history. Wikipedia arguably is one of the big things that basically unlocked human knowledge. Human knowledge, okay, and human editing, and just the human nature of building something together. Yeah, so it's fascinating. Sometimes you can't measure those things until many, many decades later. Anyway, sorry. So that was the Nino. That was there. And then there was Audible. You put books, why not put music? And I'm carrying around the music for the DJ gigs, and you're like, "Wait a second, two and two together." Right? Like, let's get rid of this. And then MP3 showed up. The actual encoder performance, the format MP3, showed up around '97, '98. So MP3 is compressed, so you can have the storage reduced significantly. Right? So you could go from a large, full, lossless digital track into something that can be stored in four to eight megabytes, something like that, for the audio. Now, that's reduced quality, but you could get it down there. And you're like, "Oh, okay." And now if we have enough flash or DRAM, we can put 10, 15, whatever, all in that same memory. And it starts to replicate a CD. And then ultimately, if you put it on a hard drive, you could start to put thousands of songs.

那些想法和我的热情在那时诞生。iPod 也是，苹果需要点什么，而我想修复点什么，一切都在对的地点、对的时间，加上对的技术，就像星辰连成一线。那么它是如何成真的？星辰连线的细节，但实际的设计、实际的工程——让设备变小、存储、界面、外观、软件细节等等。那个设计过程中有哪些有趣的回忆？你能分享哪些智慧？

Ideas and things of that nature were and my passions were born into then. The iPod, you know, it was too. Apple needed something and I wanted to fix something, and it all kind of came together at this right place, right time, plus the right technology came at this. It was just like the stars aligned. So how did it come to life? The details of the stars aligning, but the actual design, the actual engineering of getting a device to be small, the storage, the interface, how it looks, the storage, the details of the software, all that kind of stuff. What are some interesting memories from that design process? What are some wisdoms you can part from that process?

嗯，你想聊多久？我可以深入讲。至少 20 小时吧。来吧。好，那就像一部超长纪录片，我们把它做成剧集，像《权力的游戏》那样追。那就从我被请来做顾问组装这个东西开始。我当时已经了解这个领域和技术，但必须很快——因为我在 Fuse 做的那些事，很多供应商我都认识。作为承包商，我想，第一步该做什么？我给 Steve 展示了三种不同架构和产品方案，关于存储、电池、外形选项。有人给了我很好的建议：先给两个你其实不喜欢的选项，把最好的放最后，因为 Steve 会先毙掉那些，然后你就能讨论最好的那个。那个方案用了 1.8 英寸硬盘和小屏幕——不是初代 iPod classic 那种。然后我研究了市面上三四种 CPU 和处理器供应商，把电源、磁盘接口、FireWire 接口这些都整合起来。我画了框图（还不是原理图，因为就我一个人），列出物料清单，构想外观、输入输出、如何改进耳机插孔，还有屏幕供应商，拆解计算器。我搞来各种计算器和电子设备，找到合适尺寸的小 LCD。我还收集了各种电池类型——AA、AAA、锂离子、镍氢——所有存储、处理器、LCD 类型，以及有线连接方式，把它们像乐高积木一样摆出来。我做了实物模型，这样就能拼在一起，找出最小的紧凑外形。比如，怎么把它们塞进去？能做出多小的盒子？没有存储的话，硬盘、电池、屏幕尺寸……为了做实物，我拆了计算器、数码相机，拿到小零件。如果你能把无形的东西变得有形，我就能说，看，我们能做成这样。我带来一整袋零件，说，这就是为什么 AA 电池不行，因为它太厚了。通过实物零件来教育大家。你不能只画在纸上，这是物理世界。我反复迭代。说实话，因为 Mac 上没有足够好的图形工具，我用 PC 上的 Visio 和一些 3D 工具，同时做 3D 设计。我拿着这些物理零件，感受什么手感对。因为你要从细节到粗略，来回迭代。这很有趣。最后我做了个泡沫模型，把 Visio 打印的图纸粘上去，还放了我祖父的钓鱼铅坠，因为我也模拟了重量。我说，这是多少盎司，多少克，然后配重，让泡沫模型手感接近。当你拿起来时，感觉差不多就是那个外形。你还会感受它够不够密实，在手里是否坚固。为什么需要坚固？因为它必须有分量感，像手里握着一根金条。你知道，开关车门时，那种沉闷的“砰”声让你觉得扎实、真实；而廉价车的“叮”声让你觉得不安全、不值钱。所以设备不能有太多空气，质量密度要分布得当，手感才对。你还要模拟电池寿命、成本、质量大小，同时考虑 UI 设计。所有这些约束都是变量，你不可能做到完美。什么是所有组件组合起来提供体验的最佳局部最大值？局部最大值，永远是权衡。

Well, you know how long do you want to go? Because I can go deep. So let's go at least 20 hours. Let's go. Okay, yeah, that's one of those lengthy documentaries. We're gonna turn it into episodic, yeah, binge Game of Thrones. So let's just start with, you know, after I was asked to be a consultant to put this thing together. So I had already had knowledge of the space and the technology and all that stuff, but I had to very quickly, and a lot of the suppliers because of what I was doing at Fuse trying to create that thing. So as a contractor, I was like, okay, what is the first thing you need to do? So after I showed, you know, different architectures and what three different products could be to Steve about options for storage, options for battery, options for form factor, there were three options. And as I was told, given very good advice: give the two options you really do not like, but their options, and give the best option last, because Steve will shoot all those down and give the best option last, and then you could talk about that. And so that was the one that had a 1.8 inch hard drive and a small screen, like with the screen you know, it is not on the original iPod classic iPod. And then I had enough of the idea of the three or four different CPUs and processor suppliers and kind of systems that were out there that I had gone and found and put together on power supplies, you know, disk drive interfaces, FireWire interface, all that stuff. So I put together all of those schematics or block diagrams, they weren't schematics yet because it was just me, and coming up with a bill of materials, coming up with what it could look like, what would be the input output, how we could make a better headphone jack that was also on there, screen suppliers, tearing apart calculators. So I got all calculators and all kinds of electronics to get the right size, different sizes of small LCDs. So I got all kinds of different battery types, I got different types of, you know, in different battery sizes, double A's, AAA's, working through all the different, and there was lithium ion, nickel metal hydride. So I took all the battery types, I took all of the memory types, processing types, LCD types, and connectivity and all that stuff, not wireless but wired, and laid out these things as Lego blocks. So literally I had all of these things as just, and so I made them so I could like, you know, put them together and figure out what the compact form factor would be. Oh, like how do we shove them together? What's the smallest possible box you can get? So the questions without the storage, so the hard drive, batteries, double A, triple A, you're right, screens, so screen size, and then for that you're tearing apart calculators, calculators, digital cameras, whatever, and getting little things right, so you can make it physical, right? If you can make the intangible tangible, like, and so I can say, look, we can make this, and I could bring this whole bag of goods, and it was like, right, like here's this, here's this, this is why double A's won't work, and because it makes it too fat and everything. So just educate everybody through here's the parts that we can use. You should not sheet a paper, it's physical, you're playing in the physical space. Well, I would go back and forth. So truth be told, because there weren't good enough graphical tools on the Mac, I was using a PC with Visio and some 3D tools, and I was doing 3D design at the same time. I was taking all these physical parts and going, okay, what feels right? Because you have to go from the details and then the rough, and you go back and forth and you iterate, right? And so it was just a lot of fun. And then I ultimately ended up with a styrofoam model and printouts that came from Visio that I glued together and put my grandfather's fishing weights in, because I also modeled the weights, right? So I said, oh, this is this many ounces, this is this many ounces in grams, and then I went and got all that and made the weighted these styrofoam models to then match that. So when you picked it up, it felt more or less form factor, right? And it also you felt how much, you know, was it going to be dense enough? Is it going to feel solid and rigid in your hand, right? Why does it need to feel rigid? Because it has to feel substantial, it has to feel like I have a like a bar of gold in my hand, right? You know, maybe you know this when you open and close a car door, you know that thunk and you go bam, and you go that feels solid, that feels real. And then you get this tinny car that's like ding, and you're like, does this feel safe? Does this feel like a value? And so when you have a device like that, you want to make sure that there's not too much air in it, that you've distributed the density of the masses in the right way so it feels like it's the right thing. So you have to model battery life, costs, you know, mass sizes of different things, and then you have to also think about what the UI is going to look like, right? So you have all of these constraints, your work variables you're working with, and you have to kind of, you know, you can't get the perfect of everything. What's the best, you know, local maximum of all of these components that come together to provide an experience? Local max, it's always trade-offs.

那按钮呢？

What about buttons?

按钮也是，对吧？

Well, there was also the buttons too, right?

顺便问一句，这些斗争是在你脑子里，还是跟别人？跟 Steve？还是更低层级？

Oh, by the way, a lot of these battles fought inside your mind or is it with other people? Is it with Steve? Is it lower?

其实这完全是我独立完成的。在我能向 Steve 展示之前，我必须非常确信这东西能造出来。所以我得说服自己，把非常粗糙的机械设计、电气设计、软件细节都过一遍，因为我不想展示一个虚构的东西，那样我的信誉就毁了。

Like, what this was all independent. This was me before being able to present to Steve, because I had to feel really confident that if I was going to put this in front of him, that it could be made, right? So I had to convince myself and go work through all the details through the very, very rough mechanical design, electrical design, software things, because I didn't want to present something that was going to be fictional, right? My credibility would be like trashed, right?

你提到说服自己。你在描绘一个充满动力的工程师、设计师、未来学家的美好画面。在这个过程中，你被多少怀疑困扰？比如，这真的可行吗？因为这不是……

You mentioned convince yourself. You're painting this beautiful picture of a driven engineer, designer, futurist. How much doubt were you played by through that? Like, is this even doable? Because it's not...

你心里已经有了成功和失败的记录，你已经有了一种自信和冷静。但即便如此，你仍然怀疑自己能否完成这件事吗？

You already were sitting on a track record of successes and failures in your own mind where you had sort of already a confidence, a calmness. But still, was there a doubt that you could get this done?

一直都有。一直都有。

Always. Always.

要达到那种能向史蒂夫展示并真正相信这件事可行的自信有多难？你对那个时刻有什么记忆？

是的，我想那是在我反复确认之后。我不能让任何人参与进来，对吧？我不能让任何人知道这件事，所以只有我一个人。

Yeah, I think it was after I triple-checked. I couldn't bring anyone in, right? I couldn't let anyone in on this, so it was just me.

他们会不会把它搞砸，诸如此类？

Are they going to trample on it, that kind of thing?

不，不，因为我不能带任何人参与这个项目。这是苹果内部一个高度机密的项目，只有大约四个人知道，对吧？所以我不能从苹果内部带人，因为我是合同工。我也不能从外面带任何人。我在为苹果工作，签了疯狂的保密协议，对吧？所以只有我一个人。所以我就在做这件事。哦，同时，我还在购买所有竞争产品——MP3 播放器——然后把它们全部拆开，对吧？全部拆开，研究它们，并试图从中学习。所以所有这些事情都在六周内完成。所以我没睡觉，对吧？是的，是的。但我当时想，因为我从 Nino 时代就开始构想这个了，对吧？我当时想，哦，天哪，对吧？但我还有另一个疑虑，不仅仅是你能不能做出产品，而是苹果是否真的有勇气去做它？因为苹果不是今天你所知道的那家公司。在 2001 年，真的，它很谨慎、保守、小心翼翼。它几乎不盈利。它是一家四五十亿美元的公司。

No, no, because I couldn't bring anyone in on this one. It was a highly confidential program inside of Apple. There were like four people who knew about it, right? And so I couldn't bring anyone from Apple because I was a contractor. I couldn't bring anyone else from the outside world. I'm working for Apple and I'm under this crazy NDA, right, in this contract. So it was just me. So I'm doing this. Oh, and at the same time, I'm also buying every competitive product — MP3 players — and tearing them all apart, yeah, right? Tore them all apart and looking at them and trying to learn from those as well. So it was all of this stuff in six weeks. So I didn't sleep, right? Yeah, yeah. But I was like, because I was trying to make this from — I was envisioning this since the Nino, right? And I was like, oh my god, right? But there was another doubt that I had, and it wasn't just could you make the product, but could Apple actually have the balls to make it? Because Apple was not the same company that you know today. In 2001, really, it was cautious, conservative, careful. It was barely break-even. It was a four or five billion dollar company.

所以那里需要的勇气不一定是在创新上。而是这要花很多钱，我们可能会全部亏掉，因为它会失败。

So the guts required there is not necessarily in the innovation. It's like this is going to cost a lot of money and we're going to potentially lose all of it because it'll be a flop.

嗯，不仅如此，而且当时只有 Mac，是的，Mac 做得不太好。是的，Mac 在美国的市场份额只有大约 1%，对吧？公司负债累累。比尔·盖茨不得不给他贷款，对吧？当时的迈克尔·戴尔说关掉公司，把钱还给股东。所以这不是你所知道的那家公司——人们，哦，天哪，iPhone 出来了——公司当时的信心和财务状况与 iPod 时期截然不同。

Well, there's not just that, but there was only the Mac, yeah, and the Mac wasn't doing very well. Yeah, there was less — it was about a one percent only in the US market share for the Mac, right? The company was in debt. Bill Gates had to give him a loan, right? Michael Dell at the time was saying shut down the company and give the money back to the shareholders. So this is not the company that you know — that people, oh my god, the iPhone came out — it's a very different level of confidence and financial situation that the company was in versus the iPod.

鉴于此，当你最终向史蒂夫展示时，你们的对话是怎样的？

Given that, what was the conversation when you finally presented to Steve? What was that conversation like?

对话是这样的——嗯，我们进行了演示，所有那些事情都发生了，他就像——你知道，他从不——他会快速翻看演示文稿，把它扔到一边，然后说，好吧，我们来谈谈这个，对吧？所以我们讨论了所有内容。其中一个是关于索尼的大讨论。索尼在所有音频类别中都是第一——家庭、便携，无论什么。好吧，我已经经历了 10 年的失败，我当时想，等等，我们怎么和索尼竞争？我一直担心索尼会推出他们将要推出的任何产品——他们的 MP3 播放器——然后游戏就结束了，对吧？所以我就想，史蒂夫——这就是为什么在他那次会议上批准 iPod 项目后，我花了四个星期才最终签约加入苹果的原因——是因为我以前在飞利浦做过其他东西，Nino 和 Velo，但他们不知道如何销售或营销，他们不知道如何零售，对吧？所以我想，我们可以做出这个。然后我说，史蒂夫，我很确定我能做出这个，我以前做过。但我们怎么卖呢？你所有的营销预算都花在 Mac 上。他看着我，然后说，你和你的团队以及我们的团队、苹果开放业务和我一起做，对吧？我保证，至少两个季度的所有营销预算将只用于这个产品，而不是其他任何东西。哇，对吧？那时 Mac 是公司所有收入的命脉。所以史蒂夫看到了特别的东西，没错。他说，如果你能实现我们都在谈论的体验，我就投入所有的营销预算。如果我们能做到——还有杰夫·罗宾，因为没有 iTunes，iPod 永远不会发生，你知道吗？人们不明白那是一个捆绑。你不能只做一个而不做另一个，反之亦然。所以杰夫和我——你知道，如果杰夫和你能呈现并让那种体验成为现实，我会把所有的营销预算都投进去。

The conversation was — well, we went through it, the presentation and all that stuff happened, and he was just like — and you know, he never — he would flip through it real quick, throw the presentation aside, and said, okay, let's talk about this, right? And so we went through it all. And one was a big conversation about Sony. And Sony was the number one in all audio categories — home, portable, what in the world. Okay, I had already been gone through 10 years of failure, and I was like, wait a second, how are we going to compete with Sony? And I was always worried that Sony was going to come out with whatever it was they were going to come out with — their MP3 player — and that was it, game over, right? And so I was like, Steve — and this is why it took me four weeks to finally sign on to join Apple after he greenlit the iPod program in that meeting — was because I had built other things in the past at Philips, the Nino and Velo, but they didn't know how to sell it or market it, they didn't know how to retail it, right? So I was like, we could build this. And I was like, Steve, I'm pretty sure I can build this, I've done this before. But how are we going to sell it? You have all your marketing dollars on the Mac. And he looked at me and he goes, you build this with your team and our team and Apple open business and me, right? And I dedicate that we will make sure that at least two quarters of all marketing dollars will only go to this product and nothing else. Wow, right? That was Mac was the lifeblood of all revenue of the company. So Steve saw something special here, exactly. And he said, I'm going to commit all the marketing dollars if you can deliver the experience that we're all talking about. If we can do that — and that was Jeff Robbin as well, because iPod would have never happened without iTunes, you know? People don't understand that was a bundle. You couldn't do one without the other, and vice versa. So Jeff and I were — you know, if Jeff and you can present and bring that experience to life, I will put all the marketing dollars behind it.

iPod 和 iTunes 的结合是什么时候——构成 iTunes 的想法是如何诞生的？

When did the marriage of iPod and iTunes sort of — what was that a birth of ideas that made up iTunes?

iTunes 在 iPod 之前就存在了，好吗？所以杰夫·罗宾有他的公司——哦，天哪，我记不起名字了，但它被收购了。他在为 Mac 制作一个 MP3 播放器应用。史蒂夫看到了它，因为 PC 上有像 Winamp 和其他东西这样的 MP3 播放器应用，RealPlayer。史蒂夫看到了这种情况，看到杰夫和他的小团队有这个——我记不清了，Sound 什么的——总之，他收购了它，这成为了 iTunes 的基础。然后杰夫管理整个 iTunes。所以具体发生的事情是，他们开始连接所有这些第三方 MP3 播放器，因为有很多韩国的——MP Man，就像 Walkman 但叫 MP Man——所有这些，他们试图连接它们，然后他们说，这些体验太糟糕了。通过那个，他们说 iTunes 是——

iTunes existed before the iPod, okay? And so Jeff Robbin had his company — oh man, I can't remember her name, but it was bought. He was making an MP3 player app for the Mac. Steve saw it because there were MP3 player apps like Winamp and other things that were on the PC, RealPlayer. And Steve saw that going on and saw that Jeff and his small team had this — I can't remember, Sound something — anyways, he bought that and that became the basis of iTunes. And then Jeff ran all of iTunes. And so what happened specifically there was they were starting to hook up to all these third-party MP3 players, because there's a lot of Korean — the MP Man, like Walkman but MP Man — all these, and they were trying to hook them up and they were like, these are horrible experiences. And through that, and they said iTunes was —

当时有个项目是为了帮助扩大 Mac 的用户基础，因为我们想让更多人用上 Mac。所以这个项目会成为 Mac 上一个很棒的新功能，而且那时候 iMac 已经有了网络连接。他们尝试了那些合作，但进展不顺利。于是他们说我们需要自己造一个，或者 Steve 说我们需要自己造一个，因为那些体验太糟糕了。人们不想只从 iTunes 刻录 CD，我们需要让音乐随身携带，但要以 Apple 的方式。那就是我被叫来参与 iPod 项目的时候，在六周之后。他已经预见到了——我确信他预见到了，因为他们已经在尝试做这件事。好了，就是这样。iTunes，你知道的，那时候还不叫 iPod，你知道后来会成为 iPod 的东西，那将推动 Apple 进入新领域，因为你吸引了所有音乐爱好者，他们需要下一代或索尼 Walkman 2.0 版本。

Something that was going to help grow the Mac base because we were trying to get more people on the Mac. So this program would be a great new thing you could add to the Mac, and there was also internet connectivity at the time for the iMac. And so they did that, and then they were trying to do these hookups, they weren't going well. And that's when they said we need to build our own, or Steve said we need to build our own since these are such horrible experiences. People don't want to just burn CDs from iTunes, we need to get that music on the go but in an Apple fashion. That's when I was called to come in to do that, the iPod thing, after the six weeks. Then he already envisioned — I'm sure he had envisioned because they were trying to do this thing. Okay, now that's it. iTunes, what you know, it wasn't called iPod yet, you know what would become the iPod, that is going to be the thing that then propels Apple into this new thing because you bring all these music lovers in that are going to need their next generation or Sony Walkman version 2.0.

所以当你回顾——再次抱歉，在 iPod 上多花点时间，但它是科技史上最伟大的发明之一——从整个过程中，关于发现一个想法，你得到了什么智慧？这是你在《Build》一书中谈到的。你怎么知道一个想法在哪个阶段是 brilliant 的？你什么时候知道它是一个好主意？也许有一些阶段转变：先是完全怀疑，然后嗯，然后可能变得更多，信心多一点，诸如此类。还有关于该和谁谈的智慧，对吧，这样他们就不会在早期阶段践踏这个想法，诸如此类。你的想法是什么？

So when you look at — again, apologies to linger on iPod, but it's one of the great inventions in tech history — what wisdom do you draw from that whole process about spotting an idea? This is something you talk about in your book Build. How do you know that an idea is brilliant at which stage? When did you know it was a good idea? And maybe is there like some phase shifts: first your complete doubt, then maybe hmm, and then maybe it becomes more than and becomes like a little more confidence, that kind of stuff. And also wisdom about who to talk to, right, so they don't trample the idea in the early stages, that kind of stuff. And your thoughts about this.

