自比毕加索 揭秘神秘的"苹果大学"

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple may well be the only tech company on the planet that would dare compare itself to Picasso.

加州，库比蒂诺——苹果公司或许是这个星球上唯一一个敢把自己和毕加索(Picasso)相提并论的技术公司了。

In a class at the company’s internal training program, the so-called Apple University, the instructor likened the 11 lithographs that make up Picasso’s “The Bull” to the way Apple builds its smartphones and other devices. The idea: Apple designers strive for simplicity just as Picasso eliminated details to create a great work of art.

公司的内部培训计划被称为“苹果大学”，在其中一堂课上，导师将11张构成毕加索《公牛》(The Bull)的版画与苹果公司打造智能手机及其他产品的方式联系起来。他的意思是：苹果设计师像毕加索一样追求简洁，去掉繁琐的细节，创造出伟大的艺术品。

Steven P. Jobs established Apple University as a way to inculcate employees into Apple’s business culture and educate them about its history, particularly as the company grew and the tech business changed. Courses are not required, only recommended, but getting new employees to enroll is rarely a problem.

史蒂夫·P·乔布斯(Steven P. Jobs)创立苹果大学的目的是向员工灌输苹果的商业文化，并传授公司的历史，特别是公司的发展和技术经济的变革。课程并非必修，只作为推荐课程，但是吸引新雇员来听课从来就不成问题。

Although many companies have such internal programs, sometimes referred to as indoctrination, Apple’s version is a topic of speculation and fascination in the tech world.

许多公司也有类似的内部培训，有时会被视作“灌输”，而苹果公司培训的主题则是思考与技术世界的魅力。

It is highly secretive and rarely written about, referred to briefly in the biography of Mr. Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Apple employees are discouraged from talking about the company in general, and the classes are no exception. No pictures of the classrooms have surfaced publicly. And a spokeswoman for Apple declined to make instructors available for interviews for this article.

培训高度保密，几乎没有人写过相关的东西，只是在沃尔特·艾萨克森(Walter Isaacson)为乔布斯所做的传记中略有涉及。公司不鼓励雇员们公开谈论公司，这些课程自然也不例外。没有任何课堂上的照片公之于众。苹果公司的一位女发言人拒绝提供导师们的联系方式，供本文作者进行采访。

But three employees who have taken classes agreed to speak to The New York Times on the condition that they not be identified. They described a program that is an especially vivid reflection of Apple and the image it presents to the world. Like an Apple product, it is meticulously planned, with polished presentations and a gleaming veneer that masks a great deal of effort.

但是三位上过课的雇员同意接受《纽约时报》匿名采访。他们描述的课程特别能够鲜明地反映出苹果公司的状况，以及它呈现给世界的形象。和苹果公司的产品一样，苹果大学的课程也经过精心设计，有着精美的呈现和闪亮的装饰，其下掩藏着相关者付出的巨大劳动。

“Even the toilet paper in the bathrooms is really nice,” one of the employees said.

“就连卫生间的厕纸都很高级，”一位雇员说。

Unlike many corporations, Apple runs its training in-house, year round. The full-time faculty — including instructors, writers and editors — create and teach the courses. Some faculty members come from universities like Yale; Harvard; the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford; and M.I.T., and some continue to hold positions at their schools while working for Apple.

和其他许多公司不同，苹果公司的内部培训常年开课。设计和教授课程的教学人员都是全职，其中包括教师、作家和编辑。有些教学人员来自耶鲁、哈佛、加州大学伯克利分校、斯坦福和麻省理工等大学，有些人在自己的学校保留教职，同时又在苹果教课。

The program was devised by Joel Podolny, then the dean of Yale School of Management. Mr. Jobs selected him when the program was founded, in 2008, and he remains head of the effort.

该项目由乔伊·波多尔尼(Joel Podolny)设计，他当时是耶鲁大学管理学院的院长。培训计划于2008年开始创立时，乔布斯选择了他，如今他仍然领导着这项工作。

On an internal website available only to Apple staff members, employees sign up for courses tailored to their positions and backgrounds. For example, one class taught founders of recently acquired companies how to smoothly blend resources and talents into Apple. The company may also offer a course tailored specifically to employees of Beats, perhaps including its founders, Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Neither Apple nor Beats would comment.

在只对苹果公司员工开放的内部网站上，员工可以登记为自己的职务与背景量身定做的课程。比如其中有一门课专门向新近收购的公司的创始人们开放，教他们如何平稳地将原公司的资源和人才融入苹果。苹果公司恐怕也专门为Beats公司的雇员开设了一门课程，其创始人Dr. Dre和吉米·艾欧文(Jimmy lovine)可能也在学员之中。苹果公司与Beats公司拒绝对此作出评论。

Some of the courses teach case studies about important business decisions that Apple made, one of the employees said, including the one to make the iPod and its iTunes software compatible with Microsoft’s Windows system. This was a topic of fierce debate among executives. Mr. Jobs hated the idea of sharing the iPod with Windows, but he eventually acquiesced to his lieutenants. It turned out that opening the iPod to Windows users led to explosive growth of the music player and the iTunes Store, an ecosystem that would later contribute to the success of the iPhone.

一位雇员说，有些课程的内容是案例研究，就是苹果公司如何作出重大商务决定的事例，比如让iPod和它配套的iTunes软件与微软的Windows系统兼容的决策。当时这在管理层中曾激起很大的争论，乔布斯不喜欢iPod与Windows兼容的想法，但最终还是默许手下这样做。最后iPod向Windows用户开放的做法为这种音乐播放器与iTunes商店带来了爆炸式的增长，形成了一种生态系统，后来对iPhone的成功大有裨益。

The classes are taught on Apple’s campus in a section of buildings called City Center and are as thoughtfully planned as an Apple product, the employees said. The rooms are well lit and built in a trapezoid shape; seats in the back rows are elevated so that everyone has a clear view of the instructor. Occasionally, classes are given in Apple’s overseas offices, like one in China, and the professors travel there to teach.

