The iPhone That Never Was
The iPhone That Never Was
未曾面世的 iPhone
Imagine a tech company so visionary that it can take an idea public. A “concept IPO,” they called it. 想象一家极具远见卓识的科技公司，它甚至能将一个“概念”直接推向公开市场。他们称之为“概念 IPO”。
Picture the three founders, all former Apple employees, two of whom—software engineers Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson—were already Silicon Valley legends for their work creating the Apple Macintosh. Atkinson’s prolific inventions included the double click and the drop‑down menu. The third founder, Marc Porat, had a gift for seeing the future. 画面中是三位创始人，他们都曾是苹果公司的员工。其中两位——软件工程师安迪·赫茨菲尔德（Andy Hertzfeld）和比尔·阿特金森（Bill Atkinson）——因参与开发 Apple Macintosh 而成为硅谷传奇。阿特金森的发明成果丰硕，包括双击操作和下拉菜单。第三位创始人马克·波拉特（Marc Porat）则拥有预见未来的天赋。
For his PhD dissertation at Stanford in 1976, Porat analyzed (in painstaking detail) a century of transition in the American labor force and predicted a sea change in work. An economy based primarily on transforming matter and energy—via agriculture and industry—had been giving way to one based on transforming information. Computers and telecommunications, he saw, were reshaping every industry. “We are entering another phase in economic history,” Porat wrote. On the first page of the first chapter of his dissertation, Porat coined a term that would become famous: “information economy.” 1976 年，波拉特在斯坦福大学的博士论文中，极其详尽地分析了美国劳动力市场一个世纪以来的转型，并预言了工作方式的巨变。他指出，以农业和工业为基础、主要通过转化物质和能源的经济模式，正在让位于以转化信息为基础的经济模式。他预见到，计算机和电信技术正在重塑每一个行业。“我们正在进入经济史的另一个阶段，”波拉特写道。在他的论文第一章第一页，波拉特创造了一个后来家喻户晓的术语：“信息经济”。
Porat followed that up by hosting a primetime PBS documentary, The Information Society, in 1980. In it, he positioned information technology as disruptive on a scale matched only by the plow and the steam engine. He delved at length into the power of new technology, as well as emerging problems with privacy, information overload, misinformation, and increasing inequality, and showed that most Americans had no idea that the ground was shifting beneath them. 随后，波拉特在 1980 年主持了一部 PBS 的黄金时段纪录片《信息社会》。在片中，他将信息技术定位为一种颠覆性的力量，其规模堪比犁和蒸汽机的发明。他深入探讨了新技术的威力，以及随之而来的隐私、信息过载、虚假信息和日益加剧的不平等问题，并指出大多数美国人根本没有意识到他们脚下的土地正在发生剧变。
In 1988, Porat joined Apple’s Advanced Technology Group, where he could apply his prodigious foresight to the team’s task of figuring out what the next big thing would be after personal computers. One day, Porat took a Sharp Wizard—a new electronic organizer with a calendar and phone book—and duct‑taped it to a Motorola analog cell phone. He had his concept. Soon he was making plaster models of a combination phone and digital assistant. In 1989, in a large red notebook, he drew a visionary product that would fit the future he had foreseen with eerie accuracy. He called it the Pocket Crystal. You don’t need to have seen the sketch before for it to be instantly familiar. 1988 年，波拉特加入了苹果公司的高级技术小组，在那里他可以将自己惊人的远见应用于团队的任务中，即找出个人电脑之后的下一个重大突破。一天，波拉特拿了一个 Sharp Wizard（一种带有日历和电话簿的新型电子记事本），用胶带把它粘在一部摩托罗拉模拟手机上。他的概念就这样诞生了。不久后，他开始制作手机与数字助理结合体的石膏模型。1989 年，他在一本红色大笔记本中画出了一款极具远见的产品，它以惊人的准确度契合了他所预见的未来。他将其命名为“口袋水晶”（Pocket Crystal）。即使你从未见过这张草图，也会对它感到无比熟悉。
The Pocket Crystal schematic depicted a thin glass rectangle with no protruding buttons—just a touch screen. It would be a computer that combined a phone and fax machine; you would use it to send text messages, watch movies, play video games, buy plane tickets, and download new apps. It would fit in your pocket, and it would be beautiful. Following the sketch, Porat wrote in his red book: “It must offer the kind of personal satisfaction that a fine piece of jewelry brings. It will have a perceived value even when it’s not being used. It should offer the comfort of a touchstone, the tactile satisfaction of a seashell, the enchantment of a crystal.” “口袋水晶”的示意图描绘了一个没有凸起按钮的薄玻璃长方形——只有一个触摸屏。它将是一台集手机和传真机于一体的计算机；你可以用它发送短信、观看电影、玩电子游戏、购买机票以及下载新应用程序。它能装进你的口袋，而且外观精美。在草图下方，波拉特在红笔记本中写道：“它必须能提供像精美珠宝那样的个人满足感。即使在不使用时，它也应具有感知价值。它应该提供试金石般的舒适感、贝壳般的触感，以及水晶般的魔力。”
