12
Our Very Own Company
To come up with the $1,000 we thought we'd need to build ready-made printed circuit boards, I sold my HP 65 calculator for $500. The guy who bought it only paid me half, though, and never paid me the rest. I didn't feel too bad because I knew HP's next-generation calculator, the HP 67, was coming out in a month and would cost me only $370 with the employee discount. And Steve sold his VW van for another few hundred dollars. He figured he could ride around on his bicycle if he had to. That was it. We were in business.
为了凑到1000美元，我们需要已经印好的线路板。我以500卖掉了自己的HP65计算器。买方只付了一半的钱，剩下的钱再没有给我。这并没有让我感到懊恼，因为惠普新一代计算器HP67马上就会面市，面向内部员工的价格不过370美元。斯蒂夫卖掉了他的大众小货车，凑到了另外几百美元。下次他需要运货时，只能骑自行车了。就这样，我们启动了公司业务。
Believe it or not, it was only a couple of weeks later when we came up with a name for the partnership. I remember I was driving Steve back from the airport along Highway 85. Steve was coming back from a visit to Oregon to a place he called an "apple orchard." It was actually some kind of commune.
信不信由你，几周后我们为这次合作想出了一个名字。我记得，当时斯蒂夫刚下飞机，我们正行驶在85号公路上。不久前在俄勒冈，他拜访了一个叫“苹果庄园”的地方——那肯定是个公社之类的组织。
Steve suggested a name -Apple Computer.
斯蒂夫提议，新公司叫做“苹果电脑”。
The first comment out of my mouth was, "What about Apple Records" This was (and still is) the Beatles-owned record label.
我脱口而出的是：“它跟苹果唱片有什么关系吗？”那是披头士乐队旗下的唱片公司。
We both tried to come up with technical-sounding names that were better, but we couldn't think of any good ones. Apple was so much better, better than any other name we could think of. Steve didn't think Apple Records would have a problem since it probably was a totally different business. I had no idea. So Apple it was. Apple it had to be.
尽管我们试图找一个技术性更强的名字，但是“苹果”这名字优势明显，比我们能想出来的任何名字都好许多。斯蒂夫觉得有唱片公司也以苹果命名倒不是个问题，因为这根本就是不同领域的业务。我不置可否，所以“苹果”这个名字被采纳了。
- o -
Really soon after that, we met with a friend of Steve's who worked at Atari. This guy said he'd be able to design the basic layout of my printed circuit board, based on my original design, for about $600. That was what we needed so we could take it into a manufacturing company that could mass-produce boards.
稍过了一会儿，我们跟斯蒂夫在Atari工作时的一个朋友碰面。这人自称能为我的印刷线路板设计布局，而且只需要600美元。果真如此，我们就可以开始印刷线路板的批量生产了。
We also met with another guy from Atari, Ron Wayne, who Steve thought could be a partner. I remember meeting him for the first time and thinking, Wow, this guy is amazing. He could just sit at a typewriter and type out our whole legal partnership agreement like he's a lawyer. He wasn't a lawyer, but he knew all the legal words. He was a fast talker and he seemed so smart. He was one of those people who seemed to have a quick answer for everything. He seemed to know how to do all the things we didn't. Ron ended up playing a huge role in those very early days at Apple - this was before we had funding, before we'd done much of anything. He was really the third partner, when I think of it. And he did a lot. He wrote and laid out the early operation manual. After all, he could type stuff. And he could draw. He was the one who did the etching of Newton under the Apple tree that was on the computer manual.
我们还见到了朗·韦恩（RonWayne）——他也曾在Atari工作。当时，斯蒂夫还想拉他入伙，而我对他的第一印象也棒极了。他可以坐在打字机前，打出一整套合作法律协议，简直像位律师。当然，他不是律师，可是懂得所有的法律用语。他的语速很快，看起来也很聪明，对任何事都能快速地做出反应。看起来，他能解决我们遇到的许多问题。然而，朗很早就退出了苹果，那时我们还没有拉到资金。想到这一点，我总觉得，在某种意义上，他是我们的第三个成员。他做了大量的工作，撰写了早期发布的操作手册。不仅如此，他还绘制了手册上那幅牛顿在苹果树下的插图。
Underneath it was a line from a William Wordsworth poem describing Newton. It said: "A mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought. . . alone."
插图的下面是威廉·华兹华斯描写牛顿的诗句——一颗心，永远徜徉在思想的未知大海里，曲高和寡。
Eventually Steve, Ron, and I figured out a partnership agreement that started Apple and included all three of us. Steve had 45 percent, I had 45 percent, and Ron got 10 percent. We both trusted him as someone who'd be able to resolve arguments. Ron started working on the paperwork.