我们可以继续聊，你想聊多久？我跟你说过，这是一部 Netflix 系列剧，多季的。所以这些年从失败和成功中学到了很多。但首先，它始于——有一整章叫“伟大的想法追逐你”。在《Build》里，它详细讲述了 Nest 是如何诞生的。但我们专门谈谈 iPod 吧。对我来说，我一直有痛苦：随身携带这些 CD 的痛苦，对吧。而且我有音乐的快乐，对吧。如果你说突然之间，我可以随时随地在便携设备上听到我爱的音乐，并且我可以一直拥有所有我爱的音乐。我在解决一个痛苦，对我来说是几千张 CD，其他人可能是 10 或 15 张 CD，对吧。然后我可以不间断地享受所有这些音乐的快乐。那是把痛苦变成止痛药。最后，它变成了一种超能力，一种情感上的超能力，说：“哦，天哪，这不一样了。”所以当你真正专注于一个痛苦——不是没有——并为之找到止痛药，而不是维生素。止痛药和维生素的区别很清楚：一个是你需要的，“我必须摆脱这种痛苦”；维生素，也许有效，也许无效，也许有人需要，也许不需要，全是营销故事，对吧。所以从痛苦开始，给他们止痛药，希望如果你做得对，你给他们一种超能力，一种情感上的超能力，始终如此。这就是你知道自己触及了真正强大的东西的方式：痛苦和快乐。没错。

We could go on again, how long do you want to go? This is a Netflix series, I told you, multi-season. So a lot of lessons learned over those years of failure and success. But the first thing it starts with — there's a whole chapter called "Great Ideas Chase You." And so it kind of goes into in Build, and you can go and it goes through kind of chapter and verse about all of those how Nest became into being. But let's talk about it specifically for iPod, right. So for me, I always had pain: the pain of carrying these CDs everywhere, right. And I had the joy of music, right. If you could say all of a sudden I could get the music I love all the time in a portable package, and I can have all the music I love all the time. I was solving a pain, which was for me it was thousands of these, other people might be 10 or 15 CDs, right. And then I can have the joy of all this music uninterrupted. That was taking the pain, making a painkiller for it. And then at the end was a superpower, an emotional superpower that said, "Oh my, this is something different." So when you can actually focus on a pain — not of not — and get a painkiller for it, not a vitamin. So the difference between a painkiller and a vitamin is very clear: one you need, "I got to get rid of this pain"; a vitamin, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, maybe somebody needs it, maybe not, it's all marketing story, right. So you start with the pain, give them a painkiller, and hopefully if you can do it in the right way, you give them a superpower, an emotional superpower that is always. And that's the way to know that you're hitting on something that's really powerful: the pain and the joy. Exactly.

你总是能意识到痛苦吗？似乎很多伟大的产品，我们做了很多痛苦的事情，却只是认为本该如此。比如自动驾驶汽车，我们都假设我们应该开车，对吧？而且你并不认为那是痛苦，对吧？你已经习惯了。

Are you always aware of the pain? So it seems like a lot of great products, it's like we do a lot of painful things and we just kind of assume that's the way it's supposed to be. Like with much autonomous vehicles, we'll all assume we're supposed to be driving, right? And it doesn't — you don't think of it as a pain, right? Well, you've habituated it away.

是的，你已经习惯了。对我来说，你知道，当我去其他地方，住在巴厘岛或巴黎之类的地方，我不开车，我走路或用滑板车，不同的事情。你会说，“哦，天哪，”当你离开那个环境，因为其他人一直在开车，你会想，“那就是你做的事。”然后你发现还有其他的生活方式，摆脱它之后有自由。你会说，“哦，天哪，我不知道原来这么好。”所以书里有一章叫——我称之为“怀疑病毒”。怀疑病毒的意思是，当存在痛苦并且已经被习惯化时，你用正确的营销信息把人们带回到他们最初的体验，或者他们对那种痛苦的初始体验。“你还记得第一次做某事时感觉像这样吗？”对吧。然后你重新唤醒那种习惯化的痛苦，人们——它变得发自内心，然后他们会说，“哦，是的，我讨厌那个。”然后你说，“现在我有止痛药和快乐给你。”是的，那时一切就都对了。

Yeah, you've habituated it away. For me, you know, when I go to other places, living in Bali or living in Paris or whatever, and I'm not driving, I'm walking or using a scooter or what have you, different thing. And you go, "Oh my god," when you left that environment because everyone else is driving all the time, you're like, "That's what you do." And you find out there's other ways of living, and there's freedom when you get rid of that. You're like, "Oh my god, I didn't know that this was so much better." So there's something in the book that's called — I deemed it the "Virus of Doubt." And what the Virus of Doubt is, is when there's pain and it's been habituated away, you use the right marketing messages to bring people back to that initial experience they had, or the initial experience that they had of that pain. "Do you remember when the first time you did blah and it felt like this?" Right. And then you reawaken that habituated pain, and people — it becomes visceral, and then they're like, "Oh yes, I hate that." And then you go, "Now I have the painkiller and the joy for you." Yes, that's when it all comes together.

让我谈谈痛苦和快乐，说得太好了。你提到了销售和营销，对吧，营销预算。我对营销又爱又恨，就像很多需要艺术天才的事情一样。对我来说，最好的营销我想就是产品本身，然后是口碑。所以创造人们喜欢的东西。哦，绝对，那是根本。是的。但任何其他营销都需要天才才能成为额外的东西，因为对我来说，我不——是的。也许你可以，以提问的方式，因为我只是作为消费者随口说说，什么是伟大的营销？需要什么来揭示一件事的痛苦和快乐？

Let me on this on the pain and the joy, that's brilliantly put. You mentioned selling and marketing, right, marketing dollars. I have a love-hate relationship with marketing, like with a lot of things that require artistic genius. To me, the best marketing I suppose is the product itself and then word of mouth. So like create a thing that people love. Oh, absolutely, that's fundamental. Yeah. But so any other marketing requires genius to be any extra thing because every — to me, I don't — it's yeah. Maybe you can, by way of question because I'm just speaking off the top of my head as a consumer, what is great marketing? What does it take to reveal the pain and the joy of a thing?

好的，一切都从开始说起。我给你——我给你几种不同的看法，好吗。再说一次，我们可能会聊得有点长，所以请继续听。是的。第一件事是开始。让我们从开始说起。在我职业生涯的早期，你知道，像 General Magic 和 Philips 之类的公司，尤其是我十几岁的时候，当我做自己的芯片之类的东西时，我真的只关心把酷东西拼在一起。我想，“当我作为一个工程师把这两个酷东西放在一起时，你会说，‘那很酷。’”然后我会和其他可能也是极客的朋友聊，他们说，“是啊，很酷，”因为我们知道那些比特，所以我们把它们放在一起，这是一种新的做法。你会想，“哇，就是这样。”什么？不是的。“你为什么这么做？”“我们知道我们在做什么，但我们不知道为什么这么做，”因为我们没有为自己阐明，因为那只是我们拼凑起来的东西，就像，“是啊，很酷，”因为我们以为我们在解决某个问题，但我们并没有真正阐明它。所以通常发生的是——这会发生，因为我们在世界各地投资了很多公司——你有这些 brilliant 的工程师、设计师、科学家、研究人员，他们把这些“什么”拼凑起来，然后开发、开发、开发，最后他们叫来营销人员说，“现在讲个故事吧。”然后——

Okay, it all starts at the beginning. And let me give you — I'm going to give you a couple of different ways of looking at it, okay. And again, we're going to might go a little long here, so just stay tuned in. Yeah. So the first thing is the beginning. Let's start at the beginning. In the early part of my career, you know, like General Magic and Philips and what have you, and especially when I was a teenager, when I was like doing making my own chips and stuff like that, I really worried about just putting cool things together. I'm like, "When I put those two cool things together as an engineer, you go, 'That's cool.'" And then I would talk to the other friends who might be geeks too, and they go, "Yeah, that's cool," because we knew the bits, so we put them together and that's a new way of doing it. You're like, "Wow, that's all." What? It's not. "Why are you doing this?" "We know what we're doing, but we don't know why we're doing it," because we're not articulating for ourselves because it's just something we're like putting it together like, "Yeah, that's cool," because we think we're solving some problem we have, but we're not really articulating it. So what normally happens — and this happens because we invest in so many companies around the world — you have these brilliant engineers, designers, scientists, researchers, they put together these "whats" and then they develop it, develop it, develop it, and then at the end they call in marketing and say, "Now tell a story about this." And let's —

把它推向世界。好的，接下来会发生的是，市场部会问：“嗯，为什么人们需要这个？告诉我们为什么人们需要它。”于是他们围绕这个产品编了一个故事。但产品本身源于“什么是不明智的”。然后他们开始讲故事——市场部开始讲故事——结果通常是一个虚构的故事。他们说：“哦，这能实现这些功能。”产品上市、交付，然后彻底失败，因为营销和产品不匹配，因为它们从一开始就不是一起创造的，对吧？当你创造产品时，有很多“为什么”。这些“为什么”帮助定义“是什么”，同时也指导营销。所以这就是你深层的含义：我们应该从起点开始。因此设计师也应该是营销人员，工程师也应该是营销人员。没错。别再取悦你旁边的极客了。你为最终用户带来的超能力是什么？或者你为他们消除了什么痛苦？现在，我们来对比一下。想想一部电影。电影从一份剧情梗概开始。它有一个目标观众——观众，这是角色，这是故事线，这是情节，这是故事的弧光，对吧？它把所有东西都梳理出来。然后写出剧本，剧本被制作出来，然后你添加各种修饰——音乐、画面等等，对吧？然后电影上映，接着是电影的营销。而那个故事从一开始就创建好了。如果你想做出一款伟大的产品，你需要为你的产品创建一份类似的剧情梗概。我称之为“新闻稿”。像写剧情梗概一样写新闻稿。目标受众是谁？你有哪些功能？你为用户解决了什么痛苦？引入“怀疑病毒”来提醒他们有什么痛苦，以及你为什么解决这些痛苦。价格，所有这些东西。你把它作为开发过程中的衡量标准和标尺。因为在过程中会发生这种情况：“哦，我们无法按时完成那个功能——把它扔到船外。我们必须赶上日期。哦，我们还不确定这个产品对不对——再加一个功能，再加一个功能。”功能蔓延，对吧？如果你没有那个故事——你知道你从一开始就要讲的故事——你就没有那个标尺，对吧？然后到最后，你不知道什么时候算完成。如果你没有那个故事，你就无法真正对照那份新闻稿。你知道，你可能会随着时间的推移修改那份草稿。但当你完成时，你知道了“是什么”和“为什么”。你有了关于受众的所有信息。然后你可以把它交给市场部——当然，市场部一路都在参与——但这样大家就同步了。这时你才能讲一个连贯的、非虚构的故事，产品也兑现了那个故事，或者希望是超额兑现。

Get it out to the world. Okay, what happens then is marketing is like, 'Well, why do people need this? Tell us why people need it.' And so they create a story around this product. But the product was born out of what's not wise. And so they start telling — marketing starts telling a story — and it turns out to be a fictional story usually. They say, 'Oh, this is going to do these things.' The product comes in, is delivered, and it falls flat on its face because the marketing doesn't match the product, because they weren't both created at the beginning together, right? There are what's when you create a product, but there's a lot more Y's. And the Y's help inform the what's, and the Y's also inform the marketing. So that's what you mean deeply at: we should start at the beginning. So the designer should be also the marketer, the engineer should be the marketer. Exactly. Stop impressing the geek next to you. What is the superpower you're bringing or the pain you're killing for the end customer? Right now, let's contrast that. Think about a movie. A movie starts with a treatment. It has an audience that says — the audience, here's the characters, here's the storyline, the plot, here's the arc of the story, right? It pulls that all out. Then there's a script that's written, and that script is then produced, and then you add all the flourishes and what have you — music and graphics and what have you, right? And then it comes out, and then there's the marketing of the movie. And that story was created at the beginning. What you need to do if you're going to do a great product is create that treatment for your product. And I call that the press release. Do the press release like the treatment. Who's the audience? What features do you have? What pains are you solving for people? Have the virus of doubt there to remind them what pains they have and why you're solving them. The price, all of those things. And you use that as the bar, the measuring stick for what you do during development. Because what happens along the route, you know, 'Oh, we're not going to be able to get that feature done on time — throw that one overboard. We got to hit the date. Oh, we're not sure this product's right yet — add another feature, add another feature.' Feature creep, right? If you don't have that story, you know you're going to tell at the beginning, you don't have that bar, right? And then at the end, you don't know when you're done. If you don't have that story, so you can actually look at that press release. You know, you might modify it over time, that draft. But then when you're done, you know the what's and the why's. You have all the things of the audience and everything. And then you can give that to marketing and say — well, marketing's been along the way, let's be clear — but then everybody's in sync. And that's when you can tell a cohesive, non-fictional story about, and the product delivers on that story, or hopefully over-delivers on that story.

那么，从新闻稿的起草到完成，一个成功的团队是什么样的？谁参与起草？是工程师、设计师吗？在一个公司里，市场部的目的是什么？比如一个小公司，但不止两个人。好的，那么“为什么”从何而来？它应该总是来自设计师，还是应该有一个营销人员介入并提出问题？

So in the drafting from the beginning to the end of the press release, what does a successful team look like? Who is part of the draft? Is it engineers, designers? What's the purpose of a marketing department in a company? Small, let's say a small company but more than two people. Okay, so from where does the why come from? Should it always come from the designer, or should there be a marketing person that steps in and asks the question?

那我就继续随机提问。

So I'll just keep asking random questions.

我知道这些都是好问题。好的，因为你就像——我就像，“我等不及要告诉你答案了。”是的。嗯，书里也提到了，但你必须区分营销的各种职能。当我以为——我过去想，“营销就是营销”，你知道吗？但事实并非如此。营销有很多学科，就像工程学一样：机械、电气、软件，甚至软件也分为云服务、固件、应用。营销也有同样多的多样性，好吗？你必须尊重这一点。所以有营销传播，比如公关、媒体。有社交媒体营销。有营销创意，对吧？有营销激活。但还有另一件事，人们常常把它和营销混淆，那就是产品营销或产品管理。产品管理或产品营销是客户的声音。他们是坐在那里倾听市场动态和竞争情况、理解客户需求和痛点的人，他们在每一次会议中代表客户，这样事情就不会偏离轨道，对吧？而且他们创造信息，而不是营销。实际情况是，产品营销创造信息，比如深层信息，比如“我们需要节省 20% 的能源”，对吧？然后营销部门用创意等方式将其转化，传达那个信息——也许不是直接说出来，而是通过视觉或其他方式。所以产品管理做这些事，并一路持有那份新闻稿，确保我们跟踪进度。同时营销部门也跟踪那份新闻稿，确保他们不是在讲虚构的故事，对吧？因为他们也可能添加额外的形容词之类的东西，然后产品无法兑现。就像，“不，不，不，不，不。”它让每个人都扎根于新闻稿，扎根于原始需求，对吧？扎根于客户需求。是的。因为他们始终代表客户。所以你必须有一个产品经理——通常一开始就是创始人——然后随着时间的推移，你雇佣一个产品管理团队来真正全程监督。他们与客户支持、工程、设计、销售和营销沟通，他们始终参与其中。这是最难招聘的职位。哦，是的。

I know these are great questions. Okay, so it's because you're just like — I'm like, 'I can't wait to tell you the answer.' Yeah. Um, so it's in the book as well, but you have to separate out the various functions of marketing. When that's what I thought — I was like, 'Marketing's marketing,' you know? When I was — and it's really not. There's so many disciplines, just like in engineering: mechanical, electrical, software, and even software it's you know, use cloud services, firmware, applications. Marketing has that much diversity as well, okay? And you have to honor that. And so there is marketing communications, like PR, press. There is social marketing. There is marketing creative, right? There's marketing activation. But there's another thing that also comes out and people confuse it with marketing, which is called product marketing or product management. And product management or product marketing is the voice of the customer. They're the person who sits there and listens to what's going on and the competition in the marketplace, understanding the needs and those pains of the customer, and they're representing them in every single meeting so things don't get off track, right? So that — and they're creating the messages, not the marketing. What happens is there's messages that product marketing creates, like those are the deep messages, like 'We need to save 20% of energy,' let's say, right? And then marketing turns that into something that's with creative and everything and brings that message across — maybe it doesn't say that but it comes maybe visually or some other way. So product management does that and holds that press release along the route and makes sure that we're tracking. And then also marketing is tracking with that press release to make sure they're not telling a fictional story, right? Because they could also add extra adjectives or something and then the product can't deliver that. It's like, 'No, no, no, no, no.' Keeps everybody grounded to the press release, to the raw, right? To the customer needs, yeah. Right, because they're always representing the customer. So you have to have a product manager — typically that's the founder right in the beginning — and then over time you hire a product management team to then really, you know, watch over this the whole way. And they are talking to customer support, they're talking to engineering, they're talking to design, they're talking to sales and marketing, and they are always in the mix. And it's the hardest thing to hire for. Oh, yeah.

为什么这是最难招聘的？

Why is it the hardest to hire for?

因为你必须理解——首先，没有人向你汇报，对吧？你被允许——所以你孤身一人。你必须与所有这些不同的职能部门建立牢固的联系。是的。你必须理解他们做什么，对他们的工作有同理心。而且你必须——必须将客户的同理心投射给他们，告诉他们为什么以及为什么这个客户需要我们，为什么这个行不通。这样他们就能学到更多——他们不仅仅是执行，而是学习客户的观点，设身处地，从而在工程细节、运营细节、客户支持细节上做出更好的决策。所以如果他们不是目标客户，他们就开始通过客户的眼睛去生活和观察，从而做出更好的决策。

Because you have to understand — you first, nobody reports to you, right? You're allowed — so you're alone. And you have to build great ties with all of these different functions. Yes. You have to understand what they do, have be empathetic with what they do. And you have to get — have to project the customer's empathy or empathy for the customer to them and tell them why and why this customer needs us, why this doesn't work. And so that they learn more — they're not just doing, but they learn about the customer's point of view and sit in there and stand in their shoes to be able to then make better decisions on the engineering details or the operational details, customer support details. So they understand the — if they're not the customer that it's intended for, they start to live through and through their eyes and see through their eyes of that customer so they make better decisions.

这之间可能存在着迷人而美妙的张力，与那些开发产品的工程师之间。而且这肯定让工作更难了。

There's probably fascinating beautiful tensions between that and sort of the engineers developing the what exactly. And which makes it an extra hard job, I'm sure.

确实。

Exactly.

我能问一个有点私人的问题吗？营销的一个子领域提到了公关传播。我该怎么问呢？我能听出你的纠结。为什么公关传播人员有时会扼杀公司魔力的核心和灵魂？还是说这么说不对？

Can I ask a sort of a little bit of a personal question? One subfield of marketing mentioned comms in PR. How do I ask that? I can hear your struggle in your thigh. Why do the comms and PR folks sometimes kill the heart and soul of the magic that makes a company? Or is that wrong to say?

我给你举个例子。我想说的是，传播工作往往就是提供谨慎。它几乎和法律部门一起说：'对，我们可能不该这么说。我们最好小心点，小心点。' 这有道理，但在当今世界，真实性极其宝贵，而揭示工程之美、创意之美、创意之混乱，我认为在某种程度上需要把谨慎抛到脑后。我同意。而且我发现，天哪，我的意思是，这真的——我反驳一下自己——我认为这是一份极其困难的工作，因为如果你在传播中冒险，人们会追究你的责任，尤其是当冒险失败的时候。所以这是一份艰难的工作，我理解为什么人们会变得谨慎。但对我来说，传播的本质就是承担大风险，把谨慎抛到脑后，因为你的工作是长期沟通，传达产品的天才、喜悦和天才，对吧？而这有时会与谨慎产生矛盾。

Give me an example. I will say the spirit of the example, which is it feels like often the jobs of communications is to provide caution. It almost works together with legal to say, 'Yeah, we should probably not say this. We're probably, let's be careful, let's be careful.' Now that makes sense, except in this modern world, authenticity is extremely valuable, and revealing the beauty that is in the engineering, the beauty of the ideas, the chaos of the ideas, I think requires throwing caution to the wind to some degree. I agree. And I just find that boy, I mean it's a really so to push back on myself, I think it's an extremely difficult job because people hold you responsible if you're doing communications when you take risks, right? And especially when they fail. So it's a difficult job, so I understand why people become cautious. But to me, communications is about taking big risks and throwing caution into the wind at its best, because your job is to communicate in the long term, communicate the genius, the joy, the genius of the products, right? And that sometimes is a tension with caution.

抱歉，我因为有机会见到很多非常有趣的人和有趣的工程团队等等，我看着他们在做什么，再看看他们传达的内容，就觉得不匹配，因为传播内容无聊得多。他们的沟通方式因为谨慎而变得非常、直接了当的无聊。

Sorry, so I, because I've gotten a chance to meet a lot of very interesting people and interesting engineering teams and so on, I look at what they're doing and I look at what's being communicated, and it's just there's a mismatch because the communication is a lot more boring. It's like there's something very, just straight up boring about the way they're communicating because of caution.

好了，你正好给我搭了个台子，让我再来一番长篇大论。好的，我要站上我的讲台了。请便。这一切都源于领导者。如果领导者不会讲故事，或者不会大胆讲故事，那么公关和传播人员就会更加保守，因为他们总是——如果你有一个不大胆的领导者，他们就会一直充当过滤器，对吧？他们总是试图把事情抹平，去掉棱角，试图——所以他们会更加——如果你有一个保守的信息传达领导者，你的传播部门就会更加保守。为什么？因为他们想保住工作。就这么简单。是的，他们得保住饭碗。要是说错一句话，可能就完了。所以如果你有一个非常保守的领导者，他们会更加保守。如果你有一个大胆的领导者，他们会——哦，他们总会稍微偏向保守一点，但你仍然会有大胆的传播。没错，这很精彩。

Okay, and you have just teed me up for another diatribe. Okay, I'm gonna get on my podium here. Yes, please. It all comes out of the leader. If the leader doesn't know how to storytell, or the leader doesn't know how to do bold storytelling, then you get even more conservatism from the PR and communications folks, because they're always so—if you have a not bold leader, they're always going to be a filter, right? They're always going to try to smooth things out and take off the rough edges, and try—so they're going to be even more—if you have a conservative messaging leader, you're going to have even a more conservative communications department. Why? Because they want to keep their jobs. Okay, it's really simple. Yes, they got to keep their jobs. If they say one wrong thing, it could be the end of it. So if you have a very conservative leader, they're going to be even more conservative. If you have a bold leader, there will be—oh, they'll always take a little more conservative bent, but you're still going to have bold communications. Yeah, that's brilliant.

