Mac OS X如何一步步走来【10周年故事总结】

原作者：
来源How Mac OS X Came To Be [Exclusive 10th Anniversary Story]
译者猪的米

Mac OS X celebrates its tenth birthday today. The groundbreaking operating system wasintroduced to the public on March 24, 2001. Mac OS X helped reverse Apple’s fortunes in the desktop PC market, and has underpinned a lot of Apple’s subsequent success. Most importantly, it spawned iOS, which runs today’s iPads and iPhones.

今天是Mac OS X诞生十周年的日子。这个开创性的操作系统于2001年3月24日推出，帮助苹果逆转了再桌面PC电脑市场的局面，也奠定了苹果之后的很多成功。最重要的是，它是如今运行在iPad和iPhone上的iOS系统的原型。

Below is the story of how OS X’s game-changing interface came about. The story gives some insight into corporate creativity at Apple. OS X’s interface started as a side project. But as soon as Steve Jobs got wind of it, it was fast-tracked. Jobs became intimately involved in its development — a scary prospect for the programmers working on it.

下面介绍OS X划时代的界面是如何产生的，这个故事让我们得以洞悉苹果的团队创造力。OS界面最初只是一个边缘产品，但当史蒂夫·乔布斯得知它的消息后，很快就看上了它。乔布斯密切参与它的研发——对于参与研发的程序员来说这是个恐怖的前景。

But the struggle wasn’t just in its development. Apple had to nail the switch from the old Mac OS to the new, or it could have sunk the company. Guess which ally was crucial to the transition — Apple’s old enemy, Microsoft.

但并非只有研发工作困难重重，苹果公司必须摆脱旧的Mac OS以创造出新系统来，否则公司将面临破产境地。猜猜哪个盟友对这次转身起了关键性作用——苹果公司的旧敌人，微软。

With the launch of OS X, Jobs finally took the title of Apple’s permanent CEO. Prior to that he’d been the interim CEO, or iCEO, and OS X was the last major part of the company he needed to fix.

随着OS X系统的发布，乔布斯终于成为苹果公司的永久CEO。在此之前他是临时CEO，而OS X系统是他要塑造的公司中的最后一个重要部分。

The interface for OS X 10.0 was called "Aqua," and was inspired by water droplets

OS X 10.0界面被称为“Aqua”，灵感来自于水滴。

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.” — Steve Jobs, on Mac OS X’s user interface, in Fortune, January 24, 2000

“我们把屏幕上的图标做得很好看，以至于你想去舔它们。”在2000年1月24日地Mac OS X用户互动会上乔布斯如此说道。

Before Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the company had spent several years fruitlessly trying to develop a modern version of the Macintosh operating system. Since its debut in 1984, the old Mac OS had turned into a bloated, unstable patchwork of code. It had become a nightmare to maintain and upgrade. For users, it meant constant crashes, freezes, and restarts—and lots of lost data, frustration, and rage.

在乔布斯返回苹果公司之前，公司曾尝试开发新版本的Macintosh操作系统却一无所获。自从1984年首次亮相以来，旧Mac OS系统变为一对臃肿不堪、不稳定的代码包。想要对它进行维护或升级简直是个噩梦。对于用户来说，这意味着经常性地崩溃、死机和重启——还有许多丢失的数据、失落和愤怒。

Because large portions of the Mac OS were still based on creaky old code, Apple decided that it had to start from scratch.

由于很大一部分的Mac OS仍基于陈旧的代码，苹果公司决定另起炉灶、从头开始。



In 1994, programmers began a ground-up rewrite of the operating system, code-named Copland, after the famous American composer. But after a couple of years of effort, it became apparent the project was a gargantuan effort and would never be finished. The Apple executive team at the time decided it would be easier (and wiser) to purchase a next-generation operating system from another company rather than develop one itself. The search eventually led to the purchase of Steve Jobs’s NeXT.

