第二部分：NeXT与皮克斯时期

原文标题: Part II, 1985–1996

核心概念

  1. NeXT (Starting NeXT) - 与麦金塔团队一起创建新公司
  2. 皮克斯 (Pixar) - 1000万美元投资，最终追加到6000万
  3. 乔治·卢卡斯 (George Lucas) - 卢卡斯影业创始人
  4. 卢卡斯影业 (Lucasfilm) - 皮克斯最初是其电脑部门
  5. 艾德·卡特穆尔 (Ed Catmull) - 皮克斯联合创始人
  6. 技术与人文 (Technology and liberal arts) - 技术在讲故事中的运用
  7. 精简聚焦 (Honing to essence) - 学会将公司精简到本质
  8. 十年磨一剑 (Overnight success took a long time) - 十年困难后的成功
  9. 玩具总动员 (Toy Story) - 1995年首映
  10. 迪士尼 (Disney) - 皮克斯合作伙伴
  11. 麦金塔 (Macintosh) - 麦金塔团队成员参与NeXT

内容

中文翻译

史蒂夫离开苹果后的岁月是他职业生涯中最艰难的时期——也是最具塑造性的时期。

决心打造一家新的伟大电脑公司，他与麦金塔团队的几位成员一起创办了NeXT。"我们会犯一大堆错误，但至少它们将是新的、创造性的错误，"他预测道。

大约在同一时间，史蒂夫在一家叫皮克斯的小公司投资了1000万美元。这是一个小型电脑图形运营部门，刚从电影制作人乔治·卢卡斯的帝国中分拆出来。皮克斯的技术专长吸引了史蒂夫；它的最初产品是一台售价超过10万美元的高端图形电脑。

NeXT和皮克斯很快都陷入了困境。1988年首次亮相的NeXT电脑系统功能强大，充满了史蒂夫喜爱的人性化触感。它视觉上引人注目，使用直观，带有高质量音频和内置的莎士比亚全集。但它上市晚且价格昂贵——销量很差。在NeXT创立六年内，除史蒂夫外的整个创始团队都辞职了。

与此同时，皮克斯靠销售电脑和软件，后来制作动画广告勉强维持生存。该公司也在制作获奖短片，这些短片迷住了史蒂夫。这种技术在精彩讲故事中的运用体现了史蒂夫最喜欢的一件事：在技术与人文的交叉口工作。这些短片点燃了史蒂夫的热情，让他不断为皮克斯开支票，最终投资了约6000万美元。

但正如史蒂夫所说，这些电影"在背景中"，不是公司的重点。他描述皮克斯早期的商业战略是"找到付账单的方法"，他后来推测公司当时没有垮掉的唯一原因是领导团队"都会沮丧……但不是同时都沮丧"。

如果这些年他有时似乎对技术的可能性感到失望——"这些东西不会改变世界的。真的不会，"他以罕见的悲观情绪告诉记者——他的世界也在工作之外扩展。他珍视自己的隐私，谈到他的公众形象时说："我认为那是我著名的双胞胎兄弟。那不是我。"

史蒂夫学会了如何将公司精简到其本质，即使这很痛苦。他将NeXT的重点转向销售软件。这一转变意味着关闭一家工厂并解雇NeXT 530名员工中的200多名。与此同时，皮克斯剥离了其广告和硬件业务，并与迪士尼达成协议，都是为了追求有时似乎不可能的梦想：制作全电脑动画长片。

经过近十年的困难，精简后的NeXT和皮克斯都变成了不太可能的成功故事。1995年底，皮克斯在同一个月首映了《玩具总动员》并举行了首次公开募股。一年后，需要操作系统的苹果以4.27亿美元收购了NeXT。"如果你真的仔细观察，"史蒂夫喜欢说，"大多数一夜成名花了很长时间。"

英文原文

Part II, 1985–1996, Make Something Wonderful

Part II, 1985–1996

The years after Steve left Apple were among the toughest of his career—and the most formative.

Determined to build a new great computer company, he started NeXT with several members of the Macintosh team. "We'll make a whole bunch of mistakes, but at least they'll be new and creative ones," he predicted.

Around the same time, Steve invested $10 million in a small company called Pixar. It was a tiny computer graphics operation, newly spun off from filmmaker George Lucas's empire. The technical expertise at Pixar attracted Steve; its initial product was a high-end graphics computer that cost more than $100,000.

Both NeXT and Pixar quickly ran into trouble. The NeXT computer system, which debuted in 1988, was powerful and packed with the humanistic touches Steve loved. It was visually striking and intuitive to use, with high-quality audio and the complete works of Shakespeare built in. But it was also late to market and expensive—and it sold poorly. Within six years of NeXT's launch, the entire founding team, other than Steve, had resigned.

Pixar, meanwhile, was eking out an existence selling computers and software and, later, animating commercials. The company was also making award-winning short films that charmed Steve. This use of technology in service of brilliant storytelling embodied one of his favorite things: work at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. The short films fired Steve's enthusiasm and kept him writing check after check to Pixar, ultimately investing some $60 million.

But the films were, as Steve put it, "in the background," not the company's focus. He described Pixar's early business strategy as "find a way to pay the bills," and he later speculated that the only reason the company didn't fall apart then was that the leadership team "would all get depressed … but not all of us at once."

If at times in these years he seemed disappointed by the possibilities of technology—"this stuff doesn't change the world. It really doesn't," he told a reporter in an uncharacteristic flash of pessimism—his world was also expanding beyond his work. He treasured his privacy, saying of his public persona, "I think of it as my well-known twin brother. It's not me."

Steve learned how to hone a company to its essence, even when it was painful. He shifted NeXT's focus to selling software. The shift meant closing a factory and laying off more than two hundred of NeXT's five hundred and thirty employees. Meanwhile, Pixar stripped away its advertising and hardware businesses and entered into an agreement with Disney, all to pursue what sometimes seemed an impossible dream: to make fully computer-animated feature films.

After nearly a decade of difficulty, the streamlined NeXT and Pixar both transformed into unlikely success stories. At the end of 1995, Pixar premiered Toy Story in the same month it held its initial public offering. A year later, Apple, in need of operating-system software, bought NeXT for $427 million. "If you really look closely," Steve liked to say, "most overnight successes took a long time."

思考与洞察

引用此页面的内容
目录
迪士尼
精简聚焦
皮克斯
玩具总动员
技术与人文
卢卡斯影业
十年磨一剑
乔治·卢卡斯
NeXT