好的，所以这始于领导者。话虽如此，当你思考信息、喜悦和揭示事物时，对吧，很多这些领导者并不擅长讲故事。所以我们在 Future Shape（我们的投资公司）所做的，就是把这些科学家和所有伟大的头脑聚集起来，然后用什么包围他们？营销、传播人员和讲故事的人，给他们信心，去讲述一个更宏大的故事，关于他们创造的影响，以及这些技术能带来多大的全球变革。因为通常他们不会——那些创造了这些技术的领导者，并不真正知道如何很好地沟通，他们对自己的表达方式感到不太自在。

Okay, so it starts with the leader. Now that said, when you think about the messages and the joy and revealing things, right, many of these leaders don't tell great stories. So what we do at Future Shape, our investment firm, is we take those scientists and all the great minds and everything, and what do we surround them with? Marketing and communication people and storytellers to give them the confidence to tell a much broader story about the impacts of what they're creating and how big the global change can be with those technologies. Because usually they don't—those leaders who created those technologies, they don't really know how to communicate really well, and they don't feel very comfortable in how they speak.

是的，所以这很有趣，因为故事——我是故事的超级粉丝——你读过罗伯特·麦基的《故事》吗？你应该读读这本书。这是我 26 岁时读的。

Yeah, so it's interesting because stories—and I'm a huge fan of stories—have you ever read the book Story by Robert McKee? You should read this. And this is what I read when I was 26.

罗伯特·麦基的《故事》是一本关于剧本写作的书，讲述了剧本的原型类型——戏剧、喜剧，以及几千年来这些故事是如何被讲述的。它引人入胜，能给你带来洞察。这本书是为好莱坞和电影写的，但它对我们作为设计师、工程师和技术领导者来说非常有用。在当今这个时代，比如这个播客，我喜欢的是故事背后的人。所以故事的一部分就是人本身：幽默、戏剧、心碎、希望、情感。这不只是描绘一个完美无瑕的美丽故事。它关乎脆弱、做一个梦想家、过度承诺然后在现实中失败、改变主意、意识到全部，以及拥抱领导者或不同参与者个性的全部丰富性和复杂性。你不能只呈现一个美好的、永远像“欢乐谷”一样的产品视图。必须有这种人性作为一部分，人性的完整过山车，我认为公司很难接受这一点。也许这只是老派的做法。人们认为我们呈现一个假象，我们编造故事并讲述它。但在技术世界里，我们讲述故事的方式是“它更快、更小、电池寿命更长”——全是数字和指标。这能引起其他极客的共鸣。但能引起全世界共鸣的是情感。如果你能同时带来一个伟大的情感故事和一个伟大的理性故事，解释为什么应该这样做，那么你就带来了那种超能力、那种喜悦，一切就都融为一体了。

Story by Robert McKee is a book all about script writing, the prototypical types of scripts, drama, comedy, and how it's been shown over millennia how these stories are done. It's fascinating and gives you insight. It's written for Hollywood and movies, but it's incredibly useful for what we do as designers, engineers, and technology leaders. There's some aspect in this modern day, like this podcast, what I love is the humans behind the story too. So part of the story is the human beings: humor, drama, heartbreak, hope, emotions. It's not just about painting a beautiful story that's flawless. It's vulnerability, being a dreamer, over-promising and then failing in real life, changing your mind, realizing the whole of it, and embracing the full richness and complexity of the personality of the leader or the different people involved. You can't just present this beautiful, always Pleasantville view of a product. There has to be this humanity that's part of it, the full roller coaster of humanity, which I think has been very difficult for companies to embrace. Maybe it's just an old school way of doing things. People think we present a facade, we generate the story and tell the story. But especially in the technical world, we present the story as 'it's faster, it's smaller, it's longer battery life' — bits and numbers and metrics. That resonates with other geeks. What resonates with the planet is all emotions. If you can bring a great emotional story but with a great rational story at the same time, why you should do this, then you bring that superpower, that joy, and it all hangs together.

还有个人戏剧的一面，人性的一面。“这是我经历的痛苦，还记得那件事吗”。你显然是科技世界许多伟大发明背后非常知名的人，但你也是一个人。你有鲜明的个性——你的眼睛会发光，你沟通的方式就是你本人。有些人更内敛，有些人像埃隆·马斯克一样，天马行空、混乱。史蒂夫·乔布斯，有一种非常鲜明的——很难用语言形容，我可以诗意一点——但舞台上就有一种非常鲜明的个性。那不仅仅是产品，还有别的东西。你必须稍微展现那一点，也允许别人展现那一点，让他们做自己。

And there's personal drama too, the human side. Here's the pain I had, remember that thing. You're obviously this extremely well-known human being behind a lot of great inventions in the technology world, but you're also just a human being. You have a distinct personality that comes through — your eyes light up, the way you communicate is just you. Some people are more stoic, some are like Elon, all over the place, chaos. Steve Jobs, there's a very distinct — it's hard to put into words, I can be poetic — but there's a very distinct personality on stage. That's not just the product, that's something else too. And you have to reveal that a little bit and allow people to reveal that a little bit, just let them be themselves.

你看，为什么我觉得你的播客如此精彩？因为你就是你自己。你谈论自己，把你的情感带进来，而且你不去调节它。你就是你。这很真实，感觉对了。你穿你想穿的衣服，你说“这就是我，我全部的我”，你变得脆弱。做这样的播客比经营一家大公司容易得多，在大公司里，如果你说错话，很多人会感到痛苦。所以更容易害怕和小心。但尽管如此，同样的道理适用：真实和冒险是长期成功的唯一途径。

Well, look, why do I think your podcast is so amazing? Because you are yourself. You talk about yourself, you bring your emotions into it, and you don't modulate it. You are you. It comes through, it feels right. You dress the way you want to dress, you say 'this is me and this is all of me,' and you become vulnerable. It's much easier to do a podcast like that than run a very large company, where a lot of people would feel the pain if you say something stupid. So it's much easier to be afraid and be careful. But nevertheless, the same applies: authenticity and risk-taking is the only way to be successful in the long term.

让我在 iPod 上多停留一会儿，它是有史以来最伟大的设计之一。设计一个伟大的产品需要什么？我们可以看看 Nest、iPod、iPhone，以及你设计的许多伟大产品。看看那个变革性的产品，你能说说做出伟大设计需要什么，或者什么造就了伟大设计吗？

Let me just linger on the iPod, one of the great designs of all time. What does it take to design a great product? We can look at Nest, iPod, iPhone, many great things you designed. Looking at that one transformational thing, what can you say about what it takes to do a great design, or what makes a great design?

我们谈到了止痛药和它带来的喜悦。但还有幕后：团队，每个把它变为现实、把故事变为现实的人。如果你有一个伟大的故事，并且你知道为什么，那么你可以把它传达给那些正在做这件事的人，然后他们把自己的东西带进来。这对他们来说也变得有情感。这不仅仅是一份工作，这是一个使命。很多细节都源于这些早期的原型，那些你还没有完全成型的东西。可能完成了 80%，甚至 60%，但你已经能看到足够多的东西。然后你把这些好主意和“为什么”传达给团队，让他们感受到，让他们理解。然后他们把自己的最佳想法带到桌面上，你可以从中挑选。可能只是一个像素的改变，音频反馈方式的细微调整，或者手感上机械曲线的变化。因为每个人都把自己投入进去，试图感受这个东西。他们不只是做别人让他们做的事。如果你能把那个使命和“为什么”灌输给团队，不一定非得是大事。你会得到 10 倍的效果。每个人都以一种特殊的方式凝聚在一起，魔法就诞生了。你把爱投入进去，客户在另一端也能感受到爱。

Well, we talked about a painkiller and the joy that comes from it. But then there's the behind the scenes: the team, everyone who brings it to life, brings that story to life. If you have a great story and you know the why, then you can communicate it to those people working on it, and then they bring their own thing into it. It becomes emotional for them too. It's not just a job, it's a mission. And so many of the details are born out of these early prototypes, things you still haven't given full form to. It may be 80% done, or even 60% done, but you can see enough in there. Then you take those great ideas and give the whys to the team so they feel it, they can understand it. Then they bring their best and their ideas to the table, and you can select from those. It could be just a pixel change, a slight change in how you do the audio feedback, or maybe a curve on the mechanics of how it feels. Because everybody brings themselves trying to feel this thing. They're not just doing something someone told them to do. If you can instill that mission and that why into that team, it doesn't have to be big. You get a 10x effect. Everyone comes together in a special way, and the magic is created. You put the love into it, and the customer feels the love on the other side.

所以让团队接受愿景，接受“为什么”，现在他们感受到了所有的小细节。我们回想最初的 iPod 和之后的许多代，所有那些小细节都在里面。那是工程师和设计师的情感，那是他们的宝贝。就像骑士的挣扎：“这不对。”就像你说的，这里改改像素，那里改改形状，改变手感，改变材料，软件部分的一切，包装，包装上的文字，网站上的文字。总是在非常具体的细节问题和整体画面之间跳跃，整体感觉如何。总是来回跳跃：客户看起来怎么样？我们如何以最高效的方式实现它？因为很多事情你不知道，有些东西是临时拼凑的，也许是在最后拼凑的。它可能不是极客看了会惊叹“哦天哪，太美了”的最优雅的架构。有些可能只是临时拼凑的。

So making the team take in the vision, onto the why, now they feel all the little details. We think of the original iPod and all the many generations after, all those little details are in them. It's the emotion of the engineers and the designers that it's their baby. It's like a knight's struggle: 'this isn't right.' Like you said, changing little pixels here and there, changing the shape of things, changing the feel of things, the materials, everything on the software part, the packaging, the words on the packaging, the words on the website. Always jumping from the very specific detail problem to the big picture, how the thing feels overall. Always jumping back and forth: what does it look like to the customer? How are we going to implement it in the most efficient way? Because a lot of stuff you don't know, some of that stuff is hacked in, maybe hacked in at the end. It may not be the most beautiful architecture that a geek would look at and go 'oh my god, that's so beautiful.' Some of it could just be hacked in.

也许现在是个好时机来区分设计和工程。这种区别真的存在吗？它们是不同的学科，还是不是？

Maybe this is a good moment to draw a distinction between design and engineering. Does such a distinction even exist? Are these distinct disciplines or no?

我认为它们不仅仅是不同的，而是不同类型的设计。总有一种观念，认为设计师高高在上，一切像魔法一样流下来。其实不是。有电气设计、AI 设计师、数据科学家设计师——每个人都有设计。书里有一整章都在讲这个。并不是你登上山顶，下来就开悟了。每个人都有自己的设计形式和技艺。如果他们真的很优秀，他们本身就是艺术家。他们不只是工程师或设计师，他们是艺术家，有同理心，真正想做到最好。我合作过的很多最优秀的工程师，并不是那些技术上一丝不苟的人，而是艺术家。他们来自音乐或其他领域，他们能看到这一点。当你和非常僵化的工程师合作——‘只有这条路’——那不是我想共事的人。他们内心都有点艺术家气质。他们理解实用性，但没有‘就该这么做’的僵化。如果你在建造全新的、革命性的东西，我们谁都不是专家。如果你带着专家的心态——‘告诉我怎么做就行’——我不希望你加入团队。我们都在学习从未存在过的东西，必须带着脆弱和开放的心态接受新想法。所以你需要有初学者心态的人。不要以专家自居。

I don't think they're just distinct; I think they're different types of design. There's always this idea of the designer on the mount, and it all flows down like some magic. It's not. There are electrical designs, AI designers, data scientist designers—everybody has design. There's a chapter in the book all about that. It's not that you go to the mount and come down enlightened. Each person brings their form of design and their craft. If they're really good, they're artists in their own right. They're not just engineers or designers; they're artists, they're empathetic, they really want to bring their best. A lot of the best engineers I've worked with are not the technical ones who get it exactly right; they're the artists. They came from music or other things, and they see that. When you work with very rigid engineers—'this is the only way'—those are not the engineers I want to work with. They're all a bit artists at heart. They understand the practicalness, but they don't have the rigidity of 'this is the way it's done.' If you're building something new and revolutionary, none of us are experts at it. If you come with that expert mindset—'just tell me'—I don't want you on the team. We are all learning about something that has never existed before, and we have to bring vulnerability and openness to new ideas. So you want people with a beginner's mind. Don't come in as an expert.

有什么故事吗？

What's the story?

好吧，你问早期 iPod 有哪些风险。有几个大的。一个是把旋转介质放在口袋里——它随时可能掉落，磁头和硬盘介质离得太近，一撞就坏了。所以我们不得不设计特殊的测试和软件。但还有另一个：早期第一代 iPod 必须破解硬盘的 IDE 接口。我想，好吧，我们要用这个芯片通过 FireWire 把硬盘做成便携式硬盘。然后我们还有 MP3 播放器和用户界面。有时候它只是硬盘，有时候是 MP3 播放器，我必须在硬盘认为它在和什么通信之间热切换。所以我设计了这东西，拆开它，心想，我可能会搞砸 IDE。于是我去找苹果公司懂 IDE 的专家。那个大容量存储专家来了，我在白板上写：‘我们要这样做，这些是命令，这是热切换的方式。’他说：‘这永远行不通。’我说：‘好吧，让我给你看看这个原型——它已经运行好几天了。我只是想看看你能不能找出漏洞。’他看都没看就冲出了房间。

Okay, so you asked what were the risks on the early iPod. There were a few big ones. One was putting rotating media in your pocket—it could drop at any time, and the heads and hard drive media are so close that if it smacks, it's dead. So we had to design special tests and software for that. But there was another one: in the early days, the first generation iPod had to hack the IDE interface to the hard drives. I was like, okay, we're going to use this chip for hard drive to make a portable hard drive via FireWire. Then we had the MP3 player and user interface. There were times when it was just a hard drive and times when it was an MP3 player, and I had to hot-switch between what the hard drive thought it was talking to. So I designed this thing, tore it apart, and thought, maybe I'm going to screw up IDE. So I went to the expert at Apple who understood IDE. The mass storage specialist came over, and I put on the whiteboard: 'Here's how we're going to do this thing, here's the commands, and this is how it hot-switches.' He said, 'That's never going to work.' I said, 'Well, let me show you this prototype right here—it's been working for days. I just wanted to see if you could find any holes.' He didn't even look and just stormed out of the room.

我和专家有过很多类似的经历。比如这个荒谬的房间——我找了一个人，还有很多像他一样的，我给他们看了情况。声学问题。他们说：‘不，不，不，这太糟糕了，这行不通。反射，窗帘挡不住反射。’一堆术语。这和 IDE 的故事很像。我说：‘我只是想看看有没有大问题，容易解决的明显问题，以及我需要注意的重大漏洞。’而不是‘升级要花 10 万美元。’具体为了什么目的？为什么？

I've had a lot of experience like this with experts. For example, this ridiculous room—I had a person, and many like them, that I showed the situation. Acoustics. They said, 'No, no, no, this is horrible, this is not going to work. The reflection, the curtains are not going to stop the reflex.' There's a bunch of terminology. It's a similar situation to the IDE story. I said, 'I just need to see if there are major issues, low-hanging fruit that are fixable, and major holes I should be aware of.' Not 'that's $100,000 to upgrade.' For what exact purpose? Why?

没错。就是那个“为什么”——关注故事和内容，关注“为什么”。我在艺术领域也经历过，比如摄影、摄像、电影摄影。我和那些所谓的专家摄影师聊天，他们总是谈论设备——传感器、灯光。但你视觉上创造的故事感觉呢？一部没有特效但讲得很好的电影，和那些有很多动作和 CGI 的超级英雄电影之间的区别。CGI 超级英雄可以讲更好的故事，但首先你得有一个好故事。

Exactly. The why—focusing on the story and the content, the why. I've experienced that in artistic realms too, like photography, videography, cinematography. I talk to photographers who are experts, and it's always about the equipment—the sensors, the lighting. But what about the feeling of the story you create visually? The difference between a movie that's really well told without all the effects, versus some superhero movies with lots of action and CGI. CGI superhero can tell a better story, but you have to have a good story to begin with.

如果你专注于故事，你需要从故事开始。如果你请来专家，他们常常会对“为什么”有害。他们太擅长做“是什么”了。

If you're focused on the story, you need to start with a story. If you bring in experts, they can often be detrimental to the why. They're too good at doing the what.

你可以请专家来谈“为什么”。很多时候我们请来的是“是什么”的专家，他们只关注“是什么”——规格、参数、数字。但你真正需要的是关于“为什么”的人，理解我们想要达成什么，然后把“是什么”融入那个“为什么”。这就是为什么我非常喜欢与人合作的一个品质是面对特定问题时的谦逊。当你面对它时，基本上是‘我不知道怎么解决，但我们会想办法’，而不是‘哦，我以前解决过很多次了。’

You can bring in experts for why. Too many times we get experts for what, and they only focus on the what—the specs, feeds, numbers. But what you're really asking for is somebody about the why, understanding what we're trying to get done, and fitting the whats into that why. That's why one of the qualities I really enjoy in people to work with is humility for a particular problem. When you approach it, basically, 'I don't know how to solve this, but we're going to figure it out,' as opposed to 'Oh, I've solved this many times before.'

我完全知道该怎么做。在混乱面前保持谦逊，保持开放的心态，意识到这需要一种全新的做事方式。这是一个非常好的品质。你知道吗，你是硅谷历史上最迷人的人物之一，史蒂夫也是其中之一。所以这两个人曾一度合作共事。和史蒂夫·乔布斯一起工作是什么感觉？他的行为和个性中，哪一方面激发了你最好的一面？

I know exactly what to do. Humility before the chaos, sort of having an open mind that this is going to require a totally new way of doing things. It's a really nice quality to see. You know, you're one of the fascinating humans in the history of Silicon Valley. Steve is another one of those. So those two humans came together for a time to work together. What was it like working with Steve Jobs? What aspect of his behavior and personality, let's say, brought out the best in you?

推动你，真正地推动你。在细节上毫不留情，出于正确的理由挑战你。这不是霸凌，也不是贬低。他会批评工作，而不是评判人，至少不会当着他们的面或在群体面前那样做。我知道那真的是对细节的关注。当他做出决定时，你知道，当你做任何革命性产品的第一个版本时，有很多基于观点的决定。只有一两个人或三个人持有这些基于观点的决定，以及它们应该是什么。当你有这些观点并试图与团队合作实施这些决定时，你必须真正解释这些决定背后的原因。不要只是去做，而是要知道为什么这么做，这样你才能感受到自己是决定的一部分。你可以理解这个观点的不同答案之间的权衡，对吧？然后说这就是我们选择这个的原因，因为这对客户来说是这样，或者对整个故事来说是这样，等等。这样你就会感觉很好。因为很多时候，大多数人都想要数据驱动的决定，但对于第一版，你没有数据，对吧？也许在 B2B 中你可以有一点，因为你可以和客户交谈，但你不能对消费者产品的第一版这样做。B2B 业务与替代方案相比？B2C 第一版，好吧，这就是定义中心，是的，是的。

Pushing you, really pushing you. Relentless on the details, challenging you for the right reasons. It wasn't bullying, it wasn't demeaning. He would critique the work, not judge the person, at least not in front of them or inside of a group or anything like that. I know it was really that attention to detail. And when he would make a decision, you know, when you make the first version of anything revolutionary, there are a lot of opinion-based decisions. And there's only one or two people, three people who hold those opinion-based decisions and what they should be. And when you have those opinions and you're trying to work with the team to implement those decisions, you have to really tell the why of those decisions. Just don't go do it, but why it's there so you can feel part of that decision. You can understand what were the trade-offs of the different other answers to that opinion, right? And say this is the reason why we picked what we picked because it's this for the customer or this for the overall story, what have you. So that you felt really good. Because a lot of times, most people want a data-driven decision, but with v1s you don't get data, right? Maybe in a B2B you could a little bit because you can talk to customers, but you can't do that with a consumer property version one. B2B business versus what's the alternative? Business to consumer v1, okay, which is defining centers, yes, yes.

所以当你说数据驱动的决定与基于观点的决定时，就像直觉，你必须使用。你没有任何数据或任何以前的历史可以依赖来告诉你发生了什么，对吧？

So when you say data-driven decisions versus opinion-based decisions, so like gut, you have to use. You don't have any, you can't fall back on any data or any previous history to kind of inform you of what's going on, right?

所以如果你看看那些瘫痪、无法进行新创新和新产品的公司，那是因为他们试图把，这就是我在飞利浦看到的，他们试图把基于观点的决定变成数据驱动的决定，这样他们就不会丢掉工作。所以如果你看看管理咨询，管理咨询就是把这些基于观点的决定交给别人，让他们变成数据，然后回来，这样他们就可以责怪管理顾问，是的，当事情出错时，而不是说“不是我”，是的，对吧。当你需要讲述那个故事时，你必须明白，尤其是第一版，你需要能够清晰地表达那些基于观点的决定，并且你需要拥有它们。如果你在其中一些上失败了，你没有做对，那么你就拥有它们，修复它们，然后继续前进，对吧？iPod 的第一版并不完美，iPhone 的第一版也不完美。我们有很多基于观点的决定做错了。但当你经历这个过程时，因为你获得了更多数据，因为第二版你有了关于那些原始观点的数据，然后你能够在此基础上进行调整，对吧？而且你仍然有新的观点，因为这些是差异化因素，我们称之为差异化因素，是推动产品进化的东西。但在革命阶段，观点，观点，观点，没有数据。所以你们会有这样的讨论，你和史蒂夫以及整个团队都有观点。在那里你必须严厉。我不会说严厉，但你必须非常坚定，对吧？

And so if you look at most companies who are paralyzed and cannot make new innovations and new products, it's because they're trying to turn, and this is what I saw at Philips, they're trying to turn opinion-based decisions into data-driven decisions so they don't lose their jobs. So if you look at management consulting, management consulting is all about taking those opinion-based decisions, giving them to someone else to turn into data that comes back to them and says they can blame the management consultants, yeah, when something goes wrong as opposed to it wasn't me, yeah, right. When you need to have to tell that story, you have to understand that especially v1, you need to be able to articulate those opinion-based decisions and you need to own them. And if you fail with some of them, you didn't get it right, you then own them and fix them and move on, right? Version one of the iPod wasn't perfect, version one of the iPhone wasn't perfect. We got a lot of opinion-based decisions wrong. But as you go through it, because you got more data, because v2 you had data on those original opinions, and then you were able to then modulate off of that, right? And you still have new opinions because those are differentiators that we call differentiators, the things that move the product forward in its evolution. But at the revolution stage, opinions, opinions, opinions, no data. And so you have this discussion, you and Steve and the whole team with opinions. And there you have to be harsh. I wouldn't say harsh, but you have to be very determined, right?