1994年，程序员开始重写操作系统的源代码，并以美国著名作曲家Copland的名字命名。但花了几年的努力之后，程序员们发现他们这个项目如此庞大，以至于根本不可能完成。那时苹果公司的管理层认为相比起自己独立研发，从其他公司购买一套下一代操作系统是个简单（并且明智）的方法。他们最终决定收购史蒂夫·乔布斯的NeXT公司。

Copland, Apple's vaporOS

苹果公司的Copland系统

Apple was interested in NeXTstep, a surprisingly advanced and sophisticated operating system that Jobs had developed during his wilderness years away from Apple. NeXTstep had everything the old Mac OS lacked. It was fast, stable, and almost crash-proof. It had modern networking features—essential in the Internet age—and a modular architecture that was easily modified and upgraded. It also came with a collection of great programming tools, which made it very easy for software developers to write programs for it.

苹果公司对NeXTstep很感兴趣，这是一个极度先进和复杂的操作系统，由乔布斯离开苹果的那些落魄日子里研发而成。NeXTstep拥有旧Mac OS所缺少的所有东西，而且它很快捷、稳定、有防崩溃保护。它有现代网络的特征——这点在互联网时代很重要——并且是模块化设计，意味着能够容易地修改和升级。它还自带许多很棒的系统工具箱，使软件开发者能够很轻松地编写程序。

Programming tools are a huge competitive advantage in the tech industry. Computer platforms are doomed unless they can attract talented programmers to create applications for them, just like game consoles are doomed unless they can attract great games. From the Mac to the Palm Pilot and the Xbox, the success of a platform is primarily determined by the software that can run on it. In some cases this is the so-called killer app—an essential piece of software that guarantees the success of the platform, like Office on Windows, or the game Halo on the Xbox.

在科技业中，编程工具是一个巨大的竞争优势。正如游戏机房如果没有好游戏就得关门一样，如果一个电脑平台不能吸引有才能的程序员为其开发软件，这个平台也将走向灭亡。从Mac到Palm Pilot再到Xbox，一个平台成功的取决于在其中运行的软件。在一些事例中，需要一款杀手级应用来保证平台的成功，就像Windows系统中的Office和Xbox中的《光晕》。

Cordell Ratzlaff is the man who designed OS X’s interface for Steve Jobs.

Cordell Raztzlaff为史蒂夫·乔布斯设计了OS X的界面

What’s NeXT?

NeXT是什么？

After buying NeXT, Apple had to figure out how to turn NeXTstep into a Macintosh operating system. At first, the job looked so big that Apple’s programmers decided they should take the old interface in Mac OS 8 and try to graft it on top of the NeXTstep codebase. According to Cordell Ratzlaff, the manager who was charged with overseeing the job, the interface graft didn’t look like it would present much of a challenge. “We assigned one designer to OS X,” he recalled. “His job was pretty boring: make the new stuff look like the old stuff.”

在收购NeXT之后，苹果公司必须想办法将NeXTstep转变成Macintosh操作系统。起初这个工作看起来相当庞大，以至于苹果公司的程序员们决定将Mac OS 8的界面移植到NeXTstep上。根据Cordell Ratzlaff的说法，负责总管项目的经理觉得这不会有太大的困难。”我们决定只指派一名Mac OS X设计师“Cordell回忆说，”他的工作相当无聊：将新的东西弄得像旧的一样。“

But Ratzlaff thought it was a shame to put an ugly facade on such an elegant system, and he soon had designers creating mockups of new interface designs. He told me that the mockups were designed to show off many of the advanced technologies under NeXTstep’s hood — especially its powerful graphics and animation capabilities.

但Ratzlaff认为给如此优雅的一个系统配如此丑陋的界面简直是种耻辱，于是他让设计师设计有新界面的样机。他告诉我说设计这些样机就是为了展示NeXTstep背后的先进技术——尤其是它强大的图像和动画性能。

Ratzlaff, a soft-spoken designer at Kapitall, worked at Apple for nine years. Starting as a designer, he rose through the ranks to lead the human interface group for Mac OS. In this role, he was in charge of the look and feel of Apple’s operating systems from Mac OS 8 through the first release of OS X.