最后斯蒂夫、朗和我签订了合作协议，三人共同开创了苹果公司。斯蒂夫和我各持有45%的股份，朗拥有其余的10%。我们都觉得他是一个善于解决矛盾的人。此后，他着手推进公司的文字工作。
- o -
Where Did That Weird Quote Come From
这奇怪的引言从哪儿来的？
I had to look this one up. It turns out it is from book 3 of The Prelude by William Wordsworth. (A Mind Forever Voyaging is also the name of a video game from 1985. Who knew) The lines in full read like this:
我查过，结果好像是威廉·华兹华斯的《前奏曲》。这整段读起来是这样的：
The antechapel where the statue stood
塑像站立在教堂门厅旁
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
牛顿面色沉静
The marble index of a mind for ever
和他的棱镜
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
大理石永久铭刻着一颗心灵
徜徉在思想的未知大海，曲高和寡
Before the partnership agreement was even inked, I realized something and told Steve. Because I worked at HP, I told him, everything I'd designed during the term of my employment contract belonged to HP.
在合作协议最终成文前，我想起来一件事，并告诉了斯蒂夫，因为我还在惠普工作，所以我在雇用期内的设计都属于惠普。
Whether that upset Steve or not, I couldn't tell. But it didn't matter to me if he was upset about it. I believed it was my duty to tell HP about what I had designed while working for them. That was the right thing and the ethical thing. Plus, I really loved that company and I really did believe this was a product they should do. I knew that a guy named Miles Judd, three levels above me in the company structure, had managed an engineering group at an HP division in Colorado Springs that had developed a desktop computer.
我不清楚，斯蒂夫是不是因此感到沮丧，我倒觉得这不是问题。毕竟，这是我的责任——告诉惠普，为其工作时我设计了什么。从职业道德上来说，这是对的。另外，我也希望公司能像我一样，对这一设计抱有信心。我知道，在公司里比我高三个级别的迈尔斯·居德，曾带领惠普位于科罗拉多泉的事业部研发过桌面电脑。
It wasn't like ours at all -it was aimed at scientists and engineers and it was really expensive - but it was programmable in BASIC.
那与我们的计算机完全不同——它面向科学家和工程师，非常昂贵，要用BASIC语言编程。
I told my boss, Pete Dickinson, that I had designed an inexpensive desktop computer that could sell for under $800 and would run BASIC. He agreed to set up a meeting so I could talk to Miles.
我和上司皮特·迪金森（Pete Dickinson）说过自己设计的桌面电脑，能运行BASIC语言，售价800美元。为此，他答应安排一次我和迈尔斯的会面。
I remember going into the big conference room to meet Pete, his boss, Ed Heinsen, and Ed's boss, Miles. I made my presentation and showed them my design.
后来，我向皮特和他的上级爱德·海因森（Ed Heinsen）以及更高层的迈尔斯，看我演示并陈述了自己的设计。
Okay, Miles said after thinking about it for a couple of minutes. "There's a problem you'll have when you say you have output to a TV. What happens if it doesn't look right on every TV I mean, is it an RCA TV, a Sears TV, or an HP product that's at fault" HP keeps a close eye on quality control, he told me. If HP couldn't control what TV the customer was using, how could it make sure the customer had a good experience More to the point, the division didn't have the people or money to do a project like mine. So he turned it down.
迈克尔沉思了几分钟后说：“OK，你说可以输出到电视机上。问题是，如果不是每台电视机都能显示，情况会如何？我的意思是说，它是否默认只与RCA电视机、西尔斯电视机（Sears）或惠普的产品兼容？”他告诉我，惠普十分看重产品的可靠性。如果惠普无法保证用户使用哪种电视机，又怎么能保证高质量的用户体验？除此之外，这个事业部没有人力和物力投入我的设计，所以这事被搁置下来了。
I was disappointed, but I left it at that. Now I was free to enter into the Apple partnership with Steve and Ron. I kept my job, but after that I was officially moonlighting. Everybody I worked with knew about the computer board we were going to sell.
我很失望，但是也因此感到解脱，终于可以没有阻碍地与斯蒂夫、朗开始在苹果的合作了。那时，我仍在惠普工作，只是把业余时间花在苹果上。与我合作的人都知道，我们要卖的计算机主板。
Over the next few months, Miles would keep coming up to me. He knew about BASIC-programmable computers because of his division out in Colorado, and even though they didn't want my design, he said he was intrigued by the idea of having a machine so cheap that anyone could own one and program it. He kept telling me he'd been losing sleep ever since he heard the idea.