雇员们说，授课地点是在苹果工业园内一个名叫“城市中心”的建筑群，这些建筑和苹果的产品一样，经过精心设计。房间照明良好，设计成梯形，后排的座椅是升高的，让所有人都能清楚地看到教师。偶尔也会在中国等海外办公室授课，教授们会出国讲课。

Randy Nelson, who came from the animation studio Pixar, co-founded by Mr. Jobs, is one of the teachers of “Communicating at Apple.” This course, open to various levels of employees, focuses on clear communication, not just for making products intuitive, but also for sharing ideas with peers and marketing products.

兰迪·尼尔森(Randy Nelson)是“苹果公司的沟通”课程的教师之一，他来自皮克斯动画工作室，乔布斯是该公司的创办人之一。这个课程向不同等级的雇员开放，主要内容是清晰的沟通技巧，不仅要凭直觉制作产品，也要与同伴们分享想法，为产品做市场推广。

In a version of the class taught last year, Mr. Nelson showed a slide of “The Bull,” a series of 11 lithographs of a bull that Picasso created over about a month, starting in late 1945. In the early stages, the bull has a snout, shoulder shanks and hooves, but over the iterations, those details vanish. The last image is a curvy stick figure that is still unmistakably a bull.

在去年的沟通课上，尼尔森放了毕加索“公牛”的幻灯片，那是毕加索在1945年底期间，于一个月内画出的11幅公牛图案。早期阶段的公牛有口鼻、肩膀和蹄子，但是随着一次次的再创作，这些细节渐渐消失了。最后的图像是曲线构成的形状，但仍让人能看出是一头公牛。

“You go through more iterations until you can simply deliver your message in a very concise way, and that is true to the Apple brand and everything we do,” recalled one person who took the course.

“经历一次次再创作，直到你能把信息以非常简洁的方式传达出来，苹果品牌，乃至我们所做的一切都是这样，”据一个参加过这门课程的人回忆。

In “What Makes Apple, Apple,” another course that Mr. Nelson occasionally teaches, he showed a slide of the remote control for the Google TV, said an employee who took the class last year. The remote has 78 buttons. Then, the employee said, Mr. Nelson displayed a photo of the Apple TV remote, a thin piece of metal with just three buttons.

尼尔森有时还会教另一门名叫“苹果何以成为苹果”的课程，一个去年上过这门课的雇员说，他会在课上放出谷歌电视遥控器的幻灯。这个遥控器上有78个按钮，然后尼尔森拿出了一张苹果电视遥控器的图，它是一个薄薄的金属片，上面只有三个按钮。

How did Apple’s designers decide on three buttons? They started out with an idea, Mr. Nelson explained, and debated until they had just what was needed — a button to play and pause a video, a button to select something to watch, and another to go to the main menu.

苹果的设计师们是怎么决定只设三个按钮的？尼尔森解释说，他们一开始先有了一个创意，然后继续讨论，直到实现了他们所需要的东西——一个按钮用来播放和暂停视频，一个按钮作为选择键，另一个按钮用来回到主菜单。

The Google TV remote serves as a counterexample; it had so many buttons, Mr. Nelson said, because the individual engineers and designers who worked on the project all got what they wanted. But, Apple’s designers concluded, only three were needed.

谷歌电视的遥控器则是反例，它有太多按钮了，尼尔森说，这是因为参与项目的工程师和设计师们都实现了自己想要的东西。但是苹果的设计师们达成了一致：只有三个按钮是必需的。

“The Best Things,” another course, takes its name from a quotation by Mr. Jobs. Its purpose is to remind employees to surround themselves with the best things, like talented peers and high-quality materials, so that they can do their best work.

还有一门课程叫做“最好的东西”，这个名字来自乔布斯的一句话。它的目标是提醒雇员们，要让最好的东西围绕在自己身边，比如有才华的同伴和高品质的材料，这样才能在工作中做到最好。

One of the teachers for this course, Joshua Cohen, a Stanford professor, brought up Central Park in New York. The space for the park was originally a rocky swamp. But, Mr. Cohen said, its designers wanted to transform it into an area that gave urban residents the experience of nature.

这门课的教师之一乔舒亚·科恩(Joshua Cohen)是斯坦福大学的教授，他在课上举纽约的中央公园为例。公园起先是一片岩石和沼泽，但设计师们想把它改造成一片供城市居民体验自然的地方。

The comparison was to one of Mr. Jobs’s goals: to make complex computer technologies feel understandable and natural.

这种对比正是乔布斯的目标之一：把复杂的电脑技术变得让人容易理解，变得非常自然。

Ben Bajarin, a consumer technology analyst for Creative Strategies, said Apple University would take on more importance as Apple continued to grow.

本·巴贾林(Ben Bajarin)是创意战略公司的消费者技术分析师，他说，随着苹果持续发展，苹果大学会变得更加重要。

“When you do the case studies on Apple decades from now, the one thing that will keep coming out is this unique culture where people there believe they’re making the best products that change people’s lives,” Mr. Bajarin said. “That’s all cultural stuff they’re trying to ingrain. That becomes very difficult the bigger you get.”

“研究苹果迄今几十年的案例，你会发现它们始终保有这样一种独特文化——相信自己在创造能够改变人们生活的最好产品，”巴贾林说。“他们想植入的完全是文化上的东西，公司越大，要做到这一点就越困难。”