Ratzlaff住在Kapitall，说话轻声细语，他已经为苹果公司工作了9年。他从设计师开始做起，一步步晋升直到现在领导Mac OS的人类互动项目。在这个职位上，他负责从Mac OS 8而来的系统的视觉感受和操作体验。

Interfaces these days are colorful and dynamic, but in the late 1990s, both Apple’s and Microsoft’s operating systems were plain and gray, with boxy windows, sharp corners, and lots of bevels. Then Apple came out with the tear-shaped iMac, a computer with a transparent plastic shell and curvy organic lines. It was a big inspiration to Ratzlaff and his colleagues. They soon had mockups of colorful, airy interfaces with see-through menus, soft edges, and round, organic buttons.

现今的界面都是五颜六色、动态十足，但在90年代末期，苹果和微软的操作系统都很简单，看上去灰蒙蒙的，有着箱子式的窗口、尖角和许多斜角。后来苹果推出了流线型的iMac，一台拥有油瓶塑料外壳和弯曲的有机线条的电脑。Ratzlaff和他的同事们从中获得了很多灵感。他们不久就造出了新的样机，拥有彩色轻巧的界面、直达按钮、柔角处理和圆形的有机按钮。

Ratzlaff’s boss, Bertrand Serlet, who just resigned as Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, admired the mockups but made it clear there was neither the time nor resources to implement them. OS X’s lone designer continued to graft the old Mac interface onto NeXTstep.

Ratzlaff的上司Bertrand Serlet刚成为苹果软件工程高级副总裁，他很欣赏这个样机但是他同时表示公司没有这个时间和资源去使用它们。OS X的孤独的设计师不得不继续将旧Mac电脑的界面移植到NeXTstep上。

After several months of work, Apple held an off-site for all the engineering groups working on OS X to gather a status report. Ratzlaff was asked to show his mockups, mostly just for kicks. His talk would be some light relief at the end of a long, hard week. He was scheduled as the last speaker on the last day. But he secretly hoped there’d be support for the new designs and they’d be implemented, although he didn’t rate his chances. As the two-day event wore on, it became clearer and clearer what an enormous project OS X was. Everyone was wondering how it was ever going to get done. “And then here at the end, here’s me saying, ‘Oh, and here’s a new user interface. It’s translucent, there’s real-time animation, and a full alpha channel,’” Ratzlaff recalled. “There was literally laughter in the room because there was no way we were going to redo the user interface. I was pretty depressed afterwards.”

工作进展了几个月后，苹果公司召开了一个全体OS X工程师组的异地会议，汇总状态报告。Ratzlaff被要求展示他的样机，只是为了调节气氛。在过了一个漫长艰难的一周后，他的讲话将稍稍缓解一些压力。虽然他暗地里希望有人会支持这个新设计抑或设计被采用，但他最终没有碰到任何机会。随着为期两天的会议的开展，员工们越来越清晰地认识到OS X是多么庞大的一个项目，所有人都不知道它将何时完成。”最后轮到我发言了，‘现在我们来看看新的用户界面，它是半透明的，有实时动画和一个完整的alpha通道’“Ratzlaff回忆道，”但现场只有笑声，因为根本不肯能再去重做用户界面。我后来失落了很久。“

With its curvy lines and teardrop shape, the original iMac was a big inspiration for the OS X interface

最初版本的iMac的弯曲线条和水滴造型给了OS X很大的启发。

“You’re a Bunch of Idiots”

”你们是一群白痴“

Two weeks later Ratzlaff got a call from Steve Jobs’s assistant. Jobs hadn’t seen the mockups at the off-site—he hadn’t attended—but now he wanted a peek. At the time, Jobs was still conducting his survey of all the product groups. Ratzlaff and his designers were sitting in a conference room waiting for Jobs, when he walked in and immediately called them “a bunch of amateurs.”

两周之后Ratzlaff接到了一个从史蒂夫·乔布斯助手打来的电话。乔布斯没有在会议上看到样机——他根本没参加会议——但他现在想瞧一瞧。那时，乔布斯仍在调查所有的产品。Ratzlaff和他的设计师坐在会议室里等乔布斯来，他一走进来就称呼他们”一群业余人员“。

“You’re the guys who designed Mac OS, right?” he asked them. They sheepishly nodded yes. “Well, you’re a bunch of idiots.”