在接下来的几个月中，迈尔斯也在跟进我的工作。因为他领导过在科罗拉多的事业部，了解可用BASIC编程的电脑。他说，让电脑便宜到每个人都能承受，还可以用来编程，这个主意令他着迷。尽管如此，他还是不想要我的设计。
But looking back, I see he was right. How could HP do it It couldn't. This was nowhere near a complete and finished scientific engineer's product. Everybody saw that smaller, cheaper computers were going to be a coming thing, but HP couldn't justify it as a product. Not yet. Even if they had agreed, I see now that HP would've done it wrong anyway. I mean, when they finally did it in 1979, they did it wrong. That machine went nowhere.
他告诉我，第一次听到这个想法时，激动得睡不着觉。现在看来，他是对的。惠普作为公司能做什么？无计可施。那时，这电脑还远不是一个完善的产品。每个人都看见了这种更小的、更便宜的计算机，但就算他们已经同意，惠普仍然无法判断它是一件怎样的产品。 我至今认为，惠普当时决定并没有错。当他们在1979年最终做出来一个产品时，反而出现了错误，这种机器没有任何结果。
A few weeks after the meeting, the PC board was finished and working. I was so proud of it. I was at HP showing it off to some engineers when the phone rang at the lab bench.
那次会面几个星期后，个人电脑的主板完成了，而且通过了测试。我为之骄傲。当我在惠普给一些工程师展示时，实验室的电话铃响起来了。
It was Steve.
是斯蒂夫。
Are you sitting down
“你坐在那儿吗？”
No, I told him.
“没有啊。”我说。
Well, guess what I've got a $50,000 order.
“你猜发生了什么？我得了一笔5万美元订单。”
What
“什么？”
Steve explained that a local computer store owner had seen me at Homebrew and wanted to buy one hundred computers from us. Fully built, for $500 each.
斯蒂夫解释道，一个本地的电脑商店店主在家酿俱乐部见过我，想从我们这儿买100台电脑。装好的整机，500美元一台。
I was shocked, just completely shocked. Fifty thousand dollars was more than twice my annual salary. I never expected this. It was the first and most astounding success for Apple the company. I will never forget that moment.
我惊呆了——5万美元，比我两年的年薪还高，我从来都没有指望过。这是苹果公司第一个，也是最令人吃惊的成功，我永远也忘不了那一刻。
- o -
Well, I decided I should rim the whole thing by HP one more time. I spoke to Pete again. He told me to run it by legal. The legal department ran it by every single division of HP. That process took about two weeks.
好吧，我决定在惠普再试一次。我又找皮特谈了一次。他告诉我要按法律流程行事。法律部在惠普每个事业部都走了一圈，这个过程花了两周。
But HP still wasn't interested, and I received a note from HP's legal department saying they claimed no right to my design.
但是，惠普对我的产品仍不感兴趣。我从惠普的法律部门收到一纸通告，称他们不会诉求对我设计的拥有权。
- o -
It turned out that a guy named Paul Terrell was starting a new computer store, called the Byte Shop in Mountain View.
后来我才知道，那个购买我们电脑的家伙叫保罗·特瑞尔（PaulTerrell）。他在山景城刚开了一个新的电脑商店，名叫拜特。
As I said, Terrell had seen me demonstrating my computer at Homebrew, and he'd told Steve to "keep in touch," and Steve followed up with him the next day. Steve showed up barefoot at his office the next day, saying, "Hi. I'm keeping in touch."
我曾经提到，特瑞尔在家酿俱乐部看到过我的计算机，并告诉斯蒂夫“保持联系”。其后几天他们一直保持着联系。斯蒂夫曾赤脚就冲到他办公室，说：“嗨，我来找你。”
What Steve didn't know was that Paul was looking for a product just like ours. Terrell wanted to sell a complete computer to his customers, fully assembled. And that had never been done before. Before us, Paul had been buying Altairs or kits like that, and had technicians soldering them together in the back. Every time he got one built, he could sell it. But he thought he had a lot of interest, a lot more potential customers. Steve told him about the Apple I I'd designed and Paul realized it was a completely built board, so it was a great product for him.
斯蒂夫不知道，那时保罗正在寻找我们设计的那种产品。他想把整机卖给他的客户，这就要求机器必须是装配好的——这是前所未有的。在我们之前，保罗买入“牛郎星”电脑以及成套的工具箱，然后找技术员把它们焊接起来，做好一个，就卖出一个。但是他觉得应该赚取更多的利润，找到更多的潜在顾客。斯蒂夫告诉他，我已经做出了“苹果Ⅰ”，保罗意识到那是全部搭建好的主板，对他而言，这是件相当好的产品。
So suddenly, with Terrell's order, I could see that someone else was interested in the Apple I. That was so unexpected and exciting - and so easy. I mean, we already had a little company that was set up to mass-produce our boards down in Santa Clara. Now, all we needed to do was supply the additional parts and they would solder them on.