你知道，iPhone 上有两个真正的基于观点的决定。一个是键盘：我们应该用硬件键盘还是虚拟键盘？黑莓是当时排名第一的生产力消息设备。它被称为“CrackBerry”是有原因的，因为人们喜欢它，因为它打字方便，他们可以完成工作。但是当你说我们要从那个转变时，市场上每个人都在谈论那个，你说我们要转向虚拟键盘，而且它不会像硬件键盘那样好用，这是一个基于观点的决定，对吧？因为数据告诉你，是的，所有最好的销售都在这里。天哪，这需要勇气。但你必须从不同的角度来看待它。这就是我学会理解这一点的方式，因为我以前构建过虚拟键盘，我知道它们的好坏，对吧？但他说，看，那些是生产力设备。我们正在制造我们的设备，它源于娱乐设备和生产力。对吧？我们需要显示全屏视频。我们将在这里有应用，不是应用，而是我们的应用，苹果的应用，因为当时还没有 App Store，它们将占据整个屏幕。你想要一个全屏的网页浏览器。你不想要一个设备的一半都是键盘。也许你不需要在每个实例中都使用那个键盘。所以我们希望屏幕的那部分根据你当时可能需要的工具而改变。也许它只是全屏视图，对吧？所以你必须去理解这是一种不同类型的设备。仅仅因为那个是那个，并且它因为那个原因而成功，黑莓的键盘，那不是你将用这个设备做的唯一事情。因为人们只做消息和也许几个电话，对吧？这将是更多的东西。它将是一个娱乐网页浏览设备。所以你希望那些工具消失。但它不会像硬件键盘那样好。所以那是一个观点。但让我给你另一个在发货前被推翻的基于观点的决定。史蒂夫说：“没有 SIM 卡槽。我不想要任何插槽。我们要让它非常纯粹。”乔尼说：“当然，没有插槽，乔尼。”我们都环顾四周说：“那行不通。你不能那样做。”“嗯，为什么？”然后他总是，这就是史蒂夫的魔力，当你说不，那行不通时，你会说：“嗯，为什么 Verizon 没有任何 SIM 卡槽？”对吧？他们展示了你可以用那些限制做一部手机。你就像：“好吧，我们开始吧。”所以几天后我们回来，产品营销、客户之声、工程，我们都带着所有数据回来，显示有多少数据网络和移动网络需要 SIM 卡，有多少不需要，以及趋势是什么。我们展示了数据，那杀死了，或者抱歉，带回了原始 iPhone 上的 SIM 卡槽。因为我们就像，因为他就像：“我们要告诉 AT&T 不要使用 SIM 卡，对吧？我们只是要告诉他们以不同的方式做。”对吧？但我们就像：“如果我们想让这个东西走向任何地方……”

You know, there are two real opinion-based decisions that happened on the iPhone. One was the keyboard: should we have a hardware keyboard or should we have a virtual keyboard? The BlackBerry was the number one productivity messaging device of its time. It was called a CrackBerry for a reason, because people loved it because it had, it was easy to type and they could get their work done. But when you're saying we're going to move from that, everyone's talking about that in the market and you say we're going to move to a virtual keyboard and it's not going to work as well as the hardware keyboard, that's an opinion-based decision, right? Because the data is telling you, yeah, all the best sales are over here. God, that takes guts. But you have to look at it from a different point of view. And this is how I learned to come to understand this, because I had been building virtual keyboards before and I knew the goodness and the badness in them, right? But he was like, look, those are productivity devices. We're making ours born out of an entertainment device and productivity. Right? We need to show full-screen videos. We are going to have apps here, not apps but our apps, the Apple apps, because there were no App Store yet, are going to take over the whole screen. You want a full-screen web browser. You don't want one that's like half of the device is just a keyboard. Maybe you don't need that keyboard in every instance. So we want that part of the screen to change based on the tool you may need at the time. And maybe it's just full view, right? So you have to go and understand it's a different type of device. Just because that's that and it's successful for that reason, the CrackBerry for the keyboard, that's not the only thing you're going to do with this device. Because people only did messaging and maybe a few phone calls, right? This was going to be so much more. It was going to be an entertainment web browsing device. So you wanted those tools to go away. But it wouldn't be as good as the hardware keyboard. So that's an opinion. But let me give you another opinion-based decision that got turned around before it shipped. Steve said, "No SIM slot. I don't want any slots. We're going to make it very pure." Johnny was like, "Of course, no slots, Johnny." And we all looked around and go, "That doesn't work. You can't do that." "Well, why?" And then he would always, and this was the magic of Steve, like when you said no that doesn't work, you go, "Well, why does Verizon not have any SIM slots?" Right? They showed that you can do a mobile phone with those limits. You're like, "Okay, here we go." And so a few days later we come back with, and so product marketing, voice of the customer, engineering, we all come back with all the data showing how many data networks and mobile networks required SIM cards versus did not and what the trends were. And we showed the data and that killed the, or excuse me, brought back the SIM slot on the original iPhone. Because we're like, because he was just like, "We're going to tell AT&T to not use a SIM, yeah right? We're going to just tell them to do it differently." Right? But we were like, "If we want this thing to go anywhere..."

在全球范围内，你想把这种摩擦加进去。人们会从一个地方搬到另一个地方，因为价格等原因，他们会有不同的 SIM 卡。我们必须展示所有这些数据，然后那个基于意见的决定变成了基于数据的决定，SIM 卡槽显然就出现了。所以这两者同时存在，对吧？意见可以成立，数据也可以成立。当数据存在时，数据可以压倒意见。对于第一版来说，但归根结底，你不知道正确答案是什么。所以取消 SIM 卡槽可能是正确的决定；我们不会知道，因为如果那是决定，那么就像苹果历史上多次发生的那样，你基本上改变了技术发展的潮流。

Around the world you want to put that friction in. People are going to move from place to place, they have different SIMs because of the prices and all that stuff. We had to show all of that data, and then that opinion-based decision got turned into a data-driven decision, and the SIM slot obviously showed up. So those are two very... at the very same time, yeah? Right, opinion can hold, and so can data. Data can overrule opinion when data does exist. For a V1, but at the end of the day, you don't know what the right answer is. So doing no SIM card slot may have been the right decision; we won't know because maybe if that was the decision, then like many times throughout Apple's history, you basically changed the tide of how technology is done.

是的，绝对如此。你知道，你永远不知道。苹果开创了 Wi-Fi；人们不明白。Wi-Fi 就是从那里来的。2001 年还没有 Wi-Fi。苹果开创了 Wi-Fi，然后其他所有人都跟进了。如果你看看我们现在的发展方向，我们正在走向没有 SIM 卡槽的手机，因为我们有 eSIM，对吧？现在 SIM 卡槽正在成为遗留物。那个遗留端口大概会在六到十年内消失。它肯定会消失，我很确定，因为这对运营商来说容易得多；他们不需要有实体东西去分发……对吧。所以现在只是早期阶段，但它会发生，它会走自己的路。它会逐渐消失，但这需要时间。你当时就是做不到。所以时机在这里至关重要。但归根结底，这是意见，而这就是天才所在。有时数据告诉你一件事，但数据归根结底代表的是过去。没错。而未来可能与过去不同，对吧？有时过去有智慧，有时它实际上代表了一些应该被克服的东西。进步看起来就是把那些东西抛在脑后。

Yeah, absolutely. You know, you never know. Apple started Wi-Fi; people don't understand. Wi-Fi came out of there. There was no Wi-Fi in 2001. Apple started Wi-Fi, and then everyone else got on board. If you look at where we're going now, we're going to phones without SIM slots because we have eSIMs, right? And now the SIM slot is becoming legacy. That legacy port will probably be gone by six, maybe ten years. It'll be gone, I'm pretty sure of that, because it's so much easier for carriers; they don't have to have physical things to go out and... right. So right now it's just the early days, but it will happen, and it will go its way. It'll fall away, but it will take time. You just couldn't do it back then. So timing is essential here. But at the end of the day, it's opinions, and that's where the genius is. Sometimes the data tells you one thing, but the data at the end of the day does represent the past. Exactly. And the future may be different than the past, right? Sometimes there's wisdom in the past, and sometimes it's actually representative of something that should be overcome. And progress looks like leaving that stuff behind.

就像耳机插孔，对吧？我的意思是，当不同的人都在取消耳机插孔时，我真想偷听那些讨论。我们有过那种讨论。哦，那几乎是每年都会发生的讨论。

Like the headphone jack, right? I mean, when different folks were getting rid of the headphone jack, boy, I would love to be a fly on the wall of those discussions. We had that. Oh, that was a discussion that happened almost every year.

是的，那是每年都会讨论的问题：“我们该取消 iPod 上的耳机插孔吗？” 是的，没错。“无线耳机什么时候会出现？” 什么？没错。而花了多年时间才构建出所有正确的协议、芯片以及所有那些东西，才造就了今天的 AirPods 体验。要有信心，因为蓝牙不错，但它不像苹果的风格。所以我们得制造自己的芯片，得打造自己的软件栈。现在我们有了取消耳机插孔的信心，并且实际上让你为你的 iPhone 多付 200 美元，而之前你付的钱只是因为有个耳机插孔。现在我们增加了收入，给了用户新的体验，对吧？然后，你知道，这就像魔法一样。现在世界已经转变，每个人都转向了那个，对吧？但这花了多年时间理解问题、开发技术，而不是匆忙推向市场得到一个半成品体验，而是把它做对、完善，然后发货。而且只有在那样之后，大概经过了四五年的开发，就像 M1 处理器一样，对吧？那是从 2008 年开始的工作，对吧？不断打磨、打磨、打磨，然后说：“好了，现在我们有了信心。我们正在为所有 iPhone、iPod、iPad 等制造自己的芯片。现在我们要转向 Mac，确保我们拥有最好的处理器。” 对吧？不仅仅是我们拥有最好的集成设计团队，然后说我们要……你知道，然后超越所有人，确保软件和硬件同时设计，确保内核以及所有那些东西都能达到最高效率，然后把它推出来，然后感觉天衣无缝。这就是魔法。据我所知，除非你是在真正深奥的驱动程序之类的东西里，否则它就能正常工作。这就是魔法。就像过渡连个减速带都没有，连路上的裂缝都没有。

Yeah, that was an every year: 'Should we get rid of headphone jacks on the iPod?' Yeah, right. 'When are wireless headsets going to happen?' What? Right. And it took years to build all the right protocols, the chips, all those things to make the experience that is the AirPods today. To have the confidence, because Bluetooth was good, but it wasn't Apple-like. So it's like we got to make our own chips, we got to make our own software stacks. Now we have the confidence to remove the headphone jack and actually make you pay $200 more for your iPhone that you were just paying because it's a headphone jack. Now we've grown our revenue, we've given a new experience to the user, right? And ta-da, you know, it's just magic. And now the world's transformed to everyone moving to that, right? But it took years to understand the problem, develop the technology, and not just rush it to market to get a half experience, but to get it right and refine it, then ship it. And only then, after it was probably four or five years in development, just like the M1 processor, right? That was a work from 2008, right? Grinding away, grinding away, grinding away, then saying, 'Okay, now we have the confidence. We're doing our own silicon for all the iPhones and iPods and iPads and such. Now we're going to turn to the Mac and make sure we have the best processor.' Right? Not just that we have the best integrated design team, and then saying we're going to... you know, and then besting everyone, making sure the software and the hardware are designed at the same time, making sure the kernels, all those things, are going to use the best efficiency, and then popping it out, and then it feels seamless. It's magic. There were no... as far as I could tell, unless you were in real esoteric drivers or something like that, it just worked. It was magic. Like the transition was not even a speed bump, it was not even a crack in the road.

也许众所周知，史蒂夫有点脾气。史蒂夫·乔布斯，你觉得他在这方面的人格在塑造这些基于意见的想法过程中是建设性的还是破坏性的？

Perhaps famously, Steve had a bit of a temper. Steve Jobs, would you say his particular personality in this aspect was constructive or destructive in the process of shaping these opinion-based ideas?

在《Build》一书中，我写了一章叫“是的，而且”。你很好地阐述了……也许你可以谈谈建设性和破坏性的“好吧”。所以我发现实际上有两种划分，非常根本的划分。那就是再次回到“为什么”。为什么我觉得这个人是一个……好吧，他们可能不是。我觉得这个人……他们是受自我驱动，还是受使命驱动，他们试图做的是为了服务于其他事情？对吧。有时这些界限可能模糊，但通常很清楚是自我驱动。很明显他们只是想往上爬，把别人推下去，把别人推到一边。我想我们曾经看到一位总统在舞台上这样做过，你知道，“我就是我，我就是……你知道，我就是那个人，”对吧？我要通过推开所有人、做坏事或别的什么来证明这一点，要么是消极攻击，要么是积极攻击。但他们是为了自己。还有另一种人，他们对细节如此关注且毫不松懈，他们试图为客户或为服务他们的使命做正确的事情，他们想确保我们完成这些事情，对吧？他们真的很在乎。他们不会微观管理所有细节，但他们微观管理那些客户以某种方式接触到的细节。与那些毫不松懈、推动你、可能让你沮丧的人一起工作的人，很多时候会条件反射地说：“他们……别烦我。” 你是对的，你在保护你的自我，因为发生的事情是那个人通常把你推到了你的边界之外。他们看到了我们可以做或者你可以做的事情，而你出于某种原因不想做，你对此没有信心，你就像，“我不想多花时间，”而他们说，“不，我们需要完成这个，”并推动你。好吧。所以当我们遇到这些领域时，这不仅仅是单对单。可能是史蒂夫对抗整个团队，说：“我们需要在 iPhone 正面用玻璃而不是塑料，我们要这样做。” 我们就像，“天哪，你知道……” 然后我们做了，他推动我们，因为他不知道所有细节，但他能看出我们心里在想，“是的，我们可能……是的，我们可能可以，但是，伙计，这真的让我们面临风险。” 我们向他列出了风险，他说：“我愿意承担这些风险。我们就这么做。” 我们说：“我们可能会晚三个月。” 他说：“这太重要了，我们必须按时完成。” 你知道？但一直都是推、推、推。这让我想起孩子成长和我成长的过程，你知道，当你的父母……

In Build, I write a chapter called 'Yes, And.' You lay out beautifully the types of... and maybe you could speak to the constructive and the destructive types of 'okay.' So there's really two delineations that I've found, real fundamental ones. And that is again the 'why.' Why do I feel this person is an... okay, they might not be. I feel this is a person who's... are they motivated by their ego, or are they motivated by their mission, something they're trying to do that's in service of something else? Right. Sometimes those lines can be blurry, but it's usually pretty clear when it's ego motivated. It's clear they're just trying to get up in the ranks, push people down, shove people aside. I think we saw a president do that on a stage once, you know, 'I'm me and I'm the... you know, I'm the guy,' right? And I'm gonna prove it by pushing everyone away and being nefarious or what have you, either passive-aggressive or aggressively aggressive. But they're doing it about themselves. There's another one, which is someone who's so attentive to detail and unrelenting that they're trying to get the right things for the customer or in service of their mission, and they want to make sure we fulfill those things, right? And they really care. They don't micromanage all the details, but they micromanage the details where the customer touches the customer in some way. People who work with those types of people who are unrelenting and push you and might make you upset, a lot of times it's a knee-jerk reaction to go, 'They are... get off my back.' You're right, and you're protecting your ego because what's happening is that person is usually pushing you beyond your boundaries. They see something that we can do or you can do that you're just either not wanting to do for whatever reason, you're not confident in that, you're like, 'I don't want to take the extra time,' and saying, 'No, we need to get that done,' and pushing you. Okay. And so when we came to those areas, it wasn't just a one-on-one. It could be Steve against the team, going, 'We need glass instead of plastic on the front face of the iPhone, and we're going to do this.' And we're like, 'God, you know...' And so we did it, and he pushed us because he didn't know all the details, but he could see in our minds that we're like, 'Yeah, we could probably... yeah, we could probably, but man, it's really putting us at risk.' And we laid out the risks for him, and he's like, 'I'm willing to take those risks. We'll do that.' We're like, 'We might be three months late.' He's like, 'This is so important, we need to stay on time.' You know? But it would be all the time push, push, push. It reminds me of like kids growing up and me as growing up, you know, when your parents...

他们推你，让你超越自己的边界、个人边界，然后你会想，‘该死的，我很难过’，你知道的。但他们这么做是出于正确的理由。现在我们要明白，这不是霸凌，不是关于霸凌，也不是贬低。要么是把你推到任务中需要完成的另一部分，要么是批评你的工作，而不是评判你这个人。

Push you to make you grow beyond your boundaries, your personal boundaries, and you're like, 'God damn it, I'm sad,' you know. But they do it for the right reasons. Now let's see, it's not bullying, it's not about bullying, it's not about demeaning. It's about either pushing you to another part of the mission that needs to get done, or it's about critiquing your work but not judging you.

是的，这方面有很多可说的。首先，这很迷人，真的很迷人，而且你描绘了一幅很好的画面。但确实感觉有时存在灰色地带，这就是为什么这一切变得非常复杂。所以关于 iPhone 的玻璃，我有一个问题：Steve 正确有多重要？因为我可以从两边论证。从某种意义上说，仅仅拥有强烈的愿景和观点就已经能让每个人成长，即使最终证明是错的。只要你坚持自己的立场，你知道，拿破仑冬天入侵俄罗斯——那不会有好结果，对吧？这不是个好主意，但我坚持这么做，一旦你决定了，就全力以赴。然后即使整个团队都知道这是错误的决定，只要坚持下去，挺过去，你会从痛苦中学习。每个人都会学习。所以这是一方面。另一方面，可能是愿景驱动变得越来越重要。如果他们有通过这个过程建立团队、做出正确决策的记录，他们就不能——他们不被允许成为——他们处于罕见的高度，没人能挑战他们，对吧？

Yes, well, there's a lot to say there. So one, uh, it's fascinating, it's really is fascinating, and you laid out a very nice picture. But it does feel like there's sometimes gray areas, which is why it makes all this very complicated. So one question I have for you in terms of glass on the iPhone: how important is it that Steve is right? Because I could argue each side. It seems like in one sense, just having a strong vision and opinion is already going to make everybody grow, even if it turns out to be wrong. As long as you are sort of standing your ground, you know, Napoleon invading Russia in the winter — it's just not gonna be good, right? This is not a good idea, but I'm gonna hold, do that, and then once you decide, you go all in. And then from that, even if the whole team knows it's the wrong decision, just sticking by it, powering through, you will learn through the pain of it. Like everybody will learn. So that's one side. The other is maybe the vision-driven gets to be more and more of a thing. If they have a track record of through that process having built people up, having made the correct decisions, they can't — they're not allowed to be an — they're in rare air and no one can challenge them, right?

Steve 从来不是那样。那是很棒的一点。他从来不是不可挑战的。你可以挑战他。现在，从塑料到玻璃的故事就是一个完美的例子。在项目初期，远在我们开始之前，我们一直有这些关于塑料前面板的 iPod 之类的东西，这些划痕等等。所以我们说，‘我们是要用玻璃还是塑料作为显示屏的盖板？’因为显示屏下面是玻璃。我们反复争论玻璃和塑料，然后最终一致决定用塑料。好吧，最初的决定是塑料。原因是：我们不想犯错。玻璃会碎，你知道，人们总是摔东西。所以我们不想有一个易碎的设备，因为你会比音乐播放器更频繁地使用它，对吧？你会拿着它，放进口袋，等等。所以我们选择了塑料。当产品在 2007 年 Macworld 上首次展示时，那就是塑料的。当时我们刚好有足够多的设备在市场上，开始看到塑料上有轻微划痕。那些还没有拿到设备的评测人员——因为它被放在玻璃后面——如果你记得 2007 年，那款‘耶稣手机’出现了，没人能碰它。你只能在一个漂亮的博物馆品质的盒子里看它，就像它来自未来或过去。就像，‘哦’，你只能看着，仅此而已。但后来人们说，‘那是什么屏幕？上面覆盖着什么？’你知道，那些懂行的评测人员，他们说，‘哦，是塑料的’，然后他们就说，‘真的吗？’所以那里有足够的疑虑。然后当我们开始做的时候，Steve 改变了问题的参照系，或者说改变了客户会怎么想的结果。他说，‘如果我们用塑料设计，它一直在他们口袋里，被硬币轻微划伤，或被钥匙之类的东西划伤，那是我们需要解决的设计问题。那是我们的错。如果他们摔了它，甚至轻轻摔了一下，它裂了，那是客户的错。他们抱怨的可能性要低得多。是的，他们会抱怨，但他们是失败的一部分。’

Steve was never that. That's the great thing. He was never unchallengeable. You could challenge him. Now, the plastic to glass story is a perfect example of this. So at the beginning of the project, well before we were going, we had always had these things about, you know, plastic front iPods, these kinds of things, these scratches and all that stuff. So we said, 'Are we going to have a glass or a plastic display cover for the display?' Because the display was glass underneath it. We argued back and forth about glass versus plastic, and then we all landed together on plastic. Okay, the original decision was plastic. And the reasons were: okay, we don't want to make a mistake. Glass can break, you know, people drop them all the time. So we don't want to have a fragile device because you're going to be using it even more than a music player, right? And you're going to be holding it, putting it in your pocket, and all that stuff. So we went down the road with plastic. When the product was shown at Macworld in 2007, the first time, that was plastic. We had just enough of them in the field at the time we started to start seeing light scratches on the plastic. Reviewers who didn't have the device yet — because it was behind glass — if you remember 2007, the Jesus phone comes up and no one could even touch them. You could just look at it in this beautiful museum-quality box, like it came from the future or whatever, the past. It was like, 'Oh,' and you just looked, and that was all you got. But then people said, 'Well, what screen is that? What covers on that?' You know, reviewers who knew better, you know, and they're like, 'Oh, it's plastic,' and they were like, 'Really?' And so there was enough of a doubt there. And then when we started to do it, and then Steve changed the frame of reference of the question, or of the result of what the customer would think. And he was like, 'If we designed it with plastic and it's in their pocket all the time and it gets scratched by coins, lightly scratched, or by keys or something like that, that is a design problem we need to fix. That was our bad. If they go off and drop it, or even slightly drop it, and it cracks, it's the customer's fault. And they have much lower — they have less likelihood to complain. Yes, they'll complain, but they're part of that failure.'