”你们就是设计Mac OS的人是吧？“乔布斯问道。他们默默点头肯定。”好吧，你们这群白痴。“

Jobs rattled off all the things he hated about the old Mac interface, which was just about everything. One of the things he hated most were all the different mechanisms for opening windows and folders. There were at least eight different ways of accessing folders—from dropdown menus to pop-up menus, the DragStrip, the Launcher, and the Finder. “The trouble was, you had too many windows,” said Ratzlaff. “Steve wanted to simplify window management.” Because Ratzlaff was the one primarily responsible for these features, he started to get nervous about his job, but after twenty minutes of withering criticism, Ratzlaff realized his position was probably safe. “I figure he’s not going to fire us, because that would’ve happened already,” Ratzlaff said.

乔布斯噼里啪啦发泄着他对旧的Mac界面的不满，没有一样东西是他满意的。他最痛恨的一样东西就是不同的打开窗口和文件夹的机制。至少有8种打开文件夹的方式——从下拉菜单到弹出式菜单、拖拉条、桌面还有搜索器。”问题是，你有太多窗口。“Ratzlaff说道，”史蒂夫希望简化窗口管理。“由于Ratzlaff是这些功能的主要负责人，他开始担心他的职位。但当20分钟喋喋不休的批评之后，Ratzlaff意识到他的岗位暂时是安全的。”我觉得他不会炒了我，因为当时他不可能这么做。“Ratzlaff说道。

Jobs, Ratzlaff, and the designers settled into an in-depth discussion of the old Mac interface and how it might be overhauled. Ratzlaff’s team showed Jobs their mockups and the meeting wrapped up well. “Prototype these things and show them to me,” Jobs instructed them.

之后乔布斯、Ratzlaff和他的设计师们一起就如何重建旧的Mac系统的界面进行了一次深度讨论。Ratzlaff的小组向乔布斯展示了他们的样机，会议最后结束得挺不错。”造一台原型机给我看看。“乔布斯这样要求他们。

The design team worked for three weeks, night and day, building working prototypes in Macromedia Director, a multimedia authoring tool often used for mocking up custom interfaces for software or websites. “We knew our jobs were on the line so we were pretty worried,” he said. “He [Jobs] came over to the offices. We spent the whole afternoon with him. He was blown away. From that point on, it was clear there was going to be a new user interface for OS X.”

设计小组之后没日没夜地奋斗了3个星期，将原型机装到Macromedia操作器（一个多媒体创作工具，常用来测试软件和网页的界面）上。”我们知道我们的工作很紧迫，所以我们都很担心。“他说道，”他（乔布斯）曾到办公室来，一整个下午都和他们呆在一起。他对新设计影响深刻。从那时起，很明显将出现一个全新的OS X用户界面。“

Jobs was so impressed that he said to Ratzlaff: “This is the first evidence of three-digit intelligence at Apple I’ve seen yet.” Ratzlaff was happy to take the compliment. For Jobs, acknowledging you have an IQ higher than 100 is a glowing endorsement. Confident that their jobs were safe, Ratzlaff and the designers celebrated with a few six-packs of beer. But they became nervous when they saw Jobs coming back down the corridor with Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing. Luckily, Jobs was pleased. As Jobs approached, they heard him tell Schiller excitedly, “You’ve got to see this.”

新设计给乔布斯以深刻的印象，他对Ratzlaff说：”这是我在苹果第一次看到三元智慧的证据。“Ratzlaff很高兴接收表扬。对于乔布斯而言，告诉你你的智商超过100是一个荣耀。在确信他们的岗位安全之后，Ratzlaff和他的设计师们喝酒庆祝。但当他们看到乔布斯和苹果市场部头头Phil Schiller一起走下楼梯回来时，又变得紧张起来。幸运的是，乔布斯很愉快。当他们走进时，Ratzlaff听到乔布斯对Schiller激动地说：”你一定要去看看。“

“From then on we had no trouble,” Ratzlaff said.

”之后我们没遇到任何麻烦。“Ratzlaff说道。

No Detail Too Small

没有不重要地细节

For the next eighteen months, Ratzlaff’s team had a weekly meeting with Jobs during which they’d show him their latest mockups. For each element of the new interface—the menus, the dialogs, the radio buttons—Jobs requested several variations so that he could select the best ones. As we’ll see in more detail later, Jobs always asks for multiple versions of products in development—both hardware and software. During the meetings with Ratzlaff, Jobs gave lots of feedback for refining the designs, and only when he was satisfied could features be ticked off.