突然间有了保罗的订单，这让我发现了其他人对“苹果Ⅰ”的兴趣。这种惊喜出人意料，让人激动，却得来全不费功夫。那时，我们在圣塔·克拉拉已经设立了小公司，着手把我们的产品大批量投产。现在，我们所需要做的，是提供一些附加的部分，他们可以将其焊接起来。
But how would we get the parts That would cost money we didn't have. Allen Baum and his dad, Elmer, loaned us $1,200 to buy some of the parts. But we did end up finding a chip distributor (Cramer Electronics) and got the parts on a thirty-day credit. The chip distributor had to call Paul Terrell to see if he was really going to pay us.
但是，我们怎么得到其余的部分呢？这需要钱，我们没钱。艾伦（AllenBaum）和他父亲（Elmer）向我们提供了1200美元的贷款，以购买一些零配件。但是我们发现了一家芯片渠道商——Cramer电子，在那里购买零配件可以获得了三天的赊账期。芯片渠道商还跟保罗·特瑞尔打电话证实了，他的确会代我们付款。
The deal Steve worked out with Paul Terrell was he would pay us cash on delivery for the computers. So Paul Terrell was really financing this whole project, it turned out. When he paid us, we were able to pay for the chips.
斯蒂夫跟保罗·特瑞尔达成的这笔交易要求货到付现款。实际上，保罗·特瑞尔为整个项目提供了周转资金。当他给我们付款时，我们就可以付清购买芯片的赊账了。
The distributor gave us the parts, and then they went into a sealed closet at the Santa Clara company that was manufacturing the boards. On the day they were ready for them, the parts came out of the closet, were accounted for and soldered on, and then we had thirty days to pay for them.
渠道商给我们零配件，并和圣塔·克拉拉一家主板制造公司密谈。产品出来时，他们就可以直接在上面完成焊接了。而我们获得了30天的延期付款时间。
Our first batch of boards was finished in January 1976. There were kits like the Altair out there, but nothing like what we were doing. I remember how, waiting for them, I was just the happiest person in the world. I was so happy around this time. I never truly thought we were going to make money with Apple. That was never in my mind. The only thing on my mind was, Wow, now that I've discovered what a microprocessor can do, there are so many places I can take it. I knew that for the rest of my life, I would have a computing tool for myself.
第一批主板完成于1976年1月。它们很像“牛郎星”的零配件，但是不像我们正在制作的东西。让我记忆犹新的是，在等待的时间里，我简直是世界上最快乐的人。我那时高兴极了，从未真的想过我们能用苹果来挣钱。我心中唯一的想法是，哇，我已经发现了一个微处理芯片能做些什么，它的应用竟然如此广泛。我知道，此生要为什么而奉献了。我为自己找到了一个计算工具。
The potential with the Apple I was blowing my mind. I mean, I'm around video games, and suddenly I realize that my little computer is going to be able to play games. I imagined word- processing software replacing typewriters someday. I was a fast typist, and I could see we were nowhere near where we needed to be for a computer to replace a typewriter yet, though I could imagine it. I imagined how a computer could help me with all my design work at HP. It just blew me away. Every single thing I thought about on the computer was going to be valuable. I could see it so clearly. And that was all I could think about.
关于“苹果Ⅰ”的潜能的想法，也掠过了我的头脑。那时我正着迷于视频游戏，而“苹果Ⅰ”意味着我的小计算机也能玩游戏了。我还想象，未来的文字处理软件将取代打字机。我打字速度很快，但知道距离计算机取代打字机还很遥远。我能想象一台计算机如何在惠普的设计工作上帮上大忙。
After the boards were finished, we rounded up Steve's friend Dan Kottke and Steve's sister, Patty, to plug chips into sockets for $1 a board. Steve would bring us maybe ten or twenty assembled boards at a time from the manufacturer. And there we would sit on a lab bench in the garage of Steve's parents' house at 11161 Crist Avenue. Then I would plug each assembled board into the TV and keyboard we had there and test it to see if it worked.
当主板完成时，我们和斯蒂夫的朋友丹·科特克（Dan Kottke），还有斯蒂夫的妹妹帕蒂（Patty）把芯片插进板卡的插槽。当时，每片板卡的售价是一美元。斯蒂夫从制造商那里给我们带回了将近20片装配好的板卡。斯蒂夫父母的房子位于克瑞斯特大道，我们的实验室长椅就放在他们的车库里。在那儿有电视机和键盘，可以插上主板，以测试产品否能正常工作。
If it did, I put it in a box. If it didn't, I'd figure what pin hadn't gotten into the socket right or what circuit was shorted. I'd fix the bad ones and put them in the box. After a dozen or two were in the box, Steve would drive them down to Paul Terrell's store and get paid in cash.