哦，这太迷人了。而且这确实有道理，对吧？因为那样他们就成了失败的一部分，而设计——他们没有做错任何事，它只是放在口袋里，你知道，它被划伤了，那是正常使用。异常使用是摔落。然后我们想，‘哦，现在我们明白了。’所以我们都转向了那种心态。当你以那种方式框定问题和解决方案，而不是我们最初都同意的塑料方案时。然后他对此毫不妥协，但我们都转变了，我们改变了心态，我们理解了为什么，我们团结在一起。然后到六月底，那真是疯狂，机械产品设计团队、采购、我们所有人，还有合作伙伴康宁，都齐心协力实现了它，因为那是正确的理由，对吧？

Oh, that's fascinating. And then there's truth to that, right? Because then they were part of why it failed, whereas the design — they didn't do anything wrong, it was just sitting in their pocket and it's, you know, it's scratching, and that's normal use. Abnormal use has been dropped. And we're like, 'Oh, now we get it.' And so we all moved to that mindset. When you framed the problem and the solution in that way versus the original framing where we all landed on plastic. So then he was unrelenting on that, but we all had moved and we have moved mindset and we understood the why and we marshaled together. And then by the end of June, and it was crazy, the mechanical product design teams, sourcing, all of us, all the partner Corning pulled together to make that happen because it was the right reason, right?

所以你看这些故事，你听到的只是高层传闻的要点，但通常事情不是那样发生的。比如一个领导者——那不是 Steve 的方式。我见过一些领导者，他们只是强压，你知道，对团队没有真正的同理心，也不理解为什么，只是‘这就是我想要的，对吧？我是最高领袖。’那不是那样的。他只是有非常强烈的意见，非常强烈的意见，但它是可挑战的。它是可挑战的。如果你带着正确的东西来，你知道，你可以调整它。但你必须带着团队来。不能只是你一个人，你必须成为一个团队，带着数据，去克服，因为那是一个非常强烈的意见。而且还有性格上的个人怪癖，就像你说的，好日子、坏日子等等。所以还有你说的三个选项——你注意到第三个选项总是会被选中的。当然，那些特质。这又引出了另一件事。好吧，你说‘挑战想法，而不是人。’你知道，我是一个有脾气的人，我在团队里会用一些粗俗的语言等等。我在私人生活中更冷静等等。但当我真的对工程团队充满热情时，我被叫过——我的意思是，我清楚地意识到你经常越界。有层次，对吧？

So you look at these stories and you hear just the top-line rumors of the takeaways, but that's not usually how it all happened. Like one leader was — that's not how Steve was. Now I've seen leaders who were just pounding, you know, and just had no real empathy for the team and understanding the why, and it's just, 'It is the way I want it, right? I am the supreme leader.' That wasn't like that. He just had a very strong opinion, a very strong opinion, but it was challengeable. It was challengeable. And if you came with the right thing, you know, you could modulate that. But you had to come with a team. It couldn't just be you, and you had to become a team and data and to overcome because it was a very strong opinion. And there's personal quirks of character, like you said, good days, bad days, and so on. So there's also the three options you said — you notice that the third option is always going to be the one that's picked. Sure, those kinds of idiosyncrasies. And that brings up another thing. Okay, you said 'challenge the idea, not the person.' You know, I'm somebody who has a temper, I use colorful language and so on when I'm on teams. I work in my private life, I'm much calmer and so on. But I get — when I get really passionate with engineering teams, and I've been called — I mean, I am distinctly aware that you cross lines often. There's like levels, right?

当然。你知道，你可以对我说很多话。你可以骂人，你可以说一些听起来很个人化的话，比如‘Lex，有时候我觉得你是地球上最笨的人’之类的。我不知道，这听起来很个人化，对吧？但我不会把它当成针对个人的。我理解说的是什么。我也注意到其他人会更个人化地看待事情。这关系到团队，要弄清楚，好吧，谁会个人化地看待某些词语，谁不会。你必须知道这一点——这就是造就伟大教练、伟大领导者、导师的原因。你必须把所有这些都考虑进去。但只是作为一个……

Sure. You know, you could say a lot of stuff to me. You could swear, you could say stuff that sounds personal, like, 'Lex, sometimes I think you're the dumbest human on the face of the earth,' or something. I don't know, this sounds very personal, right? But I'm not going to take that personally. I understand what's being said. And I've also noticed that there are other people that take stuff more personally. This has to do with teams and figuring out like, okay, who's going to take certain words personally or not. And you have to know that — that's what makes a great coach, a great leader, a mentor. You have to factor all that in. But there's something about just being an...

充满激情和干劲，有时确实会越界。我不知道该怎么处理，因为这似乎是工作的一部分。似乎你不可能拥有一个完美优化的……

Being passionate and really driven, that sometimes you do cross lines. And that's... I don't know what to do with that because it feels like it comes with the territory. It seems like you can't just have a perfectly optimized...

不，不，绝对不是。我们是人类。我们没有一个程序让每个人都以同样的方式对给定的刺激做出同样的反应。

No, no, absolutely not. We're humans. We don't have a program where everyone's programmed the same way to react the same way to a given stimulus.

你说过“你是地球上最笨的人”之类的话。

You said, 'Oh, you're the dumbest human on earth' or whatever.

我绝不会那么说，绝对不。如果有人对我说，或者我看到别人对团队里的另一个人说，绝对不行。那是不允许的，因为那是在评判一个人。你可能会情绪激动，你可以情绪激动，你可以用语调表达，但试图贴标签、给人贴标签，那是不允许的。所以如果你让这种文化发生，它就会变得……你知道，有时是开玩笑，但必须非常谨慎，而且那两个人必须有非常好的工作关系。但除此之外，抱歉，那会变得……你可以说是有毒的，你不会加入那些东西。但你可以用其他各种方式来表达，而不说那些话，因为那些对这类语言有反应、没有防护的人，他们可能没有你那样的自信水平，你可以一笑置之，但这对团队来说可能是非常有害的，因为人们会模仿，然后他们会觉得“哦，那就是正确的做法”。你必须扼杀它，你必须成为你想展示给团队的那种改变或榜样。

I would never say that, absolutely never. And if someone said that to me, or I saw someone else say that to another person on the team, absolutely not. That is not allowed, because that's judging someone. You may be heated, and you can get heated, and you can say it in your intonation, but to then try to put a label on it and put a label on a person, that is not allowed. So if you let that kind of culture happen, and it becomes somewhat... you know, sometimes it's in jest, it has to be very much ingested, and those two people have to have a really good working relationship. But other than that, I'm sorry, it's going to be a lot more... you could say septic in that way, that you're not going to add that stuff in. But you can do it with all other types of ways without saying that, because then people who do react to that kind of language and don't have those shields, because they might not have that same confidence level that you do, and you can just brush it off, you can... that can be very cancerous in a team, because people then meme that and then they see, 'Oh, that's the right way to be.' You got to snuff that out, and you got to be that change or that model that you want to show the team.

是的，没错。即使它不影响我，它也会影响到足够多的优秀人才，而这不应该成为文化的一部分。没错。其他人看到这种情况发生，就会想“哦，我想这是可以接受的”。就像职场政治，是可以接受还是不可以？我只要看到就会指出来，当着所有人的面，因为那只是另一种自我驱动的事情。作为领导者，你必须为你的组织定下基调，以及它如何反映在世界上，你必须坚持这一点。你可以有偏离的时候，但你必须回头说“对不起”。你必须道歉、修复，并说“那天我没有成为我想成为的人。我真的很抱歉。”即使在团队面前，也要有那种谦逊，说“我们都是人，仅仅因为我是领导者并不意味着我不会犯错”。所以要有自我意识，道歉。这也是文化的一部分。

Yes, it's true. Even if it doesn't affect me, it's going to affect a significant enough fraction of brilliant people where that shouldn't be part of the culture. Exactly. And other people see that happen and then think, 'Oh, I guess that's acceptable.' Just like politics in the workplace, is that acceptable or not? I call it out exactly when I see it, in front of everyone, because it's just another ego-driven thing. You have to set the tone as a leader for what you want your organization to be and how it gets reflected in the world, and you have to uphold that. You can have an excursion outside of that, but you have to go back and say, 'I'm sorry.' You have to apologize, heal, and say, 'I was not the person I wanted to be that day. I'm really sorry.' Even in front of the team, have that humility and say, 'We're all human here, and just because I'm the leader doesn't mean I don't make mistakes.' So have the self-awareness, apologize. That's also part of the culture.

作为领导者和设计师，你和史蒂夫有什么不同？你谈到过是什么让你变得更强，那就是他能够挑战你，能够推动你发挥出最佳水平。

How are you different from Steve as a leader and designer? You've spoken about what made you stronger, which is he was able to challenge, he was able to push you to bring out the best.

嗯，我是从技术角度出发的，对吧？深层技术、软件、硬件、系统思维、实现，所有这些。所以我有不同的倾向。他想成为工程师，开始过，但实际上他在其他方面更擅长：讲故事、与人打交道、成为客户的声音，以及在某种程度上成为产品营销者，对吧？我们谈过这个。我逐渐成长为产品营销和市场营销；他则是从另一个方向来的，对吧？而且从未真正深入技术。所以这是两种不同的思维方式。没有谁更好或更差，就是这样。而且需要各种类型的人才能做出伟大的设计。

Well, I come from the technical angle, right? Deep technology, software, hardware, systems thinking, implementation, all that stuff. So I have a different bent. He wanted to be an engineer, started, but really he was much better at all the other things: the storytelling, the interfacing, and being the voice of the customer, and being that product marketer in a way, right? That we talked about. I grew into being the product marketing and marketing; he came really from the other way, right? And never got really deep technically. So that's two different mindsets. No one is better or worse, it's just how it is. And it takes all kinds to do great designs.

它是否以不同的方式表现出来，仅仅是因为你们来自不同的背景？

Did it manifest itself differently, just the fact that you came from those different places?

当然。比如关于 iPhone 玻璃的讨论，可能就有不同的味道。当你开始深入技术细节，达到第三阶技术细节时，他再也无法争辩了。他会想，“好吧，在某个点上，我赢不了这场战争。”他很早就学到了这一点，因为他不喜欢 Macintosh 主板（PCB）的布局方式。他希望内外都美观。他说，“为什么所有这些线都这样走？为什么没有对称性？我们必须让内部也美观。”甚至电路板上的走线也必须看起来有某种方式。所以团队做了他们知道能用的板子，然后做了史蒂夫想要的那种板子，但那个不工作。然后史蒂夫立刻明白了，“在某个点上，不要微观管理每一个细节。有些事情他了解得不够。”所以他就不再插手了。但那是他非常坚持的一个例子，那是他的意见。所以他们说，“好吧，我们做一个数据驱动的决定。我们两个都做，我给你看结果。”从那以后，他就不再介入那些细节了。所以从那里，你可以有一个很好的挑战，因为你可以得到那些数据，然后说，“我们不能那样做，让我告诉你为什么，”或者“我们可以那样做，”然后史蒂夫会说，“你不能那样做，”而你会说，“哦，我们可以，让我演示给你看。”所以有些时候，你把一些他认为不可能存在的东西变成了现实。所以正是那种创造性的紧张和互动，才如此成功。

Absolutely. Like the discussion about glass on the iPhone probably had a different flavor to it. When you started getting into the technical details enough, you're getting the third-order technical details, and he can't argue with that anymore. He's like, 'Okay, at some point, I can't win this war.' And he learned that very early on, because he didn't like the way the look of the Macintosh board, the PCB, was laid out. He wanted it to be beautiful on the outside and on the inside. He's like, 'Why are all these wires running this way? Why doesn't it have all this symmetry? We have to make it beautiful on the inside.' And even the traces on the boards have to look a certain way. So the teams made the board that they knew would work, and then they made the board the way Steve wanted it, and that didn't work. And then Steve instantly figured out, 'At some point, don't micromanage every single detail. There are some things he doesn't know enough about.' So he would get out of that. But that was one of those instances where he pushed really hard, and that's his opinion. So they said, 'Okay, we're going to make it a data-driven decision. We're going to make both, and I'm going to show you the results.' And from there, he didn't get into those details. So from that, you could have a great challenge, because then you could get those data and say, 'We can't do that, and let me show you why,' or 'We can do that,' and then Steve would go, 'You can't do that,' and you're like, 'Oh, we can do that, let me show you.' So there were certain times when you were bringing something to reality that he didn't think could exist. So it was that creative tension, that interaction, that was so successful.

但我认为还有另一个根本性的不同，它让团队感到不快，我确保并从中学习，避免这样做。现在我可能做得有点过头了，走向了相反的方向。那就是：当团队提出一个好主意时，要认可那个人，并说“这是个好主意”。作为领导者，你知道，以意见为导向，“这是个好主意，我们在此基础上发展，看看能不能做到”，或者“这是个好主意，但不是现在，先放一放”。但当人们有好主意时，要指出来，因为这具有感染力。而且这不仅仅是上升到客户层面的想法，而是在组织内部，人们会因为他们的想法而得到奖励。史蒂夫总是这样：你提出一个想法，他会说，“嗯，好吧，我不知道。”24 小时后，它会带着轻微的修改回来，“我有了一个天才的想法。”迟早，我们会环顾桌子，翻个白眼，心想“又来了”。所以这有点打击你产生想法的积极性。我们习惯了，但后来在团队里，这并不能带来最好的结果。因为如果反应从来不是“这是个天才的想法”，而总是消极或中性的，那么它就没有那种你想要的、能让你发挥最佳状态的情感效果。

But I think there was one other fundamental thing that was different, and it grated on the team, and I made sure, and I learned from, to not do. And I overdo it now in the opposite direction. Which is: when there's a great idea that comes from the team, acknowledge that person and say, 'That is a great idea.' As the leader, you know, the opinion-driven, 'That's a great idea, let's build on that, let's see if we can do that,' or 'It's a great idea but not for now, put it aside.' But call out when people have great ideas, because it's infectious. And that means not ideas that bubble up to the customer level, but inside the organization, people like they get rewarded for their ideas. Steve was always like: you give an idea, and he would go, 'Hmm, okay, I don't know.' The next day, 24 hours later, it would come back with slight modifications, 'I've had this genius idea.' And sooner or later, we'd look around the table and roll our eyes and go, 'Here we go again.' So it demotivates you from generating ideas a little bit. We got used to it, but later on in the team, it just didn't bring the best. Because if the reaction is never 'That's a genius idea,' it was always either negative or neutral, then it doesn't have that same emotional effect that you want to bring your best.

有时候人们兴奋起来也挺有意思的，就是“对对对”，你会在那种兴奋之上继续构建。但同时也得在想法不好的时候严厉指出，把坏点子也点出来。所以好坏都要有。你可以说，不一定要直接说“这想法不好”，可以说“现在可能不太合适，我们先放一放，回头再讨论”，或者说“这个想法还行，但你有没有从这个角度想过？”不只是说“不”或“是”，而是聊聊为什么在这个情况下可能不适用，这样他们就能学到东西。下次他们再提想法的时候，就能调整、理解，开始看穿那些凭主观做决定的人或者数据，拿出更有条理的论据或想法，这样下次成功的几率就更高。

Sometimes it's fun when people get excited about it, just yeah, yeah, yeah. You kind of build on top of excitement. But it could be coupled with harshness when the idea is bad, and you call out the bad ideas too. So it's the good and the bad. You could say, you don't have to say 'bad ideas,' like 'maybe not now, let's table that for later, let's discuss it,' or say 'that's a decent idea, but did you think about it this way?' Not just 'no' or 'yes,' but let's talk about why that might not be applicable in this case, so that they can learn. So the next time they bring an idea, they can modulate and understand and start seeing through the opinion-based decision makers or the databases to bring better formatted arguments or ideas, so that you have a better chance of success the next time.

对，没错。你得在这些时刻里训练他们。你得教，这些都是教学时刻。是啊，我希望自己能成为那样的人。我通常会这么说，那个想法……就像，我记得某个很聪明的人刚刚提了个特别烂的主意，所以我会记住，下次他们提出好主意的时候，一定要大力表扬那个好主意。但就我个人而言，我是说这跟情绪有关，我会直接指出那些特别烂的想法。但你也应该把特别好的想法也点出来。对，如果你让钟摆两边都摆，大家就会觉得“他很平衡”。是啊，如果总是一边倒，谁还愿意提想法呢？我完全赞成钟摆效应。对，你得既有快乐也有痛苦，别老是给我痛苦。

Yeah, right. You gotta train through those moments. You gotta teach; those are teaching moments. Yeah, moments I aspire to be that kind of person. I'll usually say that that idea is... like, I remember that this brilliant person just gave that really shitty idea, so I remember to make sure the next time they give a good idea, really compliment that good idea. But I personally, I mean it's emotion, but I call out the really shitty ideas. But you should call out the really great ones too. Yeah, if you let the pendulum swing both ways, then everybody goes, 'He's balanced.' Yeah, it's always one way. Why bring any idea? I'm all about the pendulum. Right, you gotta have both the joy and the pain. Don't just give me pain all the time.

你提到了玻璃和 iPhone。所以你是——不只是 iPod，不只是 Nest——你是 iPhone 创造过程中的关键人物之一。iPhone 起源故事中有哪些有趣的方面？有哪些好的、坏的和丑陋的地方？再说一次，这就像一部 Netflix 系列剧，有好几季，但什么改变了我的航班？请说吧，对。有什么智慧？你对最终版本有什么有趣的回忆？那么，作为 iPod 基础的那种痛苦和快乐——所有那些你得拖着走的 CD。在你看来，在团队看来，在史蒂夫看来，iPhone 的痛苦、快乐和愿景是什么？

So you mentioned the Glass and the iPhone. So you're one of the — not just the iPod, not just Nest — you were one of the key figures in the creation of the iPhone. What's the interesting aspects? What's the good, the bad, and the ugly of the origin story of the iPhone? Again, this is a Netflix series that spans multiple seasons, but what changed my flight? Please, yeah. What wisdom? What interesting memories do you have from the final? So the pain and the joy that was foundational to the iPod — all the CDs you had to lug around. What was the pain and the joy and the vision of the iPhone in your mind, in the mind of the team, and Steve's mind, and so on?

嗯，你知道，有很多痛点。你还要看到——不只是客户的痛点，还有业务的痛点。好吧，这关系到——苹果当时正在走出 2001 年的困境。现在人们开始关注了。苹果再次进入文化主流，变得重要起来。现金流开始涌入。iPod 占了苹果总营收的 60%，市场份额达到 85%。你开始有胜算在握了。你有了信心。就像苹果自从 Mac 以来——自从 Mac 以来，它就一直是一家被打压的公司。所以到那时已经 15 年了，对吧？这是你第一次看到——史蒂夫自豪地站在我们面前说：“今天我可以告诉你们所有员工，我们现在没有债务了。我们还清了债务。”对他来说那是一个喜悦的时刻，对吧？最终对我们的团队也是，因为没有债务了。太棒了，对吧？所以现在你有了这个成功的东西，正在改变苹果的面貌，然后你听到了手机行业沉重的脚步声。砰。那时候是功能手机。他们在加摄像头，加彩色屏幕。他们看到了 iPod 的成功，心想：“那只是音乐。我们有存储空间。我们可以在手机上加载音乐，我们能做到 iPod 能做的，甚至更多。”砰，对吧？然后你想——有多少？那时候每年卖出几亿部。还没到几十亿，但每年也有一亿、两亿部。iPod 还没到那个量；它只有 400 万、2000 万、4000 万、5000 万部左右。所以现在你想：“好吧，我们该怎么办？你知道，那个想抢我们饭碗的歌利亚，对吧？那个校园恶霸。”所以，有一个办法：跟他们合作。iTunes 音乐商店已经存在了。所有这些手机都需要音乐，所以他们可以到 iTunes 音乐商店为那些手机获取音乐。因为那时候不光是硬件播放器的问题；还有桌面端需要的软件和需要下载的内容。所以现在苹果有了多条腿，就像史蒂夫常说的那样。所以现在手机行业——好吧，我们要跟他们合作。他们要做一个红色的——基本上就是把 iPod shuffle 塞进手机里。“我能有总共 99 首歌吗？”然后他们会来我们的商店。我当时想：“好吧，太好了。一切都会顺利的。”这就成了摩托罗拉 ROKR 项目。是苹果和摩托罗拉合作的。这个智能手机——或者不是智能手机，是功能手机——上会有软件连接到 iTunes 获取音乐。甚至还不能通过云下载什么的，因为那时候还没有。还没有数据网络。嗯，从一开始就是个灾难。两种不同的文化，两种不同的领导风格，对方那边也不一定是最有能力的工程师。结果成了一个彻头彻尾的灾难。我目睹了那些痛苦，因为幸运的是我不必参与其中。每次我们见面，我都看到杰夫·罗宾脸上的痛苦，他会说：“这些人就是——你知道，真的吗？史蒂夫，我们非得这么做吗？”史蒂夫会说：“我们有合同义务。”当它出现在舞台上，史蒂夫展示它的时候，可能只有一分钟——你知道，史蒂夫喜欢那种延长的、拉长的展示——可能就一两分钟的事。然后他 literally 以最快的速度把那部手机从手里扔了出去。对吧？因为它太糟糕了。所以那就是“我们不会合作”的痛苦。所以如果我们不能跟这些人合作，我们就得成为他们中的一员才能真正竞争。对，为了拯救那个把苹果从 15 年的低迷中拉出来的东西，对吧？所以从那以后，我们做了一个 iPod 加手机的原型——一个经典款，嗯，就是一个 iPod 但里面装了电话，有所有音乐和其他东西，你用耳机，有线耳机，来做音频，对吧？同时还有另一个项目，因为我们在 iTunes 音乐商店——iTunes 视频商店——做视频，包括音乐视频和电影。那会是一个全屏的 iPod。所以不是经典款，你知道的那种，它会是一个全屏的，有一个虚拟的点击轮。你会有一个虚拟的、单点触控的触摸屏，可以滚动。对吧？想想你可能知道的 iPhone 的样子，对吧？然后还有第三个项目在进行——那两个是在我的团队里，但第三个项目是驱动 Mac 平板的多点触控屏幕技术。所以那个 Mac 平板，那个触屏技术——就是——