在接下来的18个月里，Ratzlaff的小组每周和乔布斯会面一次，向他展示最新的样机。对于新界面的每一个元素——包括菜单、对话框、信号按钮——乔布斯都要求他们给出几个不同的样式以便他能挑出最好的一个。之后我们会更清楚地看到，乔布斯总是要求研发中的产品要有多种版本——硬件和软件都是如此。在与Ratzlaff的会见中，乔布斯给了很多反馈，帮助他们完善设计，只有有他满意时才能在样式上打钩。

The design team’s mockups, in Macromedia Director, were dynamic, but they weren’t functioning software. Jobs could open and close windows, pull down menus, and see how the system would work. But they were only animations. They weren’t working code. The team had the working code running on another machine that was placed next to the Director demo. When they’d show the working code to Jobs, he’d lean forward, his nose to the screen, and examine them closely, moving from the demo to the prototype and back again.

设计小组的样机在Macromedia操作器上市动态的，但它不是运行中的软件。乔布斯可以打开和关闭窗口，下拉菜单，观察系统如何运行。但这只是动画，他们并不是在测试代码。小组在另一台紧靠操作器的测试机上运行代码。当他们将运行的代码展示给乔布斯看时，他人向前倾斜，鼻尖几乎碰到屏幕，他仔细的检查着，在测试机和原型机之间反复来回查看。

“He would compare them pixel by pixel to see if they matched,” Ratzlaff said. “He was way down into the details. He would scrutinize everything, down to the pixel level.” If they didn’t match, Ratzlaff said, “some engineer would get yelled at.”

”他会逐像素比较两者是否吻合。“Ratzlaff说道，”他一向重视细节，他会在像素层面审视任何东西。“如果两者不吻合，Ratzlaff说，”他就会朝一些工程师大吼大叫。“

The OS X design team spent six months just trying to get the scrollbars right.

OS X设计小组花了6个月才修改好滚动条。

Incredibly, Ratzlaff’s team spent six months refining the scrollbars to Jobs’s satisfaction. Scrollbars are an important part of any computer operating system but are hardly the most visible element of the user interface. Nonetheless, Jobs insisted the scrollbars look just so, and Ratzlaff ’s team had to design version after version. “It had to be done right,” said Ratzlaff, laughing at the effort that went into such a seemingly minor detail.

不可思议的是，Ratzlaff的小组花了6个月才将滚动条修改到乔布斯满意的程度。滚动条是任何电脑操作系统的一个重要部分，却几乎是用户界面最被忽视的部分。虽然如此，乔布斯坚持滚动条也要精益求精，因而Ratzlaff的小组不得不一遍遍修改。”它必须被设计好“Ratzlaff说道，一边嘲笑要在如此一个细微的细节上花这么多功夫。

At first, the design team found it very difficult to get the scrollbar details true. The little arrows were the wrong size, or in the wrong place, or the color was off. The scrollbars had to look different if the window was the currently active window or one of the background windows. “It was pretty hard to get them to fit with the rest of the design in all these different states,” Ratzlaff said with a note of weariness in his voice. “We kept at it until it was right. We worked on it for a long, long time.”

一开始，设计小组发现很难把滚动条的细节弄得真实。小箭头不是尺寸不对就是在错误的位置，抑或是颜色不对。滚动条必须看起来不一样，以区分活动窗口和背景窗口。”很难将它和余下设计进行对比，简直不在一个层面上。“Ratzlaff的声音略带疲惫，”在它完成之前我们一直在完善。我们花了很长很长的一段时间。“

Simplifying the UI

简化UI

The Dock is a new interface element introduced with OS X. At first, many users hated it.

Dock是OS X界面的一个新元素。起初，许多用户都很讨厌它。

OS X’s interface was designed with new users in mind. Because the system would be new to everyone—even veteran Mac users—Jobs focused on simplifying the interface as much as possible. For example, in the old Mac OS, most of the settings that determined system behavior were hidden away in myriad System Extensions, Control Panel menus, and special dialog boxes of the various system components. Setting up an Internet connection used to involve tweaking settings in up to half a dozen different places.

