关于苹果和乔布斯的十点疑惑

Almost 38,000 folks turned out for Technologizer's live coverage of Apple's WWDC keynote yesterday morning. We had a good time. But as the comments came in from attendees, there was clearly a serious contingent of folks who still held out hope that Apple was going to announce a new iPhone yesterday–and who just didn't care that much about software and services. For them, no new hardware meant that the event was a letdown.

昨天早晨，近38000人参加了苹果全球开发者大会的发布会。我们度过了一个美好的时光。但是就与会者的各方意见看来，寄希望苹果发布新一代iPhone讯息的人不在少数——这些人根本对软件和服务毫无兴趣。然而对于他们来说，昨天的发布会无疑是令人失望的。

This was among the most news-packed Apple events I can recall, and in its own way it was one of the most wildly ambitious ones. Apple is finally making the iPhone and iPad into autonomous devices that don't rely on a Mac or Windows PC. It wants to store vast quantities of data for us and be responsible for safeguarding it and getting it to the right place. It's making iOS look more like OS X and OS X look more like iOS.

据我所知，这是苹果近来诸多焦点资讯中的一条，而且目前看来该计划野心勃勃。苹果总算是实现了iPhone和iPad的独立自动化，而不用依赖于Mac或Windows个人电脑。云服务旨在为用户储存大量的数据并确保其安全，同时进行数据的任意传输。它使得iOS操作系统看起来更像是OS X系统，而OS X系统却更像是iOS系统。

It's not yet clear whether all of this stuff will pan out, and people who already bristle at Apple's approach to the world will like this new, more fully Apple-centric version less than ever. But if you think the event was a big yawn because there wasn't a new iPhone that was a bit thinner and a bit faster, you live in a different world than I do.

目前尚不清楚这些计划和愿景前景如何，更不清楚这些已经对苹果鲸吞世界行径颇有微词的人们是否会买苹果的账。但是如果你觉得昨天的会议由于没有新一代iPhone讯息发布而显得乏善可陈的话，那么你和我真可谓是两个世界的人。

Judging the implications of all this is going to take a while, in part because few of yesterday's new announcements involve anything that's immediately available. (Lion will reach consumers in July; iOS 5 is coming “this fall.”) For now, the best we can do is mull the news over. Here are some of the things I'm wondering about:

要想搞清楚这一切对未来意味着什么得花些工夫，因为昨天会议所发布的讯息短时间内看来是难以得到实践的（Lion系统七月才会正式发布；iOS 5则要等到秋天）。目前我们能做的是细细琢磨昨天的会议议题。我对这样几件事情比较感兴趣：

Can 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=47? On Twitter, I saw some folks with Microsoft- and Android-centric worldviews snark that this new feature or that new feature announced at WWDC already existed on other platforms. In general, they're right–just about everything Apple announced has antecedents elsewhere. And in some cases, as with iOS 5′s notifications, Apple is playing catchup, pure and simple. The company's defining characteristic isn't that it does things no company has done before it–it's that it does them on its own schedule (sometimes very early, sometimes remarkably late) and tends to do them well. And it does them all itself, on its own terms, and tries to make them all work together seamlessly. (It doesn't always succeed at the seamless part, but it tries harder than anyone else.) If yesterday's news adds up to be a big deal, it won't be because Apple invented anything utterly new; it'll be because it made many old ideas work better together than anyone else has managed to date.