Well, you know, there's multiple pains. You also have to look — there's not just customer pain, but there's business pain. Okay, and it's about the — so Apple now is getting out of that place where it was in 2001. Now people are starting to pay attention. Apple's starting to get in the culture again, it's becoming relevant. Cash is starting to flow. iPod is 60% of the revenue, total revenue of Apple, doing 85% market share. You're starting to get a win at your back. You got confidence. Like Apple had been beaten down since probably the first time the Mac was — since the Mac, it was a beaten company ever since the Mac. So we're talking 15 years at that point, right? This is the first time you're seeing — and Steve stood proudly in front of us and said, 'Today I can tell you all, the employees, we are now out of debt. We paid off our debt.' It was a joyous moment for him, right? And then ultimately for our team, because no more debt. It's wonderful, right? So now what you have is you have this successful thing changing the face of Apple, and you hear these heavy stomping footsteps of the mobile phone industry. Boom. And it's the feature phones at that time. They're adding cameras, they're adding color displays. They're seeing the success of the iPod, going, 'That's just music. We have some storage. We can load music on our phones, and we can do what the iPod does, plus more.' Boom, yeah, right? And you're like — and how many? Hundreds of millions of them are being sold at that point. It wasn't billions yet, but it was still 100 million, 200 million a year. iPod hadn't gotten there; it was 4, 20, 40, 50 million, something like that. So now you're like, 'Okay, what are we gonna do about this? You know, Goliath who wants to take our lunch, right? The schoolyard bully.' And so, well, there was one: let's partner with them. So iTunes Music Store was there. All of these phones are going to need music, so they can come to the iTunes Music Store and get that music for those phones. Because it wasn't just about the hardware player at that point; it was about the software that you need on the desktop and the content that you needed to download. So now Apple had multiple legs of the stool, as Steve would always refer to it. So now the mobile phone industry — okay, we're going to work with them. They are going to make a red — an iPod shuffle basically inside of a phone. 'Can I have 99 songs total?' And they're going to come to our store. And I was like, 'Okay, great. It's all gonna be well and good.' And that became the Motorola ROKR project. It was Apple and Motorola getting together. There's gonna be software on this smartphone — or not smartphone, but feature phone — to connect to iTunes to get your music. It wasn't even downloadable over a cloud or anything, because that wasn't available yet. There wasn't data networks yet. Um, it was a disaster from the beginning. Two different cultures, two different types of leadership styles, not necessarily the most competent engineers on the other side. And it turned out to be an absolute horrible disaster. I watched the pains because, luckily, I didn't have to be part of it. I watched the pains on Jeff Robin's face each time we would meet, and he would be like, 'These guys are just — you know, like, really? Do we have to do this, Steve?' And he's like, 'We're contractually obligated.' And when it came out on stage and Steve showed it, it was maybe a one-minute — you know, Steve loves those extended, you know, like drawn out — it might have been a one-minute, two-minute kind of thing. And he literally threw that phone out of his hand as fast as he could. Yeah, right? Because it was horrible. So that was the pain of 'we're not gonna partner.' So if we can't partner with these guys, we have to become one of them to actually compete. Yeah, to save the thing that is bringing Apple from that 15 years of malaise, right? So then from that, we made a prototype of an iPod plus phone — a classic with, well, it was an iPod but had a phone inside, with all the music and all the other stuff, and you use your headset, wired headset, to do the audio, right? There was another project at the same time, because we were doing videos in the iTunes Music Store — iTunes Video Store — for music videos and movies. And it would be a full-screen iPod. So instead of the classic, the way you know it, it would be full screen and it would have a virtual click wheel. You'd have a virtual, like, single-touch touch screen that you could scroll. Right? Think of maybe an iPhone-like you knew it, right? And then there was a third project going on — not in those two were going on in my team, but the third project going on was the multi-touch screen technology to drive a Mac tablet. And so that Mac tablet, that touch screen technology — there was just —

要使用平板电脑，你必须在软件和所有方面做太多改动，对吧？我们一直看到这种情况。人们说今天没有足够多的平板应用是为平板优化的；它们只是放大了的手机应用。所以它们就只是 Mac 触摸版的东西。你需要一整个开发者社区。那可能不是最先应用这项技术的最佳场所。所以你把那项技术，与全屏 iPod 和我们正在做的手机功能结合起来，因为带旋转拨盘的 iPod 手机就像一部旋转拨号电话。我们无法让那个界面很好地处理数据输入。你把这三者结合起来，现在这三样东西创造了形态，或者说技术以及 iPhone 内部的形态，再结合来自 iPod 的大量底层软件、制造软件、驱动程序和通信组件，再加上一个大幅精简的“弗兰肯斯坦”版 Mac OS。我这么说完全是褒义。它并不是 Mac OS 稍作改动；而是被彻底改造、删改，并插入了新代码。它真的是来自不同地方的一整套东西，共同构成了第一个 iPhone OS。然后还有另一个团队在开发应用，另一个团队在设计整体外观。所有这些元素汇聚在一起，创造了我们所知的第一代 iPhone。这些可能都是迷人的工程挑战，对吧？还有伟大的团队。就像创造“弗兰肯斯坦”操作系统，那很迷人，因为你不断简化，但你又从不同地方提取东西，你基本上是在发明——我的意思是，他们可能不这么想——但这是一个新的计算时代，一种新型计算机。它真的是“弗兰肯斯坦”，对吧？而且你不需要运行 Mac 软件。如果你看看当时其他的智能手机，比如 Windows 之类的，它们会说：“我们需要确保它能以某种精简形式运行 Excel 和 Word。”但这个不一样：“不，不，不。”它诞生于娱乐。所以我们不必去移植所有相同的应用。其他那些都是关于兼容性；而这是关于一种全新的存在方式。

Way too much you had to change on the software and everything to be able to use a tablet, right? We see this all the time. People say there aren't enough tablet apps today that are modified for tablet; they're just phone apps that are grown up. So then they would just be Mac touch stuff. You'd have to have a whole developer community. That probably wasn't the best place to take that technology first. So you take that technology, marry it with the full-screen iPod and the phone stuff we were working on, because the iPod phone with a rotary dial was just like a rotary phone. We couldn't make that interface work well for data input. You put those three together, and now that's where those three things created the form or the technology and the form inside what would become the iPhone, married with a bunch of low-level software from the iPod and manufacturing software and drivers and communication stuff, combined with a very reduced Frankenstein Mac OS. And I mean that in the best way. It wasn't Mac OS just changed a little; it was totally hacked out and changed, and new code was inserted. It really was a whole set of things from all different places to make that first iPhone OS. And then there was another team working on the apps, and another team working on the design of how it looked overall. Between all that stuff, all of those things came together to create what we know as the first-generation iPhone. And those are all probably fascinating engineering challenges, correct? And great teams. Like the creating Frankenstein OS, that's fascinating because you're simplifying, simplifying, but then you're just pulling different stuff from, and you're basically inventing—I mean, they're probably not thinking of it that way—but a new era of computing, a new kind of computer. It really is Frankenstein, right? And you didn't have to run Mac software. If you look at some of the other smartphones of the time, like Windows and stuff, they were like, "We need to make sure it runs Excel and it runs Word or something like that in some reduced thing." This was like, "No, no, no, no." This was born out of entertainment. So we didn't have to go and take all the same applications. All those other ones were about compatibility; this was about a whole new way of being.

你怎么看史蒂夫·乔布斯对 iPhone 的演示，就是第一款 iPhone？你知道，“手机、互联网通讯器和 iPod 装入口袋”。他们打算宣布三款新产品，然后说它们合而为一。这是一个很好的例子，属于那种历史性的产品演示。显然有些表演技巧奏效了。出于某种原因它奏效了，对吧？它并不总是奏效；通常它不奏效，但这次奏效了。对史蒂夫来说经常如此。那感觉如何？那个演示实际上在设计过程中扮演了什么角色？你明白我的意思吗？从早期开始——因为你肯定知道——所以考虑那个“为什么”，那个新闻稿，完全

What did you think about the Steve Jobs presentation of the iPhone, the sort of the first iPhone? You know, "Phone, internet communicator, and iPod in your pocket." They're going to sort of present announcing three new products kind of thing, and then saying that it's all in one. This is a good example of one of the sort of historic presentations of a product. Clearly there's some showmanship that works. Some reason it works, right? It doesn't always work; it often doesn't work, but it did in this case. It often did for Steve. What like, how did that feel? What part of the actually the design process was that presentation? You know what I mean? Like from the early—because you said for sure—so consider the why, the press release at the very—

正确。史蒂夫一直在做那件事。他从第一天起就在构思那个故事。是的，他向我们推销这个、这个、这个，然后这个，然后他会看我们的脸，因为你不会——大多数人不会，至少如果你为他工作——不会告诉他你对他所说的话的真实想法，但他会看你的脸。是的，然后他会和组织外少数真正信任的知己交谈，看看他们的想法，对吧？他们可以给他反馈，他们可以真正挑战他，但他也会看他们的脸，然后思考。所以当你看到那个，他就会调整它，稍微改变它，再改变。所以他在那整个时间里都在打磨故事和讲故事的方式，对吧？还有那些“为什么”，而我们在工作的同时，他也在帮助我们完善，就像从塑料到玻璃的转变，对吧？一直在琢磨。所以当他走上舞台时，他做了一件每个营销人员都被告诫不要做的事：说这三样东西现在合而为一。他们说那是营销中最懒惰的讲故事方式，对吧？是的，没错。但这是最好的方式，因为它直击所有痛点。就像，“我想要我的 iPod，但我也想要通讯，我还想要上网浏览，因为我想要在移动中查东西，因为那是信息。”当你出差时，你带着笔记本电脑、iPod 和手机，你必须同时携带所有这些。现在我们要为你解决那个痛点，把它们合而为一。所以他只是向你展示那个痛点，审视那种怀疑的病毒，然后说，“现在它就在这个神奇的东西里。”他能够巧妙地讲述那个故事，因为他几乎每天都在内部对所有人悄悄地讲，然后它就恰到好处了。就像一部托尼奖获奖戏剧，已经打磨了 10 年。但人性也流露出来，时机，所有的一切。有一点——当然他在某些时刻很戏剧化，他会提高声音，露出苦笑或别的什么。所有这些细节。他既是演员又是讲故事的人。是的，而且——但那是真相，对吧？真相流露出来了。那是一个非虚构的故事，然后他在上面添加了那些个人修饰以达到戏剧效果。太神奇了。

exactly. Steve was doing that the entire time. He was working on that story from day one. Yeah, he was pitching us this, this, this, and then this, and then he would look at our faces because you wouldn't—most people wouldn't, at least if you're working for him—wouldn't tell him what you really thought of what he was saying, but he would look at your faces. Yeah, and then he would talk to a few real trusted confidants outside of the organization and see what they thought, right? And they could give him feedback on it, and they could really challenge him, but he would also look at their faces and go. And so when you see that, then he would modulate it and change it slightly and change. So he was working during all of that time on the story and the storytelling, right? And the whys, while we're working on that and helping us refine it, just like the switch from plastic to glass, right? All the time working on that. So when he comes out on stage, he does something that every marketer is told not to do: say these three things are now combined in one. That is like the—they say that that is the laziest form of storytelling possible for marketing, right? Yeah, right. But it was the best one because it was all those pains. It was like, "I want my iPod, but I want my communications, and I want my internet browsing because I want it on the go so I can look up things because it was information." And when you were on the road, you had a laptop, you had an iPod, and you had a phone, and you had to carry all of these things with you at once. Now we're going to solve that pain for you and put it all together. So he was just showing you the pain and viewing that virus of doubt and going, "It's now in this one magical thing." And he could come up and masterfully tell that story because he told it almost every day to all of these people inside very quietly, and then it was just right. It was like a Tony Award-winning play that had been worked on for 10 years. But also the human came through, the timing, it was all that. It was a little bit—and of course he was dramatic at certain points, and he would raise his voice and a wry smile or whatever. It was all those touches. He was an actor as well as a storyteller. Yeah, and that—but it was the truth, right? The truth came through. It was a non-fiction story, and then he added those personal flourishes on top of it for dramatic effect. It's amazing.

你提到了一位设计师，乔纳森·艾维。你们俩都是杰出的设计师，伟大的人。在遥远的过去，你们之间有过一些争执。回顾过去，乔纳森有什么积极的品质，让你在与他共事后成为了更好的人和设计师？

So there's a designer you mentioned, Jony Ive. You both are brilliant designers, great human beings. There were some battles fought in the distant past between the two of you. Looking back, what is the positive characteristic of Jony that made you a better person and designer having worked with him?

观察乔纳森领导的设计团队的过程——我不知道具体在哪里，因为那是多年的事，我没有看到所有那些——但观察真正的设计过程，因为它确实是一个关于材料、形态、颜色和这些物理特性的团队。当我们之前谈到这个时，那就是设计。什么是设计？设计无处不在。好吧，所以他们真正关注的是形态、手感、外观、美学、物理美学。通过观察那个过程，我学到了很多关于如何处理颜色、如何处理材料、如何深入思考曲线，对吧？还有阴影，以及它不仅在手中看起来如何，而且在营销照片中看起来如何，对吧？所以它看起来如何，感觉如何，所有的一切。都是围绕那些物理特性。观察达到那个目标的过程，对我来说很有启发性，对吧？它打开了我的思维，让我想，“哦，好吧，就像所有其他事情都有流程一样，它不仅仅是魔法。”然后你说，“啊，就是这样。”那真的是一个精炼的过程，你知道，打开——

Watching the process that the design team that Jony led—I don't know where, because that was over years, I didn't see all of those things—but watching the design process of really, because it was really a team that was about materials, it was about form, it was about colors, it was about these physical characteristics. It, when we talked about this earlier, was design. What is design? Design is everywhere. Okay, so what they were really focused on was form, how the feel was, how it looked, the aesthetics, the physical aesthetics. And watching going through that process, I learned so much in that process about how to do colors, how to do materials, how to think deeply about curves, right? And shadows, and how it would look not just in your hand but how it would look in the photograph you were going to take from marketing, right? So how it would look, how it would feel, all of it. It was all of those physical things around that. And watching the process to get there, that was enlightening for me, right? It opened my mind to go, "Oh, okay, just like there's a process for all these other things, it wasn't just magic." And you say, "Ah, there it is." It was really a process of refinement, you know, of opening the—

一开始像漏斗一样，随着时间推移不断收窄，最终得到那个最终版本。选择过程里，有些是凭观点的设计细节，但也有很多数据驱动的设计——我们能大批量交付什么？我们能做哪些不同的事？所以你总是要面对这些约束。有时候团队会说“我们需要这个”，但我们会说“我们交付不了”，不过也许我们能一起找到不同的设计特性和实现方式，在不完全按他们描述的情况下达到目标。不是一味地说“是是是”或“不不不”，而是一起寻找其他解决方案。

Funnel at the beginning and refining down over time to get to that final final and selecting and doing the selection and certain types you could certain times they were opinion-based design details but a lot of data a lot of data-driven designs of what can we what can we deliver in volume what can we do different things so you always had these constraints that you had to work with under and sometimes they uh and the team not just i would say we need this we're like we can't deliver that but maybe we were able to work together to find different design characteristics and different implementation characteristics that could get to that point without what they were describing and instead of yes yes yes no no no let's find some other way to solve the problem together

我在好几家公司都见过这种情况，比如和特斯拉合作时，有时候讨论曲线，工程端要实现一个非常具体、绝对的东西会非常痛苦。我脑子里冒出一个问题：我们到底应该走多远，去实现曲线上一个微小的调整，或者外形、材料颜色上的变化，如果交付成本是 10 倍（不是财务上的，而是工程上的）？有些公司确实会这么做，但还有多少问题要解决？我不知道你是否有什么智慧可以分享，因为当你思考曲线时，你是在想法的空间里设计，有点像柏拉图式的形式，并不总是考虑实现这个东西要付出多少痛苦。但也许正因如此，如果你总是想着实现它要付出的痛苦，你就会过于保守，就不会有那些疯狂的想法了，对吧？

yeah is and i've seen this um and several companies have more closely interacted with like tesla as an example sometimes you know talking about curves sometimes it's very painful on the engineering side to deliver a very specific kind of absolute thing and one question that comes up in my mind is like well how far should we go to try to deliver a tiny adjustment in a curve in the curvature or in um like the whatever the form factor is in the color of the material when the cost is like 10x to deliver not financially but just like you know yeah there are companies to do it how many problems still have to solve um i don't know i don't know if you can say any wisdom to that because it because when you're thinking about curves you're designing in the space of ideas you're like platonic forms kind of thing uh not always grounded to like how much this is uh how much pain is going to be involved in delivering this but that's as you should perhaps because then uh if you're always thinking about the pain required to deliver this thing you you'll be too conservative you wouldn't do the wild ideas right exactly

但你必须再次理解背后的“为什么”。在 Nest，当我们资源有限时，把一把螺丝刀放进包装盒里——一把定制设计的螺丝刀——正是源于我在苹果的经历，以及看到如何创造有情感的东西。它是营销的一部分，也是整体产品体验的一部分，尽管看起来有些多余。我回去让设计团队和机械团队改变了 Nest Protect（我们做的烟雾和一氧化碳探测器）上的一些曲线，那时他们已经开好模具了。我说他们告诉我这样成本更高，我说它看起来不对。他们说“哦，我们已经……”，我说“不，你们要回去做这个改动。我告诉过你们我们需要这样做。我们有一个更好看的模型，必须完成。我知道这对你们来说成本很高，但我们之前已经讨论过了，事情必须这样。对不起，但事实就是如此。”你知道，因为这对客户更好，看起来更好，照片效果也更好。然后我们做了，结果很棒，最后每个人都同意它很棒，但过程很痛苦。正是这些细节创造了魔力。如果你不付出这些痛苦，不投入爱，客户会感受到的。他们要么感受到痛苦，要么感受到爱——如果你做对了的话。所以这取决于你愿意投入多少时间和精力，以及什么对你真正重要。以及你如何沟通你所做的，毕竟我们是人。

But you have to understand again the why behind it. And at Nest when we had limited resources, you know putting a screwdriver in the box, a custom designed screwdriver in the box, was born out of those experiences I had at Apple and seeing how you can create something that's emotional, it's part of marketing and it's part of the product experience overall even though it seems extraneous. I went back and made the design team and the mechanical team changed some curves on the Nest Protect, the smoke and CO detector we did at Nest, after they had already tooled it. And I said they're saying this cost more. I said it doesn't look right. There is a but they're like oh well we had I said no you're going to go back and you're going to make that change. I told you you want we needed to do it. We had a better looking model that is going to get done. I know it's going to be a terrible cost to you but we already had this discussion and that's the way it's gonna have to be and I'm sorry but it is what it is. And you know, because it's better for the customer and it looks better and the pictures and all the other stuff. And then we did it and it was great and everyone agreed it was great at the end, but it was pain to get there. Those are where those little details are where the magic comes out. And you know, if you don't do, if you don't take those pains and put in the love, the customer's going to feel it. They're either going to feel the pain or they're going to feel the love if you put it in right. So it depends on you know how much time and effort you want to put into something and what really matters to you. And so how you communicate what you do, we're human beings after all.

你从团队中自然产生的或当人们充满热情、试图解决这些问题时发生的紧张关系中学到了什么吗？这是生活的常态，是人类的戏剧吗？它总是这样吗？它就是那样吗？它让你变得更好吗？

Is there something you've learned from sort of the the tensions that are natural or that happen in teams when they're passionate and they're trying to solve these problems? Is that the way of life and there's the human drama? Is that just is that always going? Is it what it is? Does that make you better?

实际上，个性之间的紧张关系等等，你看，过山车如果没有起伏就不好玩了。重要的是旅程。是的，正是旅程让每个人展现出最好的一面。我们被这些经历锻造、淬炼。不仅是高潮，还有低谷。正是在那时，你获得了人性中的连接。我们可以把这些故事讲到脸色发青，每次都微笑，因为我们一起做了每个人单独无法完成的事。当它汇聚在一起时，所有的情感就产生了。如果它源于正确的理由、正确的故事和正确的方式，那就是魔法发生的地方。不仅对客户如此，对每个参与其中的人也是如此，它改变了他们。他们永远不会忘记那些经历——无论是当时积极的还是消极的——但回首往事，只有积极，因为他们做了有意义的事。

Actually, the drama of the tension between personalities and all that kind of stuff, look, a roller coaster ride without ups and downs is no fun. It's the journey. Yeah, it's the journey that brings out the best in everyone. We're forged, we're tempered by those experiences. Not all the ups, but also the downs. And that's when you get the humanity in the connection. And we can tell these stories till we're blue in the face and smile every time because we did something together that each of us couldn't do apart. But when it comes together, that's where all the emotions happen. And that's where if it's born out of the right reasons and the right story in the right way, that's where the magic happens. Not just for the customer, but for how it transforms each person who is working on it. And they will never forget those experiences in their life, positively and negatively that happened at the time, but they look back and it's only positive because they did something that mattered.

你实现的另一个绝妙想法是 Nest，Nest 恒温器，以及 Nest 这个大框架，再次作为 Netflix 系列第三季的一部分。为了将 Nest 变为现实，你不得不克服的最难忘、最痛苦、最具洞察力的挑战是什么？

Yet another brilliant idea that you brought to life is Nest, Nest thermostat, and the big umbrella of Nest again as part of this Netflix series season three. What was the most memorable, the most painful, the most insight-leading challenge you had to overcome to bring Nest to life?