OS X的界面是为新用户而设计的。因为系统对于所有人而言都是新的——甚至对于老版本用户也是如此——乔布斯致力于尽可能简化界面。比如，在旧的Mac OS上，控制系统行为的绝大多数设置隐藏在五花八门的系统扩展、控制面板菜单和控制系统部件的特殊对话框里。在过去建立一个互联网连接至少要在6个不同的地方进行设置。

To simplify things, Jobs ordered as many settings as possible to be collected together into a single System Preferences box that lived in a new navigation element called “the Dock.”

为了简化操作，乔布斯要求将尽可能多的设置集中到一个系统设置盒内，位于新的叫做”Dock“的导航元素里。

The Dock is an icon-filled bar that sits at the bottom of the screen. It is home to commonly used applications and the system trash can. It can accommodate all kinds of stuff, from frequently used folders to mini-programs called “scripts.”

Dock是一个充满图标的栏目，位于屏幕底部。由它可以找到常用的应用和系统回收站。这个栏里可以放各式各样的东西，从常用文件夹到称作”脚本“的迷你程序。

Jobs insisted on stripping back as many interface elements as possible, maintaining that the content of the windows was the most important thing, not the windows themselves. His desire to strip back and simplify put an end to several major features, including a single-window mode that the design team had worked on for many months.

乔布斯主张尽可能精简界面元素，因为他认为窗口内容才是最重要的东西，而不是窗口本身。他这精简的想法最终造就了几个主要特征，包括一个单窗口模式，这东西花了设计小组几个月的时间。

Jobs hated having multiple windows open. Every time a new folder or document was opened, it spawned a new window. Quickly, the screen was filled with overlapping windows. So the designers created a special single-window mode. Everything was displayed in the same window, no matter which software program the user was working in. The window would display a spreadsheet, then a text document or a digital photo. The effect was rather like jumping from website to website in a single Web browser window, except here it was between documents stored on the local hard drive.

乔布斯讨厌看到同时打开很多窗口。每次打开新文件夹或文件时，都会新开一个窗口。很快，屏幕就充斥着各种窗口。因此设计师们创造了一个特殊的单窗口模式。所有的东西都在相同的窗口被呈现，无论用户正在运行的是什么程序。窗口会显示一个电子表格，然后是一个文本文档或者数码照片。这种效果就像是在一个单窗口浏览器从一个网站跳到另一个网站，唯一不同的是，这里是在存储在本地硬盘上的文件之间。

Sometimes the system worked well, but the window often had to be resized to display different kinds of documents. When working with a text document, the window was best made thin and narrow to make it easy to scroll up and down the text. But if the user opened an image in landscape format, the window would have to be widened.

有时系统运行正常，但窗口需要调整大小以显示不同的文件。当处理一个文本文档时，又细又长的窗口是最佳的，因为这样便于上下滚动文本。但如果用户打开的是一个地景格式的照片，窗口就需要扩大。

But this wasn’t the biggest problem. Critically for Jobs, the system required the designers to create a dedicated button in the window toolbar to switch it on and off. Jobs decided, in the interest of simplicity, to take the button away. He could live with resizing windows, but not the additional button cluttering the menu bar. “The extra button wasn’t justified by the functionality,” Ratzlaff said. Jobs’s decision to excise that button illustrates his obsession with simplicity, and his long-running desire to build systems as minimalist in design as possible.

但这不是最大的问题。对于乔布斯最关键的一点是，系统需要设计师在窗口栏创建一个独立按钮来控制它的开关。处于简化考虑，乔布斯决定拿掉这个按钮。他可以忍受调整窗口大小，但他不想看到一个额外的按钮把菜单栏弄乱。”这个额外的按钮并不是因为功能而被删去的。“Ratzlaff说道。乔布斯做出这个决定是因为他沉迷于简介和他长久以来存在的将系统设计得尽可能简单的愿望。

While working on the new interface, Jobs would sometimes suggest what at first seemed to be crazy ideas but later turned out to be good ones. At one meeting, he was scrutinizing the three tiny buttons in the top left corner of every window. The three buttons were for closing, shrinking, and expanding the window, respectively. The designers had made all the buttons the same muted gray, to prevent them from distracting the user, but it was difficult to tell what the buttons were for. It was suggested that their functions should be illustrated by an animation that was triggered when the mouse cursor hovered over them.