通过测试的主板会被放进一个盒子，反之，则要接受检修，直到修好，再放入盒子。每当盒子装了一打或两打芯片，斯蒂夫就开车把它们送到保罗·特瑞尔的商店，再拿回现金。
These weren't finished computers as you would think of them today. Paul Terrell ended up having to supply monitors, transformers, keyboards, and even the cases to put the computers in. I'm not sure that's what he expected. I think he thought, based on what Steve Jobs told him, that he was getting a fully built computer.
那不是今天这种装配好的电脑。保罗·特瑞尔最后还得给我们提供显示器、转换器、键盘，甚至还有机箱。我不确信这就是他想要的，但根据斯蒂夫·乔布斯的说法，他应该是想要一种完全装配好的计算机。
Back then, we didn't have the volume to do plastic. So Paul would put them into wooden cases -often a Polynesian wood called koa -which was a style thing for us.
我们没有塑料外壳，保罗把它们放进木箱子里——对我们来说，还挺时髦的。
We had to come up with a retail price for our literature. After all, we weren't going to sell them just to Paul.
我们设计了自己的零售价格。毕竟，我们不能把产品永远只卖给保罗。
We decided to price them at $666.66 each - a price I came up with because I liked repeating digits. (That was $500, plus a 30 percent markup.)
我们决定把价格定在每台666.66美元——我喜欢这个重复的数字。当然，更实际的考虑是500美元再上30%的上浮价格。
And you know what Neither of us even knew the number's satanic connections until Steve started getting letters about it. I mean, what The number of the Beast. Truly, I had no idea. I hadn't seen the movie The Exorcist. And the Apple I was no beast to me.
可是我们中没有人意识到在电影《驱魔人》（The Exorcist）中，它是个与魔鬼有关的数字，直到后来有人给斯蒂夫写信提及此事。不过，“苹果Ⅰ”对我可不是什么野兽。
- o -
By now, writing the BASIC interpreter was turning out to be the longest, most complicated single project I'd ever do for Apple.
那是迄今为止，我面对的最长、最复杂的单项任务。我曾被BASIC语言搞得头大。
Man, I sniveled at BASIC back then. Compared to FORTRAN, it was a weak, lightweight language. I thought no one would ever use it, for example, to create the kind of sophisticated programs engineers and scientists use. I could just see where tilings were going. That book I told you about, 101 Basic Computer Games, meant you could just type in the programs and have these games.
跟FORTRAN相比，它是一门轻量级的弱语言。我觉得，没人想用它创建一种工程师和科学家都能用的复杂语言。我想看事态发展情况。我曾经提到过《101个BASIC计算机程序》这本书，它指导读者输入程序就可以运行一些游戏。我曾写了一个在“苹果Ⅰ”上运行的BASIC解释器，基于MOS6502处理器。
I'd been writing a BASIC interpreter to run on the Apple I, which was based around the MOS 6502 processor. I figured if I wrote this language really fast -if I worked on it day and night and turned my ideas into something that worked within a couple of months -well, then I would get almost famous. People would say that Steve Wozniak wrote the first BASIC for the 6502, just like they knew Bill Gates for writing the BASIC for Altair. I would be the source, and that was kind of exciting.
那时我想，如果我能尽快写出这个语言——如果我夜以继日地工作，在几个月内把想法写出来——我就能声名远播。人们会说斯蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克为6502写出了第一个BASIC解释器，就像知道比尔·盖茨为“牛郎星”电脑写出了第一个BASIC解释器一样。“成为了第一人”的想法让我激动。
I had never taken a class on writing a computer language. In my early college years, Allen Baum would Xerox textbooks at MIT, where he went to school, and send those pages to me. I learned a little that way.
我从来没有修过计算机语言的课程。在我刚上大学的那段日子里，艾伦·鲍姆从他就读的麻省理工学院复印了一些教材寄给我，这让我学到了一些东西。
So I understood that computer languages had a grammatical syntax, just like any language, and I knew how they were organized.
我知道了计算机语言跟其它语言一样，也讲语法，也需要组织起来完成任务。
I didn't know that the BASIC interpreters that existed for different computers, like DEC's and HP's, were different in any way.
但是我不知道，不同的计算机有不同的BASIC解释器，比如DEC和惠普就需要编写不同的解释器。
I assumed they were all the same, and I assumed Bill Gates's was the same as those. So, back at work, I grabbed some HP BASIC manuals and studied them. I started writing on paper a syntax table. This is what describes the grammar of the computer language. It defines what commands a programmer can enter.
