Joining Apple Computer 加入苹果电脑
作者： Bill Atkinson 日期： April 1979 人物： Bill Atkinson, Jef Raskin, Steve Jobs, Susan Kare 主题： Inspiration, MacPaint, QuickDraw, HyperCard 概括： Reflections on the 40th anniversary of my joining Apple
40 years ago today, I joined Apple Computer on April 27, 1978. It was a big turning point in my life and I am glad I said “Yes”.
40 年前的今天，我于 1978 年 4 月 27 日加入了苹果电脑。
这是我人生的一个重大转折点，我很高兴我说“是”。
I was working on my PhD in neuroscience with Doug Bowden at the University of Washington Regional Primate Research Center. Jef Raskin, a professor and friend from my undergraduate days at UC San Diego, called and urged me to join him at an exciting new startup called Apple Computer.
我当时正在华盛顿大学地区灵长类研究中心与道格·鲍登一起攻读神经科学博士学位。
杰夫·拉斯金 (Jef Raskin) 是我在加州大学圣地亚哥分校读本科时的一位教授和朋友，他打电话邀请我加入他，加入一家名为苹果电脑 (Apple Computer) 的令人兴奋的新初创公司。
I told him I had to finish my PhD, a required credential for researching brains and consciousness. But Jef would not take “No” for an answer, and sent me roundtrip airplane tickets with a note: “Just visit for a weekend, no strings attached.” My dad lived in nearby Los Gatos so I decided to visit.
我告诉他我必须完成博士学位，这是研究大脑和意识所需的证书。
但杰夫不肯接受“不”的回答，并给我寄来了往返机票，并附上一张纸条：“只是来度周末，不附加任何条件。”
我父亲住在附近的洛斯加托斯，所以我决定去参观。
I don’t know what Jef told Steve Jobs about me, but Steve spent the entire day recruiting me. He introduced me to all 30 employees at Apple Computer. They seemed intelligent and passionate, and looked like they were having fun, but that was not enough to lure me away from my graduate studies.
我不知道杰夫告诉了史蒂夫·乔布斯关于我的事，但史蒂夫花了一整天的时间来招募我。
他把我介绍给苹果电脑公司的全部 30 名员工。
他们看起来聪明又热情，看起来很开心，但这并不足以吸引我放弃研究生学习。
Toward the end of the day, Steve took me aside and told me that any hot new technology I read about was actually two years old. “There is a lag time between when someting is invented, and when it is available to the public. If you want to make a difference in the world, you have to be ahead of that lag time. Come to Apple where you can invent the future and change millions of people’s lives.”
那天快结束时，史蒂夫把我拉到一边，告诉我，我读到的任何热门新技术实际上已经有两年了。
“某些东西从被发明到向公众提供之间存在一段时间滞后。
如果你想改变世界，你就必须领先于那个滞后时间。
来到苹果，你可以创造未来并改变数百万人的生活。”
Then he gave me a visual: “Think how fun it is to surf on the front edge of a wave, and how not-fun to dog paddle on the tail edge of the same wave.” That image persuaded me, and within two weeks I had quit my graduate program, moved to Silicon Valley, and was working at Apple Computer. I never finished my neuroscience degree, and my dad was mad at me for wasting ten years of college education that he helped to pay for. I was pretty nervous, but knew I had made the right choice.
然后他给了我一个视觉效果：“想想看，在波浪的前缘冲浪是多么有趣，而在同一波浪的尾缘上狗式划桨是多么不好玩。”
这个形象说服了我，两周内我就放弃了研究生课程，搬到了硅谷，在苹果电脑公司工作。
我从未完成神经科学学位，我父亲对我很生气，因为我浪费了他资助的十年大学教育。
我很紧张，但我知道我做出了正确的选择。
Steve Jobs and I became close friends. We went for long walks at Castle Rock State Park, shared meals and wide-ranging conversations about life and design. We bounced ideas off each other. Sometimes he would start a conversation with “Here’s a crazy idea…”, and the idea would go back and forth and evolve into a serious discussion, or occasionally a workable design. Steve listened to me and challenged me. His support at Apple allowed me to made a difference in the world.