在开发新界面的过程中，乔布斯常常会提出一些初看起来疯狂但之后成为好设计的意见。在一次会议上，他在审议每个窗口左上角的小按钮。这三个按钮是用来独立关闭、缩小和放大窗口的。设计师将它们都设计成了相同的灰色，为了防止用户收到误导，但这导致了很难分辨每个按钮是用来干什么的。因此乔布斯建议给每个按钮设计一个动画，当鼠标放于上方时动画被激活。

But then Jobs made what seemed like an odd suggestion: that the buttons should be colored like traffic stoplights: red to close the window, yellow to shrink it, and green to expand it. “When we heard that, we felt that was a strange thing to associate with a computer,” Ratzlaff said. “But we worked on it for a little while and he was right.” The color of the button implicitly suggested the consequence of clicking it, especially the red button, which suggested “danger” if the user clicked it but didn’t mean to close the window.

但之后乔布斯又做出了一个看起奇怪的决定：按钮要按照交通信号灯那样上色：红色表示关闭窗口、黄色表示缩小窗口、绿色表示放大窗口。”当我们听到这个建议时，我们觉得把信号灯和电脑联系起来是件奇怪的事情“Ratzlaff说道，”但是我们还是照做了，事后证明他是正确的。“按钮的颜色无形中暗示了点击产生的结果，尤其是红色的按钮暗示着”危险“，如果用户点击了它却又不打算关闭窗口的话。

Steve Jobs suggested the close, minimize and zoom buttons be colored like traffic lights to give visual clues about their function.

史蒂夫·乔布斯建议关闭、缩小和放大按钮按照交通信号灯那样上色，给人们以其功能的视觉线索。

Introducing OS X

介绍OS X

Here is Steve Jobs introducing Mac OS X for the first time:

史蒂夫·乔布斯首次介绍Mac OS X：

Jobs knew that OS X would cause a huge outcry from Apple’s outside software developers, who would have to rewrite all their software to run on the new system. Even with OS X’s great programming tools, there would be pushback from developers. Jobs and his executives struggled with the best way to approach the software community. Eventually they came up with a strategy: if they could persuade just three of the biggest companies to embrace OS X, everyone else would follow. The big three were Microsoft, Adobe, and Macromedia.

乔布斯知道OS X将会引起大量苹果外围软件开发者的不满，因为他们不得不为新系统重新编写软件。即使有OS X的优秀的编程软件，这仍会给开发者带来麻烦。乔布斯和他的董事们想尽办法接近软件社区。最终他们想到一个策略：如果他们能说服三家最大的公司投入OS X的怀抱，其他的人也会跟着投奔。三家大公司是微软、Adobe和Macromedia。

It worked—eventually. Microsoft supported OS X from the get-go, thanks to Jobs’s 1998 deal with Bill Gates that cemented five years of software support. But Adobe and Macromedia weren’t so quick to convert their big applications like Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Both companies eventually ported them over, but they refused to rewrite their consumer applications for OS X, a decision that eventually had a major impact on Apple and its business: it led Apple to develop its own hugely popular application software suites (iLife and iWork) and, indirectly, to the invention of the iPod and iPhone.

这个方法奏效了——最终微软通过get-go支持OS X，这要多亏乔布斯1998年和比尔·盖茨的协议为五年的软件支持奠定了基础。但Adboe和Macromedia就没那么迅速了，因为像Photoshop和Dreamweaver这样的软件太大。不过最后两家公司都将之移植到了OS平台上，但他们却拒绝为OS X开发用户软件，这个决定后来给苹果和它的生意带来了巨大的影响：这让苹果自己研发大众应用程序套件（iLife和iWork），这也间接导致了iPod和iPhone的诞生。

While it was no secret Apple was working on OS X, the fact that it had a new interface was. The interface was designed in intense secrecy. Only the handful of people working on it knew it was being overhauled. One of Jobs’s stated rationales for keeping the new interface secret was to prevent others— Microsoft in particular—from copying it.