我原以为它们都一样，而且以为比尔·盖茨编写的解释器也跟其他的一样。显然我错了，我拿了几本惠普的BASIC手册就开始学习起来，开始在纸上设计计算机语言的语法表，这定义了程序员可以输入什么样的命令。
For instance, if English had a syntax table, it would explain that personal pronouns like "he" and "she" are nouns and usually subjects in a sentence such as, "He threw the ball." It would list all the possible verbs, of which "threw" would be one. And it would tell you what all possible "objects" would be, such as "ball." In English, there are millions of possibilities for subjects, verbs, and objects, but in a language like BASIC you can limit them to a certain number of items.
这与英语中某些单词在句子中的形式变化类似。不同的是，英语中这种变化之后的组合有上百万种可能，但是在BASIC语言中，可以把这些限定在一定的数目中。
Then there are the rules you need. Say you wrote out the equation 5 + 3x7. When you write that out with no parentheses, a mathematician would know that you execute multiplication and division first, addition and subtraction second. So really that equation would be 5 + 21. So that rule, about what terms to execute first, is an example of something that has to be defined in the syntax table.
所以你需要规则。比如，你写出一个代数式5＋3×7。写出来后，不加圆括号，数学家会觉得你应该先做乘法再做加法。那么，这个式子相当于5＋21。这就是规则，计算机语言同样需要一个明确、易于使用的规则。
I had no idea what other people did in their computer languages, but I felt it was obvious that you needed a noun stack to hold things like numbers, a verb stack (which would include actions like multiplication or addition), and a set of priorities for every single verb that was typed in.
我不知道别人在他们的计算机语言里做什么，我只是觉得，它需要一个名词库保留数字之类的东西，还需要一个动词库——记录乘法和加法之类的动作，以及这些动作优先权的定义。
It took me about four months to come up with the core of my BASIC interpreter. I ended up leaving out the ability to type in decimal numbers (called "floating point arithmetic"), and instead handled everything with integers - that is, whole numbers. That saved me about a month of work, I figured. I decided that for games and computer simulations - the two main things I was writing the BASIC for - I would just get by with integers.
我花了4个月时间才找到自己的BASIC解释程序的核心。之后，我放弃了在计算机上输入并处理十进制的想法，而是只要求它处理整数。这为我节省了一个月的工作时间。我决定只用整数来做游戏和计算机模拟——这也是我写BASIC的两个主要用途。
Many of the key programs in my life, including those back in Colorado, used only integers. So I designed my BASIC to only work with numbers from -32,768 to +32,767.
我生活中几个关键程序都是这样完成的。所以我把自己的BASIC语言的运算范围设计成从-32768到+32787。
I wrote the whole program on paper -with machine instructions on the left and the equivalent in hexadecimal (equivalent to Is and Os) on the right. I had to do this by hand because I couldn't afford to use an assembler program, which is the typical way you'd do this. This is the same way I had to write the little monitor program.
我把整个程序都写在纸上，机器指令写在左边，右边写十六进制的代码。我只能手工编写代码，因为买不起汇编程序——尽管通常都需要一个。我还用这个方法编写了显示器的程序。
So I figured, Hey, I'm able to write the program with the code by myself, by hand. Who needs a computer to do this for you By the way, I still have the notebook I wrote my BASIC interpreter in. I'm not sure, but I bet it could be worth a lot to a museum now!
当然，我也发现，自己竟能手工编写程序。谁说一定需要台电脑来编程？我只用一个小本子就编写了BASIC解释器。虽然不太确信，但我敢打赌，把那个小本子送进博物馆还是值点钱的。
Anyway, the end result of all this was, when my 6502 BASIC was in the computer, I could type in little programs with the keyboard. Like I could have the computer ask you, "What's your name" And if you typed it in, it would fly your name all around the screen. This sounds so simple now, but back then, nobody had ever seen a small computer where you could actually type in programs with a regular keyboard and have it execute. Even with machines like the Altair, it was very expensive to add a plug-in card and a big cable that would connect to an enormous ugly teletype that had the keyboard to type on.
最终，当我为6502编写的解释器载入电脑时，用键盘输入小程序终于实现了。比如，让电脑问：“你叫什么名字？”如果你输入名字，它就能满屏幕飞了。今天看起来，这没有什么，但在当时却是极为罕见的。即使是“牛郎星”计算机，要加一个插入式卡片和电缆都非常昂贵，而且还要连上巨大笨重的电传打字机键盘作为输入设备。
I showed my computer running BASIC at Homebrew after the main meetings a few times, and people were just blown away by it. But there was one problem. The Apple I had no permanent storage -no hard disk drive or floppy or CD drive like you see today. This was way, way before that. So every time I wanted the BASIC to run, I had to turn on the computer and literally type my whole program in from my notebook. This was a 4,000-byte program -it took almost forty minutes for me to type it all in every time. And when I turned off the computer, because there was no permanent storage and only RAM, the whole program would be gone. I ended up having to either leave my computer on all the time -which meant I couldn't transport it very well -or come up with a solution.