嗯，对我来说第一件事是让人们关心他们的恒温器，对吧？没人考虑它。他们从来没有客户选择权。他们不安装它。他们通常甚至不用它，因为它太复杂了之类的。他们只是把它藏在角落里，然后付账单，对吧？不管多少。它完全不被爱，不被考虑。对吧。那么如何唤醒——就像我说的，怀疑的病毒——如何唤醒它并让人们行动起来？你知道，记住每天你进去时，你只是感到沮丧，然后你收到账单，你付钱。所以你必须做那件事。所以那是一件事。我认为另一个大问题是交付。你知道，所有事情都很难，对吧？我们受到限制。我们只有这么多资源。我们是白手起家。我们没有大量资金。我们没有拿到数亿美元。但我们出于正确的理由做了。但我认为另一个重要部分不仅仅是构建一个颠覆性产品，因为团队中的很多人以前做过。我们知道自己在做什么。如果我们设计正确，我们可以在足够的时间内交付。关键是颠覆性的市场进入。换句话说，如何将产品从生产线的末端送到客户手中，因为恒温器没有零售或客户选择。甚至没人考虑过购买。他们从未想过自己有选择。通常某个穿着背带裤、露着股沟的家伙，环顾四周，看看他们的房子，然后说：“嗯，这看起来像是个有钱人。这个恒温器现在要花你 350 美元。非常感谢。”然后你就像“你给我什么我就拿什么”，对吧？然后它被装进另一所房子。

Well, the first thing for me was making someone care about their thermostat, right? No one considers it. They never had any customer choice. They didn't install it. They usually don't even use it because it's so complicated or what have you. They just like, they just at it, they hide it in the corner and then they just pay the bill, right? Of whatever it is. Right, it's totally unloved, unconsidered. Right. So how do you wake up, like I said, the virus of doubt, how do you wake that up and get people going? You know, remember every day when you go in and it's like you're just frustrated and then you get the bill and you pay the bill. So you have to do that. So that was one thing. I think the other big one was not delivering. You know, it was all of it was hard, right? It was constrained. We had only so much stuff. We were bootstrapped. We didn't have massive funding. We didn't get hundreds of millions of dollars. It was but we did it for the right reasons. But I think the other big part of it was not just building a disruptive product, because a lot of the people on the team had done that. We knew what we were doing. And that was if we got the design right, we could deliver it with the enough time. It was getting the disruptive go to market. In other words, how to take that product from the end of the production line and get it into the customer's hands, because there was no retail or customer choice in thermostats. No one even it was never considered purchase. They never thought they had choice. Some guy usually in suspenders and a butt crack told them, looked around, looked at their house and said, um, this looks like somebody who's got is well to do. This thermostat is now going to cost you $350. Thank you very much. And you're like, I'll take whatever you give me, right? And then it goes into another house.

一个价值一百美元的东西，结果还是那玩意儿。没错。所以没有价格透明度，没有选择，你只能拿到别人给你的东西。那么你怎么去……这是一个根深蒂固的行业，这就是为什么它没有创新，因为它过得很好，因为每个房子都需要它们。所有的安装工都被产品供应商用奖金给“编程”了，让他们说“你只能卖我们的产品，如果你卖这么多，就能免费去夏威夷旅游”。对吧。对这些安装工来说，免费去夏威夷就是他们的梦想。所以整个渠道完全被产品方控制，在某种程度上几乎是垄断的。那么你怎么绕过这个呢？创建一个颠覆性的市场渠道：一是直接面向消费者，以及必要的营销来传递信息。另一个是搞定安装问题。没人会自己安装恒温器。那么如何让足够多的早期用户能够自信地自行安装，这样他们就不必再打电话叫人来安装？因为如果叫人来，那人会说“这是个垃圾产品，不，我有好得多的产品”。所以你必须消除这个摩擦。最后，如何让那些不只是早期用户、而是需要看到和摸到才购买的人？如何让产品进入零售渠道，而当时恒温器的大品牌和家得宝、劳氏都有合同，不能引入其他品牌？他们完全控制了渠道，以至于只有一点点客户选择，实际上更多是承包商的选择，而不是消费者的选择。所以所有这些都必须和产品一起创新。对我来说，这是一个巨大的挑战，也是我从未做过的事，我们大多数人从未做过。我们必须像交付产品本身一样，把它作为一个项目来创造。结果它大获成功，被谷歌以 32 亿美元收购。

It's worth a hundred dollars was the same damn thing. Yeah, right. So there's no price transparency, there was no choice, you just got what you were given. So how do you go and... and this was an entrenched industry, that's why there was no innovation in it, because it was doing just fine, because every house needed them. All the installers were programmed by the product deliverers, by bonuses, to say you're going to only carry our product, and if you sell this many you're going to get a free trip to Hawaii. Right, yeah. And for these guys who install, a free trip to Hawaii is a dream for them, right. So this whole channel was fully controlled by the product guys, and it was almost monopolistic in a way. So how do you go around that? Creating a disruptive go-to-market channel: one was direct to consumer, right, and all the marketing that was necessary to get that message across. Another one was getting the installation right. No one was self-installing thermostats. So how do we get enough people who are early adopters to be able to self-install them confidently, so they didn't still have to call the guy to come and install it? Because then he would say, "This is a crap product, no, I got the much better product." Right. So you had to get rid of that friction. And then ultimately, how do you get the people who were not just early adopters, but people who needed to see it and touch it before they bought it? How do you get that into retail, when the large brands of the time of thermostats and Home Depot and Lowe's had contracts that they couldn't bring in any other brands? They were owning the channel all the way to where there was any sort of slight customer choice, and it was really contractor choice more than it was consumer choice. So all of that had to be innovated along with the product. And so to me, that was a huge challenge and something I had never done, most of us had never done, and we had to create that as much as a project as actually delivering the product itself. So it turned out to be a giant hit, and it was acquired by Google for 3.2 billion dollars.

作为创始人和领导者，出于好奇，在这些收购案例中，这总是好事吗？你和团队有没有考虑过说不？

As a founder and leader, just out of curiosity, in these cases of acquisition, is it always a good thing? Is there any part of you and the team that considers saying no?

哦，我们在整个过程中一直在考虑说不。没错。我们之前都在大公司待过。我们知道那是什么样子，政治斗争和其他一切。我从飞利浦那里学到很多，因为飞利浦是一个非常……它有 37.5 万人，是一家非常大的公司，政治斗争无数。我当时想，我们想回到那个世界吗？因为我有太多负面经历。但后来去了苹果，苹果不算大，但也足够大，可以有所有这些动态。但当你看到一个领导者崛起，消除这些动态，或者不让它们泛滥时，你就会想，哦，有正确的领导，这可以是一段美好的婚姻。所以有整整四个月，我们和谷歌一起工作，确保我们有正确的领导，并且我们处于合适的环境中，感觉对了。所以那确实发生了。我们讨论了所有细节。我们甚至没谈价格。我们讨论的是品牌如何运作，团队与谁合作，如何获取知识产权，如何进行交换，如何获得预算等等。我们在实际敲定任何交易之前就解决了所有这些问题，因为他们已经是公司的投资者，所以我们知道他们大致知道价格的终点。在解决所有这些先决条件的过程中，我意识到，作为一个试图创建平台的单一产品公司，没有投资者会投资一个需要三四年、数亿美元才能建成的平台，同时还需要各种新产品，而我们已有的产品虽然成功，但甚至还没达到盈亏平衡。我们还在开发它们。那么如何让更多人资助所有这些事情和我真正想创建的这个平台呢？因为我的担忧——我在硅谷见过很多次——是这些小初创公司有虚张声势，他们说“我要用平台挑战大公司”。但当那些平台玩家出现，苹果说他们要进入这个领域……当时没人关心，他们只是好奇，“Nest 是什么？”没错。但苹果还没进入市场，谷歌还没进入，亚马逊不在，微软、三星都不在，他们都只是觉得“有点意思”。我观察到，如果你说“我要挑战他们，我要建一个平台”，然后他们突然一个接一个地说“哦，我们现在也在建平台，我们在建一个玩家”，他们就会用恐惧、不确定性和怀疑把你淹没，开发者会跑掉，你就建不成那个平台。所以我想，在我们因为吸引了太多注意力而让格局改变之前，他们宣布了什么，我们需要改变格局。让我们去最好的地方，在那里我们可以建立平台，有正确的领导支持我们，把这个东西发展成它应有的愿景。这就是我们相信通过谷歌收购所做的事情。

Oh, we considered saying no all the way along the process. Right. We had all been in big companies before. We knew what it was like, the politics and all the other stuff. And what I came to learn, especially from Philips, because Philips was a very... it was 375,000 people, it was a big, massive company, right, and tons of politics. And I was like, do we want to go back into that world? Because I had so many negative experiences from that. But then going to Apple, which was not big, but it was big enough that it could have all these dynamics. But then when you saw a leader rise up and get rid of those dynamics or not allow many of them to flourish, then you're like, oh, with the right leadership, this can be a beautiful marriage. Right. And so for four months we were working together with them, with Google, to make sure that we had the right leadership and we were going to be in the right environment that it felt right. So that happened. It absolutely happened. We worked on all the details. We didn't even talk about price. We were talking about how's the brand going to work, who's the team going to work with, how are we going to get IP, how are we going to do exchanges, how are we going to get budgets and all that stuff done. So we worked through all of that before we actually sealed any kind of deal, because they were already an investor in the company, so we already knew, you know, they knew relatively where the end point was for the price. So working through all those prerequisites, I knew that as an individual product company that was trying to create a platform, no investors were going to invest in a platform that could take three or four years and many many hundreds of millions of dollars to build without all kinds of new products at the same time, and products that we were having which were successes but they weren't even break-even yet, right. We were still developing them. So how are we going to get more people to fund all of these things and this platform that I really want to create? Because my worry, and I had seen this many times in Silicon Valley, is these small startups have bravado and they say, "I'm going to take on the big guys, right, with a platform." But when those platform guys show up and Apple says they're going to get in the house... at the time nobody cared, they were curiously curious, "What's Nest?" Yeah, yeah. But Apple wasn't in the market, Google wasn't in the market yet, Amazon wasn't there, Microsoft, Samsung, they were not, they were all just, "That's curious." Right, yeah. And I had watched, if you said, "I'm going to go challenge them and I'm going to build a platform," and then they all of a sudden one by one go, "Oh well, we're building a platform now, we're building a player," they flooded you to death, fear, uncertainty, doubt, and the developers run away, and you can't make that platform. So I'm like, before the landscape gets changed on us because we've attracted so much attention, they announced something, we need to change the landscape on them. Let's go to the best place where we can build out the platform, have the right leadership behind us to help us grow this thing into what the vision it should be. And that's what we believe we were doing with the Google acquisition.

有没有可能挑战这些平台？你说有很多初创公司有虚张声势，对吧。但这并不意味着……你知道，詹姆斯·乔伊斯 20 岁时说“我要成为 20 世纪最伟大的作家”，在他写出任何有价值的东西之前。你知道，其中可能有一个是对的。在这个现代世界，当你……首先，人们绝对应该读你的书《创造》，它提供了大量关于如何建造酷东西、如何创建初创公司、如何应对团队和招聘的不同阶段的建议，而且这主要是人性，不是技术，背后主要是人性。结果发现，这就像层层叠叠的乌龟，最底层还是人性。是的。那么，有没有可能创建挑战大公司的初创公司，不管现代的大公司是什么？目前是这些平台：苹果、谷歌、推特，甚至我不知道，现在叫 Meta 了吧。当然。有可能挑战它们吗？

Is it possible to take on the platforms? So you said there's a lot of startups with bravado and all that kind of stuff, right. Doesn't mean... you know, James Joyce when he was 20 said, "I'm going to be the greatest writer of the 20th century," before he wrote anything of value. You know, one of them might be actually right. In this modern world, when you... so first of all, people should definitely get your book, Build, as just this giant number of advice on this exact question of how to build cool things, how to build a startup, how to all the different stages of that team and hiring, and it's mostly human nature, it's not technical, it's mostly human nature behind it. And it turns out it's turtles all the way down, that's human at the bottom. Yes. So is it possible to build startups that take on the big guys, whatever that is of the modern era? So for now it's these platforms of Apple, Google, Twitter, I don't even know, Meta I guess called now. Sure. Is it possible to take them on?

绝对可以。但你不能在他们的地盘上挑战他们。你要在他们未来想要的地盘上挑战他们。没错。Spotify 是一个平台。它最初是一个应用，现在是一个平台。是的，没错。想想微信。想想所有那些超级应用，它们现在集成了钱包、配送服务、旅行服务和交通服务，都在一个应用里。是的。他们在不同的层面、不同的空间进行了创新，而平台……

Absolutely. But you don't take them on on their same turf. You take them on on the turf they're going to want to have in the future. Right. Spotify is a platform. It started as an application, is now a platform. Yeah, right. Think of WeChat. Think of all the super apps out there that are now wallets and delivery services and travel services and transportation services all within an app. Yeah. They've innovated in a different level, in a different space that the platform...

有些公司一开始并不对，比如谷歌是一家应用公司，它解决搜索问题，然后才成为平台公司。苹果解决个人计算问题，我们的 iPhone 解决了上网浏览等等，然后在加入 App Store 后才成为平台公司。如果你仔细看，根本不存在直接建立平台公司这回事。你先打造一个出色的应用，然后才能扩展，才有资格成为平台。

Companies weren't right or they, you know, Google was an app company. It was solving search and then it became a platform company. Apple was solving personal computing and then, our iPhone was doing internet browsing, all that stuff, and then became a platform company when the App Store was added. If you look it up, there's no such thing as building a platform company. You build a great app first and then you can expand it and have the right to become a platform.

你的整本书都是给年轻人的建议。但我想问你，我也认识其他人和年长者——好吧，每个人都有一颗年轻的心。如果你没有，你应该有。那么在职业选择上，你有什么建议？你会给一个人如何选择职业什么建议？

Your whole book is just a bunch of advice for young people. But let me ask you, I know other people and old—well, everyone is young at heart. If you're not, you should be. So, in terms of picking a career, you have advice on this point. What advice would you give to a person on how to pick a career?

你想学什么？你想向谁学？就像你选大学一样——你会说，我想来这里是因为这个专业，我听说过这些项目，尤其是研究生项目。你为了某个项目、某群人而去。为什么找工作或选职业时不这么做呢？你不能只是说，我就想去谷歌工作，或者我就想去苹果工作。你应该去某个团队，和某群人一起，做你真正好奇、想学习的事情。

What is it you want to learn and who is it you want to learn from? Just like you pick a university—you're like, I want to go here for this expertise, I've heard about these programs, especially graduate studies. You go for a certain program with a certain set of people. Why don't you do that when it comes to a job or a career? You just don't go and say, I just want to go work at Google or I just want to work at Apple. You want to go to a certain team with a certain set of people and work with them on something that you're really curious about and you want to learn about.

这是一个微妙但 brilliant 的框架：就问自己，我想学什么，然后看哪条职业道路能最大化这一点。太有趣了。这是我面试任何人时问的第一个问题。当我要招人进团队时，第一个问题就是，你想学什么？我不想要那种专家——就像我们之前聊过的——说，我是这方面的专家，你雇我当专家。我们在做新东西。你不是专家，因为我们也不是专家。你想学什么？

That's such a subtle but brilliant framing: just ask the question, what do I want to learn, and then see what career path is going to maximize that. That's so interesting. It's the first question I ask anyone who interviews with me. When I say I'm going to bring somebody on the team, first question is, what do you want to learn? I don't want the expert—like we talked about earlier—says, I'm the expert in this, you're going to hire me as the expert. We're doing something new. You're not an expert because we're not an expert either. What is it you want to learn?

关于学习，最好的学习方法是什么？你进入一个新地方、新世界，也许是 v1。你说你在构建 v1。我的意思是，整个世界都晚了，到处都是 v1 或等待 v1 出现的 v0。从零到一。这个过程是什么样的？学习的过程是怎样的？你怎么学习？

On the topic of learning, what is the best way to learn? You go into this new place, into this new world, into maybe v1. You said you're building v1. I mean, the whole world is late, it's full of v1s or v0s waiting for the v1 to come along. Zero to one. What's the process of that look like? What's the process of learning? How do you learn?

让我先给个框架，然后再聊最后那部分。现在回头看，尤其是写这本书时，我有版本一的自己、版本二、版本三、版本四。我对自己和想做的事有很多看法。有时这些看法对某些人来说，是从父母那里得到数据，然后去做父母或环境告诉他们的。我的看法是，我想去学这个，我对那个好奇。我做了从零到一的移动，然后通过实践，我不断精炼这些东西，了解自己真正好奇和擅长的，因为我获得了数据。然后我又有了新的看法，创造版本二的自己，再去实践。永远是干中学。从看法开始，你得不到任何事实。大多数人会问，我在这个位置怎么赚最多钱？他们试图从数据开始。从为什么开始。你的好奇心是什么？你想学什么？然后追随它。我在 General Magic 做了最低级别的工作，因为我想进入那个团队，和合适的人一起工作。我甚至不知道他们在做什么，但我觉得感觉对。我在那里工作，收入勉强高于贫困线，每周工作 80 小时，因为学习太棒了，就像大学生一样。那就是我做的。然后那一段经历让我学到更多，把那些看法变成数据，再找到新的看法。所以是一样的，但通过实践。你找到一生想做什么的方法，就是弄清楚你不想做什么，而唯一的方法就是做一堆事情并不断精炼。

Let me put a framing and then we'll talk about that last piece. I have now, looking back especially writing this book, I have a version one of myself, a version two, a version three, a version four. I had a lot of opinions about myself and what I wanted to do. Sometimes those opinions for certain people are formed and they get the data from their parents and they go do what their parents told them to do or their surroundings. My opinions were like, I want to go and learn this, I'm curious about that. I made the zero to one move and then over time by doing, I was refining those things and learning what I was really curious about and what I was really good at because I was getting data. And then I was like, then I had another set of opinions to create version two of me, and then I would go and do it. It's always learning by doing. Starting with the opinion, you're not gonna get any facts. Most people like, where do I make the most money from my position? They're trying to start with data. Start with the why. What's your curiosity? What do you want to learn? And then follow that. I took the lowest job on the totem pole at General Magic because I wanted to get in there to work with the right team. I didn't even know what they were doing, but I thought that it felt right. I was barely living above the poverty line working there, working 80 hours a week because it was so amazing to learn, just like a college student. That's what I was doing. And then that set, and then I learned more from that and then changed those opinions into data and then I found other opinions. So it's the same thing, but it was by doing. The way you find out what you want to do in life is by figuring out what you don't want to do, and the only way you find that out is by doing a bunch of stuff and refining it.

这太有趣了。是的，很 brilliant。

That's hilarious. Yeah, that's brilliant.

关于跳入创业世界、创办公司的职业道路，要成功创办一家初创公司、有机会成功，需要什么？也许你怎么决定迈出这一步？你创办过、参与过许多 v1，其中一些是最成功的 v1，迈出这一步需要什么？也许离开你在公司的舒适工作，去做创业。需要什么？

In terms of the career path of leaping into the startup world and launching a startup, what does it take to successfully found a startup, to have a chance to succeed? And maybe how do you decide to take that leap? Having founded, having been part of many v1s, many of some of the most successful v1s ever, what's it take to take that leap? Maybe leave your job at a cushy job at a company and do the startup. What does it take?

需要相信自己。这是第一件事。相信你能做到，但最好有镜子或导师在你身边，你的教练，确保你知道自己没疯。这是一个疯狂但聪明的想法，但你没疯，你不是一个孤独的狂人。你有一个好主意，就像我说的，好主意会追逐你。在这个世界上，有很多人的想法比他们实施的时间还多。我以前就是这样。我会想，天哪，有这个想法，那个想法，你试图全部实现。但最好的想法是那些你能真正专注的，你屏蔽所有其他事情，把其他想法融入你正在做的事情。所以我试图逃离一个好主意，然后它跟踪我。是的，它追捕你，因为你会想，啊，这会有这个问题，我把它放一边，然后几天后，哦，我想我知道怎么解决那个问题了，或者我和某人聊了，你总是在它的边缘徘徊。然后在某个时刻，它就像一个黑洞一样把你吸进去，你除了这个什么都想不了。这几乎就像一段关系，对吧？你知道当你遇到一个人，找到你的伴侣，你会想，嗯，等等，嗯，然后你试着，然后突然一切就对了。差不多就是这样。最终，实现专注。看，我不同，我直接跳进去。我以前也那样，直接跳进去。但我学到你需要更多时间逃离它。逃离它，这样它就会追逐你，因为它让你更深入地思考。这不是在讲约会建议。但最终，你实现了对它的专注。但你也说，相信自己。所以不一定只是想法，而是人。你必须相信自己和你的想法，因为如果你没有那种信念，你就无法把它传递给其他人，让他们加入团队。

It takes belief in yourself. That's the first thing. Belief that you can do it, but hopefully with mirrors or mentors around you, your coaches around you, to make sure you know you're not crazy. It's a crazy smart idea but you're not crazy, and you're just working on something as a lone mad man or woman. You have a great idea, and like I said, great ideas chase you. In this world, there are so many people who have more ideas than they have time to implement. I used to be like that. I would like, oh my god, have this idea, this idea, and you try to do all of them. But the best ideas are the ones that you can really focus on, and you shut out all those other things, and you bring those other ideas into the thing you're trying to do. So I try to run away from a great idea and then it stalks me. Yeah, it hunts you down because you're like, ah, that's gonna have this problem, I'm gonna put it aside, and then all of a sudden, a few days later, oh, I think I know how to solve that problem, or I talk to somebody, and you're just always kind of niggling around the edges of it. And then at some point, it just becomes like this black hole that just sucks you, and you're like, I can't think about anything else but this. It's almost like a relationship in the world, right? You know when you have it with a person, you find your partner, you're like, hmm, wait, um, something, and then you're trying to like, and then all of a sudden it just comes together. It's kind of like that. Ultimately, achieve focus. See, I'm different, I just dive right in. I used to do that too, I used to dive right in. But I learned that you need more time to run away from it. Run away from it and so it chases you because it makes you think harder about that. This is not dating advice we're talking about. But ultimately, you have achieved a focus on it. But you also said, believe in yourself. So it's not necessarily even the idea, it's the human. You have to believe in yourself and the idea that you have, because if you don't have that belief, then you can't project that to other people to say, join the team.

你提到了导师，也聊过自己生命中遇到过非常棒的导师。同时，你也是很多人的导师。要怎样才能找到一位导师？怎么找到一位好导师？

You mentioned mentors and you've talked about having had incredible mentors in your life. You're also a mentor to a very large number of people. What does it take to find a mentor? How do you find a great mentor?