1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=47成立吗?在twitter上面我看到微软和安卓拥趸们叫嚣昨天会议上的所谓创新不过是对别的平台的冷饭热炒。总体来说，他们说的倒也没错——苹果每走一步似乎都有先例可循。某些情况下，比如iOS 5，苹果纯粹是在炒冷饭。苹果公司的的显著特点不在于做别人没有做过的事情，而在于按自己的时间表来做别人做过的或正在做的事情（有时早的出奇，有时晚的离谱），并且力图把这些事情做到最好。此外，苹果做事完全独立自主，个性张扬，天衣无缝（虽然“天衣无缝”有时也有注水嫌疑，但是它做出的努力却值得肯定）。倘若要说昨天的苹果会议事关重大，从创新角度上来讲的话其实也没什么了不起的，因为苹果就是以创新著称的；但要是从推陈出现，化腐朽为神奇的角度上来讲的话，再多的溢美之词对于苹果都不为过。

What does the last week mean for the Microsoft vs. Apple wars?People sure like to talk about the competition between these two companies–which makes sense, since it's been going on for at least thirty years–but it's really been pretty quiet in recent years. Microsoft has had a monopoly on PCs under $1000, and Apple has had one on PCs over $1000, and they've both made lots of money. (And Apple has sprinted ahead on the mobile front, where Microsoft is still lacing its running shoes.) Between last week's Windows 8 peek and yesterday's news, though, the two companies are coming back into existential conflict. Microsoft is trying to reinvent Windows into a post-PC operating system. Apple is giving iOS, its post-PC operating system, a level of autonomy formerly reserved for PCs. What the two companies are doing is simultaneously oddly similar and wildly different. (More thoughts to come on this.)

上周对于“微果大战”意味着什么？人们对于这两家公司之间的竞争一直以来都津津乐道——都争了三十几年了，这也见怪不怪——但是近年来人们开始对这个话题失去兴趣了。微软是1000美元以下个人电脑市场的枭雄，而苹果则是1000美元以上市场的翘楚，并且两个企业都赚得盆满钵满（而且苹果在手机领域拔得头筹，而微软则还在摸爬滚打）。上周，微软Windows 8和苹果技术会议两个焦点事件再次将两家公司带到了风口浪尖。微软致力于将Windows系统引入后电脑时代，而苹果则致力于赋予其后电脑时代iOS操作系统以可以媲美电脑的自动化。两家公司所做的事情出奇的一致却又南辕北辙（这一点值得深思）。

Will iCloud…work? Syncing is one of the toughest problems in personal technology; I'm not sure if anyone's ever nailed it. And Steve Jobs acknowledged that MobileMe isn't exactlyproof that Apple knows how to get it right. John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out that Apple isn't calling what iCloud does “syncing,” and that the version of a file that Apple is storing on its servers is the definitive one. That version will just get pushed out to devices as necessary. That should help. But even if you don't consider iCloud to be syncing, it's the single most ambitious moving-data-around-between-devices service to date. If it works without meaningful hiccups, it'll be quite an accomplishment.

iCloud有用吗？同步问题是个人技术方面的一大难题；我不确定是否真的有人做到过。乔布斯自己也承认Mobile Me无法证明苹果已经具备这样的技术实力。约翰•格鲁伯指出，苹果并没有把iCloud的功能称为“同步”，苹果服务器所采用的文件存储格式特征明显。必要时这一文件格式可以被输出。这一点有文章可做。但是，即使你认为iCloud的功能谈不上同步，这的确是设备间数据传输的重要一步。如若流畅度能得到保障的话，它会成为一项了不起的成就。

Do people want the file system to go bye-bye? At the keynote, Steve Jobs explained that the company is working vigorously to eliminate the need for a file system of the sort that personal computers have had ever since the first ones with floppy disks arrived. He was talking about iOS, but iCloud starts to nibble away at the edges of the traditional file system on Macs and PCs, too. My impulse was to think “but I like the file system.” And then I thought “maybe it's an inconvenience I only think I like because I don't know better.”