虽然苹果致力于OS X的开发并不是秘密，但它的新界面却是。新界面的研发处于极度保密中，只有开发的少数人知道它进行了大换血。乔布斯对新界面守口如瓶的一大原因是为了防止其他人——尤其是微软——抄袭它。

But more important, Jobs didn’t want to kill sales of the current Macintosh operating system. He wanted to avoid what’s known as the Osborne effect, in which a company commits suicide by announcing cool technology still under development, before it is ready to be sold.

但更重要的是，乔布斯不想破坏现有Macintosh操作系统的销售。他想避免奥斯本效应：一个公司在正式发售前宣称他们用了新技术而导致现有销量大跌。

Jobs hated the old Mac OS 9 but he insisted it was publicly supported until OS X was ready. He was like Khrushchev, banging his shoe on the table.

乔布斯痛恨旧的Mac OS 9，但他坚持认为在OS X准备好之前应该继续支持它。他就像赫鲁晓夫一样，在桌子上敲鞋。

As soon as OS X development started, Jobs directed everyone at Apple to stop criticizing the current Mac OS in public. For years, Apple’s programmers had been quite frank about the system’s problems and shortcomings. “OS X was his baby, so he knew how great it was,” said Peter Hoddie. “But he said for the next few years we’ve got to focus on Mac OS because we’ll never get there without it. He was like Khrushchev, banging his shoe on the table. ‘You’ve got to support the Mac OS, kids. Get this through your heads.’”

OS X的研发工作一开始，乔布斯就让苹果员工停止当众批评现有的Mac OS系统。有好几年苹果的程序员们都对旧系统的毛病和缺点讳莫如深。”OS X是他的孩子，所以他知道这有多重要。“Peter Hoddle说道。”但他后来几年说我要要继续致力于Mac OS，因为没有它就没有OS X。他就像赫鲁晓夫一样，在桌子上敲鞋“

Jobs unveiled OS X in January 2000 at Macworld, after nearly two and a half years of work by almost one thousand programmers. OS X was a colossal undertaking. It was—and arguably still is—the most sophisticated computer interface designed to date, with complex, real-time graphics effects like transparency, shadowing, and animation. But it had to run on every G3 processor Apple had on the market, and it had to run in as little as 8 MB of video memory. It was a very tall order.

乔布斯在2000年1月的苹果大会上推出OS X，几乎有1000名程序员花了两年半的时间才开发出了它。OS X是一个巨大的承诺。它曾经是，现在也是——最复杂的电脑界面，拥有复杂的诸如透明、阴影和动画的实时图画效果。但它必须能够运行在市场上的每个G3处理器上，往往只有不足8MB的运行空间。这可是个技术活。

While introducing OS X at Macworld, Jobs also announced that he was becoming Apple’s permanent CEO, which drew huge applause from the keynote crowd. Several Apple employees have noted that Jobs didn’t become the company’s permanent CEO until after OS X shipped in March 2001. By this point, Jobs had been at Apple’s helm for two and a half years, and had replaced almost all the directors and senior staff, fixed marketing and advertising, reinvigorated hardware with the iMac, and reorganized sales. Ratzlaff noted that with OS X, Jobs had overhauled the company and all of Apple’s major products.

在苹果大会介绍OS X的同时，乔布斯同时宣布他将成为苹果公司的永久CEO，这赢得了基层的大量掌声。许多苹果员工都注意到直到2001年3月OS X正式发售乔布斯才真正成为永久CEO。到这时，乔布斯已经掌舵苹果两年半了，他调换了几乎所有的董事和高级员工，僵化的市场营销和广告宣传，为iMac硬件注入新的活力，并且重新调整销售。Ratalaff注意到通过OS X，乔布斯已经对公司和所有的苹果主要产品进行了一次大换血。

“He was waiting for the last big parts of the company to be running to his standards before he took on the role of Apple CEO,” said Ratzlaff.

”他在等待公司最后的一大部分满足他的标准，然后再担起苹果CEO的角色。“Ratzlaff说道。

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