通常他们也会找到你。就像想法一样，不是的。关键在于你身处一个合适的社群。因为你一直在建立人脉，因为你不可能单打独斗。所以你必须围绕自己建立一个关系网络，这些关系不是交易，而是你真正珍惜的、经得起时间考验的关系。你和他们交谈，分享脆弱或初生的想法，或者疯狂的观点，然后一起辩论。你会开始看到共鸣。这和年龄无关，只关乎这种连接。我有导师。显然，年轻时我的导师都比我年长。但随着年龄增长，我也有比我年轻或同龄的导师。他们并不都比我大。所以关键在于那种连接，在于同频共振。但他们也能平衡你，在某种程度上与你互补。比如我最好的导师和科技毫无关系，他们对我们所理解的科技一无所知。他们关注的是人性，能反映人性，帮助我更关注人、更有同理心。因为我在科技细节上过于投入，需要从其他视角看问题。而他们也想了解更多科技，或者觉得这个想法太棒了，应该存在，那就一起合作吧。所以真的是他们找到你，你也找到他们，而这通过分享实现。你不能只是上网搜索“世界上最好的导师是谁”，那样行不通。所以要建立一个朋友圈，看看会怎样。这就像寻找伴侣、寻找爱情，都是人性使然。

Usually they also find you. It's like with the ideas, no. What happens is you're in the right community around you. Because you've been building a network, because you can't do it alone. So you have to create this network around you of relationships that are not transactions but relationships over time that you really cherish. People you talk to, share vulnerable or nascent ideas with, or crazy opinions, and then you argue them through. But you start to see resonate. And it's not about age, it's just about this connection. I have mentors. Obviously when I was young, all my mentors were older. And as I get older, I have mentors who are younger than me or the same age. They're not all just older. So it's about that connection, about being on that same wavelength. But they also counterbalance you, they complement you in some way. Like my best mentors had nothing to do with technology, they didn't know anything about technology the way we know it. They were all about human nature and they could reflect that and help me get more human focused and more empathetic. Because I was so detailed in the technology, I needed to see from other perspectives. But then they wanted to learn more about the technology, or they thought that this idea was so great that it should exist, now let's work together on that. So it's really they have to find you and you have to find them, and that's by sharing. You just don't go and look it up on the internet and say who are the best mentors in the world. It just doesn't work that way. So form a network of people and see where it goes. It's like finding relationships, finding love, all that kind of human nature.

风险投资家，钱。风投总体上对生意是帮助还是伤害？在早期阶段，在开发第一个版本的过程中，金钱在开发和部署一个绝妙想法时的建设性和破坏性力量是什么？

Venture capitalists, money. Do VCs help or hurt a business in general? In those early stages, in the chase of developing a V1, what is the constructive and destructive power of money in the development and deployment of a brilliant idea?

我见过出色的风险投资家，也见过糟糕的。有些更关心他们的有限合伙人（LP），而不是创业者。当然，说到底，每个人都在其中，尤其是风投，他们必须为有限合伙人带来回报，那些投资他们的人，他们必须管理好那笔钱。但当风投在 LP 的需求和创业者的需求之间失去平衡，没有制衡，创业者可能非常努力，但风投看不到两年内能退出，就撒手不管，当价值交换只有金钱，没有指导或想法等其他东西，当关系不是关系而是交易时，金钱就是有毒的。因为钱到处都能找到。也许过去一个月更难一些，但你仍然能找到有钱人，他们认同你的使命，愿意支持你的使命，并且能成为导师。不总是，不是所有人，但有些人可以成为导师。如果他们站在你这边，那就非常强大，因为不只是 1+1=2，而是更大的东西。他们可以带来他们的人脉网络、公司网络，以及他们合作过的、可能想加入你使命的人。这就是那种风投和聪明的钱。但你必须建立关系。人们会说：“哦，看那个估值，哦，投资我的风投是大品牌。”不，归根结底是那个合伙人是谁，他们有多经验丰富。别只给我品牌，给我那个人，因为那才是我要互动的人。

I have seen brilliant venture capitalists, I have seen horrible ones. Ones that care about their LPs more than they care about the entrepreneurs. Of course, everyone's in it, at the end of the day, especially venture capital, they have to give a return to their limited partners, the people who invest in money that they have to shepherd and make sure it's watched over properly. But when there's not a balance, a pushback in a venture capitalist between what the LP needs and what the entrepreneur needs, and the entrepreneur might be trying really hard, but if the VC doesn't see the exit happening in two years and then just leaves them hanging, when the value exchange is only money and not mentorship or ideas or other things, when there's not a relationship but really a transaction, that's when money is toxic. Because you can get money everywhere. Maybe it's a little harder today over the last month, but you can still find people with money who are on that mission, who want to enable your mission and can be mentors. Not always, not all of them, but some of them can be mentors. But if they're on your side, then it's incredibly powerful, because not just one plus one equals two, it's something bigger than that. Then they can bring their networks of people, their networks of companies, and other people they worked with that might want to join your mission. That's the kind of venture capitalist and smart money that's out there. But you have to build a relationship. People go, "Oh, look at that valuation, oh, it's the brand name of the VC that's investing me." No, it boils down to who's that partner and how experienced are they. Don't just give me the brand, give me the person, because that's the person I'm going to be interacting with.

在你写的所有精彩内容中，这个问题可能不重要，但我觉得很有意思。公司需要律师吗？为什么？需要什么样的律师？你写过这个游戏的价值，法律游戏。我们为什么需要律师？

It seems like out of all the brilliant things you write about, this might not be an important question, but it's fascinating to me. Does the company need lawyers? And why, and what kind? You write about the value of this game, the legal game. Why do we need lawyers?

律师的“为什么”？对，就是律师的“为什么”。谢谢。你甚至把问题都问出来了：我们只需要在你问的每件事前面加个“为什么”。为什么需要律师？为什么连黑手党都有律师？托尼·索普拉诺、疤面煞星，他们都有律师。为什么？因为世界上有些事情你并不总是考虑到：政府、法律、竞争对手。因为你太专注于自己正在做的事，他们必须为你把关。最好的律师是那些试图与你合作、促成你的事业、并看到灰色地带的人。法律不是非黑即白的，而是如何解释的。所以他们可以帮助以某种方式解释事物，或以某种方式推动事物，从而促成改变或允许改变发生。因为如果你的律师总是像你提到的公关人员那样，总是对所有事情说“不”，因为他们的工作就是说不或者也许，他们永远不会说“是”。你也说过他们的工作就是说“不”并按小时收费。没错，这很压抑。如果你不想知道，就别问他们，因为你会得到一个“不”或者“也许”，而且你还会为此付费。所以，要有一个伙伴，让他们加入你的团队，帮你看到你看不到的东西，一些后果，他们帮你控制或改变你的措辞。比如，“你会因为这个广告被起诉吗？”“是的，改一个词就好了。”所以你需要一个伙伴。大多数时候，尤其是工程师或设计师，他们认为律师只会扼杀创意。实际上，如果你做对了，找对了人，律师可以为你打开一个全新的世界，因为解释和做事的方式。而且他们帮你避免陷入那些毫无意义的愚蠢小错误的痛苦中。你搬起石头砸了自己的脚，却还不知道，甚至不知道自己手里有枪。

Why of lawyers? Yes, exactly. The why of lawyers. Thank you. You even do the question: we just have to put "why" in front of everything you ask. Why lawyers? Why even mafiosos had lawyers? Tony Soprano, Scarface, all of them had lawyers. Why? Because there are things in this world that you don't always consider: in the government, in laws, in competitors. Because you're so focused on what you're doing, they have to watch out for you. The best kind of lawyers are the ones who try to work with you to enable what you're doing and see gray areas. Law is not black or white, it's how it's interpreted. So they can help interpret things a certain way or help push on things a certain way to get change to happen or allow change to happen. Because if you have lawyers who are always like you were talking about PR people, if you have lawyers who are always saying no to everything because their job is to really say no or maybe, they'll never say yes. And you also said their job was to say no and bill you by the hour. Exactly, it's depressing. If you don't want to know, don't ask them, because you're going to get a no, maybe, and you'll get charged for it anyway. So to have a partner, to have them on your team to help you see some things you don't see, some consequences, they help to rein that in or change your language. Like, "Are you going to get sued for this ad?" "Yeah, just change this one word and it helps." So you need to have a partner. Most of the time, especially engineers or designers, they see lawyers as only stifling. Lawyers can actually, if you do it right and you have the right type, they can actually open up a whole new world for you because of the interpretation and how we go about doing things. And they help you not get bogged down in the pain of stupid little mistakes that didn't mean anything. You shot yourself in the foot and you didn't even know it, you didn't even know you were carrying the gun.

跳转一下，查尔斯·布考斯基曾写道：“找到你热爱的东西，让它杀死你。”所以问题是关于工作与生活的平衡。这就像找到一个想法，让它追逐你，是的，但更激进一点。那么什么是工作与生活的平衡？

Just to jump around, Charles Bukowski once wrote, "Find what you love and let it kill you." So the question is about work-life balance. That's like finding an idea, let it chase you, yes, but a little more aggressive. So what is work-life balance?

那种能最大化成功和幸福的平衡是什么样的？存在工作与生活的平衡这回事吗？你能谈谈这个吗？你的工作就是你的生活，我是在积极的意义上说这话的。

Balance like that maximizes success and happiness? Is there such a thing as work-life balance? Can you speak to this? Your work is your life, and I mean that in the positive sense.

当你投身于一项真正重要的使命，并且知道自己不仅能影响自己，还能影响他人的生活时，那是非常有成就感的。那不是工作，而是使命。你接受了它。但即便如此，你仍然需要设定边界。在 General Magic——那部精彩的纪录片，如果没人看过，你一定要看，太棒了——我身心俱疲，社交也不健康，因为我醒着的每一分钟都投入其中，倾注了全部心血。当它遭遇惨败时——我们做 iPhone 早了 15 年——一切崩塌了。我一无所有。在那次创伤之后，我不得不恢复社交、情感和身体健康。我放下了所有。我从中学到，即使你可能全身心投入工作，也需要在外部找到平衡。这并不意味着你每周工作三天、休息四天之类的。你仍然像以前一样努力工作，但你要确保思考时间在工作期间，而不是凌晨 3 点还在反复琢磨。你利用工具把这些想法存入数据库、记在纸上或其他地方，这样你可以回头查看，而不必一直记着。因为大多数人都不写下来，所以他们只能坐在那里想‘我得记住这个，我得记住这个’。如果你把它放进工具里，然后可以回来再看，你就能以全新的状态回归。

When you're on a mission that really matters and you know that you can really affect not just yourself but other people's lives, that is very rewarding. That's not work; it's a mission. You adopt it. But that said, you still need to have boundaries. At General Magic — wonderful documentary, if no one's seen it, you've got to see it, it's amazing — I was physically and mentally unhealthy, socially unhealthy as well, because I put every waking minute into this thing, every ounce of me into it. And when it was a spectacular disaster — we were making the iPhone 15 years too early — the bottom fell out. I had nothing left. I had to get healthy socially, emotionally, physically after that trauma. I let everything go. I learned from that that you have to, even though you might put everything into your work, you need to find balance outside of it. Now, that doesn't mean you're working three days a week and four days off or whatever. You're still working as hard as ever, but what you're doing is making sure that when your thinking time is during work, you're not ruminating at 3 AM. You use the tools you have to put those ideas into databases or on pages or somewhere else so you can go back and look at them, so you're not always having to remember. Because what happens is most people don't write stuff down, so they just sit here thinking, 'I've got to remember this, I've got to remember this.' If you just put it into the tools and you can come back to it, you can come back fresh.

很多时候，我们都在反复思考需要完成什么、记住所有事情，而不是真正去做工作。这很有意思。你看，如果你把它写在纸上，你就能暂时摆脱它，获得片刻的宁静。

A lot of the time is about ruminating about what I need to get done and remembering everything instead of doing the work. That's fascinating. See, if you just put it down on paper, you can actually escape it for a time, to have peace for a time.

你提到了 General Magic。让我问你那个俄罗斯问题：你生命中最黑暗的时刻是什么？你脑海中曾到过哪些最黑暗的地方？你谈到过，如果你在创业中做这类事情，就一定会面临危机。绝对如此。如果你做得对，你就会面对它。那么对你个人来说，你生命中有哪些比较艰难的时刻？

You mentioned General Magic. Let me ask you the Russian question: what's been the darkest moments of your life? What are some of the darkest places you've gone in your mind? You've talked about how if you're doing these kinds of things with startups, you're going to have to face a crisis. Absolutely. If you're doing it right, you're going to face it. So for you personally, where were some of the tougher moments in your life?

成长过程中，我 15 年内换了 12 所学校。我永远是那个新来的孩子。设身处地想想。你被欺负过吗？当然有。但更甚的是，我是那个玩电脑的极客。还记得 80 年代的书呆子吗？你可能不知道，但相信我，我们被嘲笑过。‘这些电脑是什么？这些东西是什么？’你缩在角落里，他们都在聚会或做别的，而我坐在那里。他们觉得‘这家伙就是个外星人。这个新来的家伙是谁？’然后你会问一些聪明的问题，但你不敢成为班上最聪明的，因为那样你也会被欺负。而且你是新来的，所以处在一个不断变化的环境中，你格格不入，你只是问问题，因为你认为那是该回答的正确问题，但他们却说‘你让我们显得很糟糕。别问这些聪明的问题，因为你让我们做更多的工作。’所以那真的很艰难。而且我还要搬家，对吧？我没有互联网可以和人保持联系。没有互联网。电话费每分钟两美元。所以也很孤独。很孤独。我是挂钥匙儿童。我有哥哥，但他是个滑板少年，他有不同的社交方式。他喜欢在外面玩那些东西。我喜欢电脑。所以即使在家庭里，我也是独自和电脑在一起。我完全孤独。只有我一个人。但后来你能找到其他极客，对吧？但我们只有几个人，我们组成了这个小团体。但当你搬走之后，我不得不使用 BBS（公告板系统）和拨号调制解调器。然后我开始入侵电话系统，获取当年 MCI 和 Sprint 的免费代码，用来打长途电话，免费打电话给我的朋友——另一边的极客们，或者廉价拨入世界另一端的 BBS。所以这是一种亚文化，完全不被接受，不像今天那些成为世界首富的英雄们。所以那是第一段创伤。然后下一个真的是 General Magic，它的结局，就像我之前描述的，以及如何把自己拉出来。我变得如此封闭在那个极客和构建东西的世界里，以至于我撕毁了所有社会关系，因为它就像毒品。我上瘾了。我是个瘾君子。我必须戒掉。

Growing up, I went to 12 schools in 15 years. I was always the new kid. Put yourself in those shoes. Were you picked on? Well, absolutely. But even more so, I was the geek with the computer. Remember the nerds in the 80s? You probably don't know this, but believe me, we were made fun of. 'What were these computers? What were these things?' You're off in a corner, they're all off partying or whatever, and I'm sitting there. They're like, 'This guy is just this alien. Who's this new guy who just showed up?' And then you would ask the smart questions, and you couldn't be the smartest in the class because then you'd get picked on too. And you're the new kid, so you're in this environment that's ever-changing, you don't fit in, and you are just asking questions because you think they're the right questions to answer, but then they're like, 'You're making us look bad. Don't ask these smart questions because you make us do more work.' So right there, it's pretty tough. And I'm moving cities, right? I didn't have the internet to stay connected to people. There was no internet. Phone calls were two dollars a minute. So it was lonely too. It was lonely. I was a latchkey kid. I had my brother, but he was a skateboarder and he had a different social way of working. He loved to do that stuff and be outside. I loved the computer. So even in the family, I was alone with the computer. I was absolutely alone. That was just me. But then you could find the other geeks, right? But there were just a few of us, and we made this little thing. But then when you moved away, I had to use a BBS, a bulletin board system, and a dial-up modem. And then I started hacking the phone system to get free codes of MCI and Sprint back in the day to get long distance, to get free codes to call my friends, the geeks on the other side, or to dial into a BBS cheaply that was in another part of the world. So this was this subculture, and that was not accepted in any way, and not the heroes that you see today that are the richest people in the world and everything. So that was the first set of trauma. And then the next one really was General Magic, the end of that, like I described before, and pulling yourself out. I became so insular in that world of geeking out and building stuff that I just tore all the social ties, because it was just a drug. I was hooked on that. I was a junkie. I had to get clean.

而这造就了现在的你，经过淬炼的你。

And that made you who you are, tempered.

史蒂夫·乔布斯已经不在了。总有一天你也会离开我们。这就是生命的本质：它会结束。所以无论你给这个世界带来了多少不可思议的东西，无论你创造了多少发明，你也会消亡。你考虑过这个吗？你害怕死亡吗？

Steve Jobs is no longer with us. One day you also will no longer be with us. That's the thing about this life: it ends. So no matter how many incredible things you brought to this world, no matter how many inventions you built, you too shall perish. Do you think about this? Are you afraid of your death?

我不害怕死亡。我是无神论者，但我思考灵魂。因为即使我是无神论者，我仍然思考灵魂。灵魂是你离开时灌输给他人、得以延续的东西。它不是某种神奇地存在于太空中的东西；而是你传授给共事过的人以及你所拥有的那些关系的东西。那个灵魂活在他们的故事里。通过构建，我希望那些故事能保持相关性，因为它们关乎人性。它们不是关于谁知道下一个 iPhone 或下一个 iPod 是什么。我有幸能够创造并与他人合作的那些东西，都是短暂的。iPod 已经消失了。本周宣布 iPod 停产了。而在那之后，是那些人际联系，是你帮助他人成长的过程，就像他们帮助我一样。就像比尔·坎贝尔或史蒂夫·乔布斯已经离世，但他们让我变得更好。这就是我所相信的灵魂。

I am not afraid of my death. I am an atheist, and I think about the soul. Because I do, even though I'm an atheist, I think about the soul. And the soul is the thing that you instill in others when you go, that lives on. It's not this thing that's magically in space; it's the thing that you've imparted onto people that you worked with and those relationships you've had. And that soul lives on in the stories that they tell. And through build, I'm hopeful that those stories stay relevant because they're human nature. They're not about who knows what the next iPhone thing is or the next iPod thing. The stuff that I have been able, the privilege to make and work with people, those are all ephemeral. The iPod's gone now. This week it was announced iPod's dead. And after it is, those human connections, it's that growth that you've helped someone, just like they helped me. Just like Bill Campbell or Steve Jobs is gone, but they made me be better. That's the soul that I believe in.

你这么说很有意思。所以即使 iPod 是一个时代的终结，每天使用它，我认为它影响的人数……我想灵魂是由人承载的。没错。有时你创造的产品是一种传输机制，是容器，人们感受到了那份爱，那份爱改变了它，即使他们不再拥有那个容器。这样，灵魂就永存了。

That's fascinating that you say that. So even though the iPod is an end of an era, using it every day, I think the number of people that it impacted is just... I suppose the soul is carried by the people. Exactly. Sometimes the products you create are the sort of the transport mechanism, it's the vessel, and they felt the love, and that love transformed it, even if they don't have the vessel anymore. And that way, the soul lives.

就像身体是容器，这个比喻很妙。你觉得我们为什么在这里？生命的意义是什么，托尼？天哪，我们聊得真广。生命的意义。为什么？因为你说过发新闻稿很重要。好吧。人类，如果地球上的生命，如果这个东西——意识、坠入爱河、建造桥梁、iPod 和火箭、试图向宇宙延伸——为什么？你觉得我们为什么在做这些？有什么原因吗？

Just like the body is the vessel that's beautifully put. Why do you think we're here? What's the meaning of life, Tony? Jesus, we're going all around. Meaning of life. Why? Because you said it's important to have a press release. Okay. Humanity, if life on Earth, if this thing, the consciousness, the falling in love and building bridges and iPods and rockets and trying to extend out into the cosmos, why? Why do you think we're doing it? Is there anything?

我们天生就是好奇的个体。我们总是在寻找意义，总是试图赋予某物意义或理解某物。通过这个过程，这就像进化论，对吧？达尔文主义。这不过是刻在我们存在最底层的东西，由好奇心驱动。由好奇心驱动，并在此过程中创造出一些很酷的东西。

We are naturally curious individuals. We are always looking for meaning, always trying to ascribe meaning to something or understand something. And through that, it's just like evolution, right? Darwinism. It's just that thing that's baked into our being at the most fundamental level, driven by curiosity. Driven by curiosity and creating some pretty cool things along the way.

托尼，说到酷的东西，你创造了一些有史以来最酷的东西。除此之外，你本身就是一个了不起的人。你今天能坐下来和我聊天，是我莫大的荣幸。

Tony, you and speaking of cool things, you've created some of the coolest things ever. And on top of that, you're just an amazing human being. It's a huge honor that you'll sit and talk to me today.

这很有趣，莱克斯，太棒了。我不知道会聊到哪里，但让我们聊吧。我一直在找座位。我很想七、八、九、六、七，是的。我们一起去闲逛、吃晚餐，随便聊聊各种事情。我很想继续聊下去。

This is a fun Lex, this is great. I didn't know where it was going and I'm let's talk. I've been looking for seats. I would love seven, eight, nine, six, seven, yes. Let's go hang out and have dinner and just rap about all kinds of crates. I'd love to continue this.

我也是。非常感谢。谢谢。

I would too. Thank you so much. Thank you.

感谢收听本期与托尼·法德尔的对话。要支持本播客，请查看描述中的赞助商。现在，让我用托尼·法德尔本人的话作为结尾。与团队一起构建事物最美好的部分是，你与他人并肩而行。你们同时低头看路，又抬头眺望地平线。有些人能看到你看不到的东西，而你也能看到别人看不见的事物。所以不要认为工作就是把自己锁在房间里。很大一部分工作是和团队一起前行。工作就是一起到达目的地，或者找到新目的地，并带领团队一起前往。感谢收听，希望下次再见。

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tony Fadell. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Tony Fadell himself. The most wonderful part of building something together with a team is that you're walking side by side with other people. You're all looking at your feet and scanning the horizon at the same time. Some people will see things you can't, and you will see things that are invisible to everyone else. So don't think doing the work just means locking yourself into a room. A huge part of it is walking with your team. The work is reaching your destination together or finding a new destination and bringing the team with you. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.