人们真打算和文件系统说拜拜了吗？昨天会上，乔布斯表示苹果竭力取消自第一台电脑出现时便与个人电脑如影随形的文件系统。他说的是iOS，但是iCloud已经开始蚕食Mac和个人电脑的文件系统。而我想说的是“可是我挺喜欢文件系统的”。但是转念一想，“我大概只是自认为很喜欢它罢了，因为我对这个问题懂的不多。”

Why is Lion only $29? It looks like a pretty meaty upgrade. Certainly far more so than Snow Leopard–I'm provisionally more excited by it than I was by Leopard, which was $129. Maybe Apple figures it's a good idea to get it on as many Macs as possible to increase the chances of people buying lots of software from the Mac App Store?

为什么Lion系统只卖29美元？看起来这次系统升级挺有料，至少比雪豹系统有料多了——Lion系统带给我的激动程度远胜于标价129美元的雪豹系统。难道是因为苹果忽然意识到购买Mac的人越多，Mac应用程序的销路就越好？

Does the world need iMessage? My instinct is to be skeptical about a messaging system that requires me to give much thought to what sort of device the person on the other end is using. We'll see.

世界需不需要iMessage？我的直觉是，对于一个发个短信还得算计收信人使用的是什么设备的信息系统我是持怀疑态度的。走着瞧。

Will the split keyboard catch on? Divvying up an onscreen keyboard into left- and -righthand sides to make for easier thumb-typing is a very old idea. I associate it with Samsung's Q1 UMPC from five years ago, and Microsoft showed a variation in its Windows 8 preview last week. So far, it's felt quirky rather than mainstream. But Apple likes to avoid the quirky, so I take its inclusion in iOS 5 as a sign that Apple thinks a lot of people will like it. (Now, can we get Swype?)

对开键盘会流行吗？将触屏键盘一分为二成左右手键盘以使拇指输入更便捷已经是老生常谈了。我用三星的Q1超级移动个人电脑已经5年了，而上周微软在win 8预览中展示了对该技术的变革。目前，这看起来很非主流。但是苹果一项擅长让非主流成为主流，因此我从iOS 5系统中得出的结论就是，苹果有信心让人们爱上键盘对开式电脑。

What should we read into iOS's embrace of Twitter? I like to tweet from my iPhone, so it's a pleasing development. But should we try to parse its greater meaning? Is there any reason why it wasn't Facebook that got baked into Apple's OS, or might that come along in iOS 6? Is there now an Apple-Twitter alliance that's a mightier Facebook competitor than if the two companies were going it alone, with more signs of the partnership to come?

从iOS 6于Twitter的联袂中我们能读出什么？我喜欢用iPhone发微博，所以我觉得这项发明很不错。但是这其中是否有什么弦外之音呢？为什么内置进OS系统的不是Facebook？以后是否会考虑添加？是否两家企业强强联手是为了合力对付Facebook？

Why no straightforward music subscription service a la Rhapsody, Napster, Rdio, Slacker, and Mog? Is it a business Apple isn't interested in pursuing? Or can it not sign the music-label deals it wants?

为什么年订阅音乐服务不包含la Rhapsody, Napster, Rdio, Slacker, 以及Mog这几家在线音乐网站呢？难道是因为苹果对该领域不甚感兴趣？或者这些网站无法迎合其音乐品味？

Will people pay twenty-five bucks a year for iTunes Match? It's the return of one of Lala's best features, the ability to automatically unlock songs you already own in an online collection. Lala offered it for free. Then again, $25 a year is slightly over two bucks a month–pretty darn close to free if it's useful.

三月起是否人们就可以以每月25美元的价格享受iTunes了呢？这是Lala音乐网特色服务的重要回归，即自动解封线上音乐集里面用户已经拥有的歌曲这一功能。Lala音乐完全免费。而且，一年25美金只比每月两美金贵一美元而已——如果有用的话，这项服务基本上相当于免费提供。

Got any thoughts about any of these issues–or questions of your own? (I know I'm going to have more questions–the more I think about all of yesterday's news, the less I'm clear on all of its implications…)

以上十个问题各位有什么高见吗（我是觉得我的问题越来越多了——对昨天的资讯想得越多，对其深远影响就越不清楚）？