In 1989, only 15 percent of American households even had a computer, which didn’t fit in anyone’s pocket; zero percent were browsing the web, because it didn’t exist. And yet, there was Marc Porat, essentially sketching the iPhone. 1989 年，只有 15% 的美国家庭拥有电脑，而且电脑根本装不进任何人的口袋；当时浏览网页的人数为零，因为互联网还不存在。然而，马克·波拉特当时就在那里，本质上是在勾勒 iPhone 的雏形。
The project was green‑lit, but with a caveat: It was too big, even for Apple. Early adopters were only just talking on their brick‑like mobile phones. The Pocket Crystal would require not only unprecedented hardware and software but networks that could link the world and new digital communication standards. 该项目获得了批准，但有一个前提：对于当时的苹果公司来说，这个项目太庞大了。早期的使用者才刚刚开始使用像砖头一样的移动电话。而“口袋水晶”不仅需要前所未有的硬件和软件，还需要能够连接世界的网络以及全新的数字通信标准。
In 1990, Porat and Apple CEO John Sculley agreed that Apple would invest and take a board seat, but the project would spin out as a separate company and start courting partners. For this new enterprise, the founders chose a name that evoked both the country’s most revered companies and the adage from science‑fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Thus, General Magic was born. 1990 年，波拉特与苹果公司首席执行官约翰·斯卡利（John Sculley）达成协议：苹果公司将进行投资并获得一个董事会席位，但该项目将作为一家独立公司分拆出去，并开始寻求合作伙伴。对于这家新企业，创始人们选择了一个名字，既让人联想到美国最受推崇的公司，又呼应了科幻作家阿瑟·C·克拉克的名言：“任何足够先进的技术，都与魔法无异。”于是，General Magic 公司诞生了。
Sculley introduced the founding trio to Sony. They made their pitch, and within days Sony was on board, with a stake and a licensing deal. Next came Motorola, and then AT&T. In quick succession, the world’s telecom titans and consumer electronics giants were convinced to join what became known as “the Alliance.” Philips was next, and then Sony’s bitter rival Panasonic (then known as Matsushita). Then NTT (Japan’s largest telecom), then Toshiba, then France Telecom, and on and on, each one investing millions of dollars. General Magic’s partners controlled so much of the world’s communications industry that Alliance meetings had to begin with an antitrust lawyer listing all the topics they were prohibited from discussing. It was, as General Magic’s general counsel put it, the biggest consortium of global companies that had ever existed in American business. 斯卡利将这三位创始人介绍给了索尼公司。他们进行了演示，几天之内索尼就加入了进来，并获得了股份和授权协议。紧随其后的是摩托罗拉，然后是 AT&T。全球电信巨头和消费电子巨头接二连三地被说服加入这个后来被称为“联盟”（the Alliance）的组织。飞利浦紧随其后，接着是索尼的死对头松下（当时称为 Matsushita）。随后是 NTT（日本最大的电信公司）、东芝、法国电信等等，每一家都投入了数百万美元。General Magic 的合作伙伴控制了全球大部分通信行业，以至于联盟会议必须先由一名反垄断律师列出所有禁止讨论的话题。正如 General Magic 的总法律顾问所言，这是美国商业史上规模最大的全球企业联盟。
The buzz, and the reputations of Atkinson and Hertzfeld, became a Silicon Valley bat signal for talent. General Magic attracted Apple veterans, like Joanna Hoffman, who ran Mac marketing; artist Susan Kare, who designed Mac’s graphics (like the trash can that would sit in the corner of millions of screens); even Sculley’s personal publicist, Jane Anderson. It also drew the young, brilliant, and ambitious from within Apple and without, some of them sleeping on the office door-step in the hope of landing a job. 这种热度，加上阿特金森和赫茨菲尔德的声望，成为了硅谷吸引人才的“蝙蝠信号”。General Magic 吸引了许多苹果公司的老员工，例如负责 Mac 营销的乔安娜·霍夫曼（Joanna Hoffman）；设计了 Mac 图形界面的艺术家苏珊·卡尔（Susan Kare，比如数百万屏幕角落里的那个垃圾桶图标）；甚至还有斯卡利的私人公关简·安德森（Jane Anderson）。它还吸引了来自苹果内外年轻、聪明且雄心勃勃的人才，有些人甚至睡在办公室门口，希望能得到一份工作。
General Magic engineers were custom‑building almost everything, and innovation came fast and furious: an early form of USB; touch-screens with a virtual keyboard; “skeuomorphic” graphics that depicted their functions, like a filing cabinet, a game room, and a virtual street with a store for new applications (i.e., an app store); messages with stickers and animated characters (i.e., precursors to emojis); interactive graphics, like a pair of lips you could tap if you wanted to record your voice and send it as a message; Telescript, a new programming language that would allow devices to communicate in a virtual network for information sharing and ecommerce. Their name for that remote gathering space: the cloud. General Magic 的工程师们几乎在定制开发一切，创新成果层出不穷：早期形式的 USB；带有虚拟键盘的触摸屏；描绘其功能的“拟物化”图形，如文件柜、游戏室，以及一条带有新应用程序商店（即 App Store）的虚拟街道；带有贴纸和动画角色的消息（即表情符号的前身）；交互式图形，比如如果你想录音并作为消息发送，可以点击一对嘴唇图标；以及 Telescript，一种允许设备在虚拟网络中进行通信以实现信息共享和电子商务的新编程语言。他们将那个远程聚集空间命名为：云（the cloud）。