史蒂夫·乔布斯和我成为了亲密的朋友。我们在罗克堡州立公园散步，一起吃饭，并就生活和设计进行了广泛的对话。
我们互相交换想法。有时他会以“这是一个疯狂的想法......”开始对话，这个想法会来来回回并演变成认真的讨论，或者偶尔是一个可行的设计。
史蒂夫听了我的话并向我提出了挑战。
他在苹果公司的支持让我能够改变世界。
I wanted to port the UCSD Pascal system to the Apple II. We needed to build software in a cumulative fashion with libraries of reusable modules, and Apple BASIC didn’t even have local variables. My manager said “No”, but I went over his head to Steve. Steve thought Apple users were fine with BASIC and 6502 assembly language, but since I argued so passionately, he would give me two weeks to prove him wrong. Within hours I boarded a plane to San Diego, worked like crazy for two weeks, and returned with a working UCSD Pascal System that Apple ended up using to bootstrap the Lisa development.
我想将 UCSD Pascal 系统移植到 Apple II 上。
我们需要使用可重用模块库以累积方式构建软件，而 Apple BASIC 甚至没有局部变量。
我的经理说“不”，但我越过他的头去找史蒂夫。
Steve 认为 Apple 用户可以使用 BASIC 和 6502 汇编语言，但由于我争论得如此激烈，他给了我两周的时间来证明他是错的。
几个小时之内，我登上了飞往圣地亚哥的飞机，疯狂地工作了两周，然后带着一个可用的 UCSD Pascal 系统回来了，苹果最终用它来引导 Lisa 的开发。
After the UCSD Pascal system shipped, Steve asked me to work on on Apple’s new Lisa project. The Apple II had optional game paddle knobs, but software writers could not count on them because not every user had them. I convinced project manager Tom Whitney that the Lisa computer needed to include a mouse in the box so we could write software that counted on a pointing device. Otherwise a graphics editor would have to be designed to be usable with only cursor keys.
加州大学圣地亚哥分校的 Pascal 系统发货后，史蒂夫邀请我参与苹果公司的新 Lisa 项目。
Apple II 有可选的游戏手柄旋钮，但软件编写者不能指望它们，因为并非每个用户都有它们。
我说服项目经理 Tom Whitney，Lisa 计算机需要在包装盒中包含一个鼠标，这样我们就可以编写依赖于指点设备的软件。
否则，图形编辑器必须设计为仅可通过光标键使用。
The Apple II displayed white text on a black background. I argued that to do graphics properly we had to switch to a white background like paper. It works fine to invert text when printing, but it would not work for a photo to be printed in negative. The Lisa hardware team complained the screen would flicker too much, and they would need faster refresh with more expensive RAM to prevent smearing when scrolling. Steve listened to all the pros and cons then sided with a white background for the sake of graphics.
Apple II 在黑色背景上显示白色文本。我认为，为了正确地制作图形，我们必须切换到像纸张一样的白色背景。
打印时反转文本效果很好，但对于以负片打印照片则不起作用。 Lisa 硬件团队抱怨屏幕闪烁太多，他们需要使用更昂贵的 RAM 进行更快的刷新，以防止滚动时出现拖尾现象。
史蒂夫听取了所有的优点和缺点，然后为了图形的缘故选择了白色背景。
The Lisa and Macintosh were designed with full bitmap displays. This gave tremendous flexibility in what you could draw, but at a big cost. There were a lot of pixels to set and clear anytime you wanted to draw a character, line, image, or area. I wrote the optimized assembly language QuickDraw graphics primitives that all Lisa and Macintosh applications called to write the pixels. QuickDraw performance made the bitmap display and graphical user interface practical (see I Still Remember Regions).
Lisa 和 Macintosh 设计有完整的位图显示。
这为您可以绘制的内容提供了极大的灵活性，但成本也很高。
当您想要绘制字符、线条、图像或区域时，需要设置和清除大量像素。
我编写了优化的汇编语言 QuickDraw 图形基元，所有 Lisa 和 Macintosh 应用程序都调用它来写入像素。
QuickDraw 性能使位图显示和图形用户界面变得实用（请参阅我仍然记得区域）。
To handle overlapping windows and graphics clipping, I wrote the original Lisa Window Manager. I also wrote the Lisa Event Manager and Menu Manager, and invented the pull-down menu. Andy Hertzfeld adapted these for use on the Mac, and with these and QuickDraw, my code accounted for almost two thirds of the original Macintosh ROM.