我在家酿俱乐部会后展示过几次那台运行BASIC的电脑。大家觉得很不错，但有一个问题，“苹果Ⅰ”没有永久性存储器，没有你现在看到的电脑常配的硬盘驱动器或软盘磁动器，更没有CD驱动器。所以，每次运行BASIC程序，不得不打开计算机，从小本子上逐字输入。这个程序有4000个字节长，每次输入需要50分钟。因为没有永久性存储器，只有RAM，一关掉计算机，整个程序就丢了。这意味着：要么把电脑永远开着——我没办法随意搬动电脑，要么就另寻解决之道。
That's how 1 developed the cassette tape interface for the Apple I. Aside from changing the type of RAM from static to dynamic, this was the only change to my original design from the very first days of Homebrew in the spring of 1975. I designed a circuit so that a regular cassette tape could hold the BASIC, and when I turned the computer on, it would automatically load my BASIC into memory so the computer was usable.
这就是我为“苹果Ⅰ”研究出磁带存储器的原动力。自1975年春我在家酿俱乐部展示初始设计以来，把RAM从静态变成动态是唯一的改变。我设计的线路让普通磁带也能存储BASIC。当我打开计算机时，自动载入我的BASIC，计算机就进入了备用状态。
Once the BASIC was done and easily loadable from a cassette tape, I discovered something terrible. I had miscalculated. I had thought that all versions of BASIC were more or less the same, and that all the 101 games in BASIC that I had in that book would automatically run if you typed them in. That turned out not to be the case. It turned out that the type of BASIC I'd written - as well as the HP BASIC I'd originally studied -was totally different from Bill Gates's Microsoft BASIC, which was based on the DEC BASIC at the time. Bummer!
一旦准备好了BASIC解释器，就可以轻松从磁带上装载。但是，我原以为BASIC所有版本都相似，只要把书中101个BASIC游戏输入，就能自动运行，结果却发现根本不是这样。我发现，我写的BASIC解释器基于惠普，而比尔·盖茨的却基于DEC。真惨！
The Basics on BASIC
BASIC的一些基本知识
The BASIC computer language, the one I told you I sniveled at, was designed from the start to be an easy-to-program language for writing computer programs. Created in 1963 by Dartmouth College professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, the BASIC acronym stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. There's no question that BASIC is an easier-to-learn language than languages such as Pascal or C. It's also smaller and slower. But it worked just perfectly with my first Apple computers.
我告诉过你的，我曾为之头大的BASIC语言，最初是作为一个易于编程的语言而设计的。1963年在达特茅斯学院由教授约翰·克门尼（JohnKemeny）和托玛士·克兹（ThomasKurtz）创建，BASIC是“初学者通用符号指令”（Beginner’sAll-purposeSymbolicInstructionCode）的缩写。毫无疑问，BASIC是一门易学的语言，比Pascal或C容易，小一点，运行速度慢一点。但是我的第一台苹果电脑上配合得天衣无缝。
So anyone who wanted to put those games on the Apple I was going to have to make changes to the games to do it. I did manage to get some games working on the Apple I, though. There was a popular game, in BASIC, called Star Trek. Like the show. I adapted it to my BASIC and it ran just fine.
所以，如果有人想把这些游戏放进苹果电脑，就必须相应修改一下这些游戏。尽管如此，我还曾设法给苹果电脑再找些可以运行的游戏。当时有一款相当受欢迎的BASIC游戏，叫《星球大战》，就像那部电影一样。我改编了一下BASIC解释器，让这个游戏运行起来毫无障碍。
- o -
After we started selling the boards to Paul Terrell -working day and night to get them to him on time -we had profits like I never imagined. Suddenly our little business was making more than I was making at HP That wasn't very much, admittedly. But still, it was a lot. We were building the boxes for $220 and selling them wholesale to Paul Terrell for $500.
在我们开始向保罗·特瑞尔卖板卡时，我们夜以继日地加班工作，就为了及时交货。那次，我赚到了一笔做梦也没想到的钱。忽然间这些小生意赚得比我在惠普的收入还多。我们以220美元的成本价组装机器，以500美元的批发价卖给保罗·特瑞尔。
And, of course, we didn't need a ton of money to operate. I had a day job, so I looked at it as, Hey, cool. Extra money for pizza! As for Steve, he was living at home. I was twenty-five and he was only twenty-one at the time, so what expenses could we have, really Apple didn't have to make that much to sustain itself and be ongoing. We weren't paying ourselves salaries or paying rent, after all. We didn't have any patents to pay for. Or lawyers. It was a small-time business, and we weren't worried that much about anything.
当然，我们也不需要大把的钱来运营企业。我白天有一份全职工作，可以挣点零花钱。而斯蒂夫住在家里。那时，我25岁，而他刚21岁，我们都没有什么生活负担。苹果不需要赚太多钱就可以维持自身的运转和发展。毕竟，我们无需给自己发薪水也不需要付房租，而且我们也不需要支付任何专利费或律师费。这是个小本买卖，我们没有任何需要提心吊胆的事情。
My dad, watching this, pointed out that we weren't actually making money because we weren't paying ourselves anything. But we didn't care, we were having too much fun.
我爸爸一直在密切关注着这件事，他指出，我们并没有真正的赚钱，因为我们没给自己发薪水。但我们不在乎，觉得事情足够好玩。
- o -
Right after we delivered to Paul Terrell, Steve arranged for me to show the Apple I PC board during the main meeting of Homebrew in about March 1976. I had shown off my computer after the meeting for months by then, but I'd never talked about it formally to the whole group.
1976年3月，在我们给保罗·特瑞尔发货后，斯蒂夫安排我在家酿俱乐部聚会上展示“苹果Ⅰ”的主板。那之前的几个月，我已经在每次正式会议后演示了计算机，但是还从未在整个小组里正式展示过。
Of course, I'd never spoken in front of a group of people this large. This was the largest spotlight I had ever been in. I mean, by now Homebrew had grown to about five hundred or more peopie. The meeting was being held at the auditorium at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). So I just stuck to the facts after I walked down the aisle with my printed circuit board in my hands. This was the first of only two times I ever spoke in front of the Homebrew meeting. (The other was when I introduced the Apple II.)
当然，我也没有在这么多人面前讲过话。那时，家酿俱乐部已经发展到超过500人。这次会议在斯坦福大学的线性加速器中心的大礼堂举行。我手里拿着印刷电路板，穿过过道，站在那儿，只是陈述了一下事实。我一生中只有两次这样在家酿俱乐部的聚会上发言——另一次是在我介绍“苹果Ⅱ”时。
I knew that many people in the club had seen me running my prototype. So I just stood there in front of everybody and described the chips on the board -what they were and all - and talked about the specifications and the architecture. I talked about how I built it. And I talked about the main thing, as far as I was concerned: having a human-typable keyboard instead of a stupid, cryptic front panel with a bunch of lights and switches. I explained that I'd used dynamic RAM instead of static RAM and why. I pointed out that my board had 8K bytes RAM and compared that to the Altair motherboard, which had only 256 bytes. I talked about a little BASIC program - the one that moved your name around on-screen when you typed it in. I described the video circuitry, the connectors, the voltages needed, everything. And finally I got to tell everyone the price -$666.66.
我知道，这个俱乐部许多人之前看过我的演示，这次，我只是站在每个人面前，讲解板卡上每块芯片的功能，再谈谈架构和规格，以及我如何搭建这个系统。我还讲到了它的主要特点——便于人工输入的键盘，而不是一堆灯和开关组成的仪表面板，后者笨重而且难于理解。我说过，我用动态RAM替代了静态的RAM及其原因；并指出，我的板卡有8KB大小的RAM，“牛郎星”的主板却只有256字节的RAM。我也谈了自己的BASIC小程序——让你输入的名字满屏幕跑的那个。我还描述了视频线路、连接器、需要的电压等细节。最后，我告诉在场的每个人，它的售价是666.66美元。
I'm not sure if we were a big hit or not. You'll have to ask someone there who saw me giving the talk. After all, by that time a lot of Homebrew members were either starting or working for little computer companies. So maybe they couldn't see that the Apple I was that special.
我不太清楚那次演示的效果，你可以问一下当时听过讲话的人。毕竟，那时家酿俱乐部的大部分成员，不是在小的计算机公司工作，就是自己经营着一家小公司，所以大家可能并不觉得苹果有什么特殊。
But I could. And Steve could. We were so proud.
但是我为之感到骄傲，斯蒂夫也有同感——我们感到十分骄傲。
We were participating in the biggest revolution that had ever happened, I thought. I was so happy to be a part of it. It didn't have to be a big business. I was just having fun.
这是历史上最大的一次变革，我们有幸已参与其中。在我看来，它不一定非要成为什么大生意，只要我觉得开心就足够了。
Ron Wayne, the third partner, wasn't having as much fun, I guess. He was used to big companies and big salaries. We bought him out for $800 after we delivered some of the first boards to Paul Terrell and well before we got our first outside investment.
我猜，另一个合伙人朗却不觉得有那么好玩。他适合大公司和高薪的工作。我们把第一批板卡发给保罗·特瑞尔后，在获得第一笔外部投资前，就以800美元的价格赎清了朗的股份。