为了处理重叠窗口和图形剪切，我编写了原始的 Lisa 窗口管理器。
我还编写了 Lisa 事件管理器和菜单管理器，并发明了下拉菜单。
Andy Hertzfeld 对这些进行了改编，以便在 Mac 上使用，并且通过这些和 QuickDraw，我的代码几乎占了原始 Macintosh ROM 的三分之二。
I had fun writing the MacPaint bitmap painting program that shipped with every Mac (see MacPaint Evolution). I learned a lot from watching Susan Kare using my early versions. MacPaint showed people how fun and creative a computer with a graphics display and a mouse could be.
我很高兴编写每台 Mac 附带的 MacPaint 位图绘画程序（请参阅 MacPaint Evolution）。
通过观看 Susan Kare 使用我的早期版本，我学到了很多东西。
MacPaint 向人们展示了配备图形显示器和鼠标的计算机是多么有趣和富有创意。
The portrait of Steve and me was made by Norman Seeff at Steve’s home in December 1983, just before the Mac was introduced. Steve’s expression looks like he is calculating how to harness this kid’s energy. Some say Steve used me, but I say he harnessed and motivated me, and drew out my best creative energy. It was exciting working at Apple, knowing that whatever we invented would be used by millions of people.
我和史蒂夫的肖像是 Norman Seeff 于 1983 年 12 月在史蒂夫家里制作的，就在 Mac 推出之前。
史蒂夫的表情看起来像是在计算如何利用这个孩子的能量。
有人说史蒂夫利用了我，但我说他利用并激励了我，并激发了我最好的创造力。
在苹果工作是令人兴奋的，因为我知道无论我们发明什么，都会被数百万人使用。
The image showing the Mac team is from the cover of Andy Hertzfeld’s great little book, “Revolution in the Valley, The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made.”
显示 Mac 团队的图片来自安迪·赫茨菲尔德 (Andy Hertzfeld) 的伟大小书《硅谷的革命，Mac 制造过程的疯狂伟大故事》的封面。
Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system that enabled non-programmers to make their own interactive media. HyperCard used a metaphor of stacks of cards containing graphics, text, buttons, and links that could take you to another card. The HyperTalk scripting language implemented by Dan Winkler was a gentle introduction to event-based programming. Steve Jobs wanted me to leave Apple and join him at Next, but I chose to stay with Apple to finish HyperCard. Apple published HyperCard in 1987, six years before Mosaic, the first web browser.
受到 1985 年一次拓展思维的 LSD 之旅的启发，我设计了 HyperCard 创作系统，使非程序员能够制作自己的交互式媒体。
HyperCard 使用了一堆卡片的比喻，其中包含图形、文本、按钮和可以将您带到另一张卡片的链接。
Dan Winkler 实现的 HyperTalk 脚本语言是对基于事件的编程的温和介绍。
史蒂夫·乔布斯希望我离开苹果并加入他的 Next，但我选择留在苹果完成 HyperCard。 Apple 于 1987 年发布了 HyperCard，比第一个网络浏览器 Mosaic 早了六年。
I worked at Apple for 12 years, making tools to empower creative people, and helping Apple grow from 30 employees to 15,000. In 1990, with John Sculley’s blessing, I left Apple with Marc Porat and Andy Hertzfeld to co-found General Magic and help to invent the personal communicator.
我在 Apple 工作了 12 年，开发工具来增强创意人员的能力，并帮助 Apple 从 30 名员工发展到 15,000 名员工。
1990 年，在约翰·斯卡利 (John Sculley) 的支持下，我离开了苹果公司，与马克·波拉特 (Marc Porat) 和安迪·赫茨菲尔德 (Andy Hertzfeld) 共同创立了 General Magic，并帮助发明了个人通讯器。
The road I took 40 years ago has made all the difference. I still follow research in consciousness, but I am more than satisfied with the contributions I was able to make with my years at Apple. I am grateful to Jef Raskin and Steve Jobs for believing in me and giving me the opportunity to change the world for the better.
40年前我所走的道路改变了一切。我仍然关注意识方面的研究，但我对自己在苹果工作期间所做出的贡献感到非常满意。
我感谢杰夫·拉斯金和史蒂夫·乔布斯对我的信任，并给了我让世界变得更美好的机会。