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The Magician
The revolution that Steve Jobs led is only just beginning
When it came to putting on a show, nobody else in the computer industry, or any other industry for that matter, could match Steve Jobs. His product launches, at which he would stand alone on a black stage and produce as if by magic an “incredible” new electronic gadget （小器具）in front of an amazed crowd, were the performances of a master showman. All computers do is fetch and work with numbers, he once explained, but do it fast enough and “the results appear to be magic”. Mr Jobs, who died recently aged 56, spent his life packaging that magic into elegantly designed, easy-to-use products.
The reaction to his death, with people leaving candles and flowers outside Apple stores and politicians singing praises on the internet, is proof that Mr Jobs had become something much more significant than just a clever money-maker. He stood out in three ways－as a technologist, as a corporate （公司的）leader and as somebody who was able to make people love what had previously been impersonal, functional gadgets. Strangely, it is this last quality that may have the deepest effect on the way people live. The era of personal technology is in many ways just beginning.
As a technologist, Mr Jobs was different because he was not an engineer－and that was his great strength. Instead he was keenly interested in product design and aesthetics （美学）, and in making advanced technology simple to use. He repeatedly took an existing but half-formed idea－the mouse-driven computer, the digital music player, the smartphone, the tablet computer（平板电脑）－and showed the rest of the industry how to do it properly. Rival firms competed with each other to follow where he led. In the process he brought about great changes in computing, music, telecoms and the news business that were painful for existing firms but welcomed by millions of consumers.
Within the wider business world, a man who liked to see himself as a hippy （嬉皮士）, permanently in revolt against big companies, ended up being hailed by many of those corporate giants as one of the greatest chief executives of his time. That was partly due to his talents: showmanship, strategic vision, an astonishing attention to detail and a dictatorial management style which many bosses must have envied. But most of all it was the extraordinary trajectory （轨迹）of his life. His fall from grace in the 1980s, followed by his return to Apple in 1996 after a period in the wilderness, is an inspiration to any businessperson whose career has taken a turn for the worse. The way in which Mr Jobs revived the failing company he had co-founded and turned it into the world’s biggest tech firm (bigger even than Bill Gates’s Microsoft, the company that had outsmarted Apple so dramatically in the 1980s), sounds like something from a Hollywood movie.
But what was perhaps most astonishing about Mr Jobs was the absolute loyalty he managed to inspire in customers. Many Apple users feel themselves to be part of a community, with Mr Jobs as its leader. And there was indeed a personal link. Apple’s products were designed to accord with the boss’s tastes and to meet his extremely high standards. Every iPhone or MacBook has his fingerprints all over it. His great achievement was to combine an emotional spark with computer technology, and make the resulting product feel personal. And that is what put Mr Jobs on the right side of history, as technological innovation （创新）has moved into consumer electronics over the past decade.
As our special report in this issue (printed before Mr Jobs’s death) explains, innovation used to spill over from military and corporate laboratories to the consumer market, but lately this process has gone into reverse. Many people’s homes now have more powerful, and more flexible, devices than their offices do; consumer gadgets and online services are smarter and easier to use than most companies’ systems. Familiar consumer products are being adopted by businesses, government and the armed forces. Companies are employing in-house versions of Facebook and creating their own “app stores” to deliver software to employees. Doctors use tablet computers for their work in hospitals. Meanwhile, the number of consumers hungry for such gadgets continues to swell. Apple’s products are now being snapped up in Delhi and Dalian just as in Dublin and Dallas.
Mr Jobs had a reputation as a control freak （怪人）, and his critics complained that the products and systems he designed were closed and inflexible, in the name of greater ease of use. Yet he also empowered millions of people by giving them access to cutting-edge technology. His insistence on putting users first, and focusing on elegance and simplicity, has become deep-rooted in his own company, and is spreading to rival firms too. It is no longer just at Apple that designers ask: “What would Steve Jobs do?”
The gap between Apple and other tech firms is now likely to narrow. This week’s announcement of a new iPhone by a management team led by Tim Cook, who replaced Mr Jobs as chief executive in August, was generally regarded as competent but uninspiring. Without Mr Jobs to shower his star dust on the event, it felt like just another product launch from just another technology firm. At the recent unveiling of a tablet computer by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, whose company is doing the best job of following Apple’s lead in combining hardware, software, content and services in an easy-to-use bundle, there were several attacks at Apple. But by doing his best to imitate Mr Jobs, Mr Bezos also flattered （抬举）him. With Mr Jobs gone, Apple is just one of many technology firms trying to arouse his uncontrollable spirit in new products.
Mr Jobs was said by an engineer in the early years of Apple to emit a “reality distortion （扭曲）field”, such were his powers of persuasion. But in the end he created a reality of his own, channeling the magic of computing into products that reshaped entire industries. The man who said in his youth that he wanted to “put a ding in the universe” did just that.
单选题
We learn from the first paragraph that nobody could match Steve Jobs in ---|||________|||--- .
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】[定位] 根据题干中的the first paragraph和match Steve Jobs定位到第1段第1句。
[解析] 第1句中说当提到putting on a show(表演)，没有人能match Steve Jobs(与史蒂夫?乔布斯相媲美)，B中的showmanship意为“演技”，与putting on a show同义，同时与下一句中的showman呼应，故选B。
单选题
What did Steve Jobs do that most deeply affected people’s way of life?
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】[定位] 根据题干中的most deeply, affected, way of life定位到第2段倒数第2句。
[解析] 原文中的the deepest effect on the way提示该句是本题答案依据所在，句中的强调部分this last quality，指的是上一句中的“让人爱上先前那些毫无个人情趣的、实用的小玩意”，言外之意是，现在这些东西具有个性化的情趣，最后一句承接此意，指出“个人技术的时代才刚刚开始”，C的语义与之相近，含有关键同personal technology，故为答案。A中的functional gadgets也出现在定位句的上一句，但为提到过去的产品而用到的描述，不属于乔布斯影响人们生活方式的描述。
单选题
Where did Mr Jobs’s great strength lie?
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】[定位] 根据题干中的great strength定位到第3段第1句。
[解析] 该句提到乔布斯的优势在于他不是一名工程师，Instead之后的内容对此进行解释，故答案在第2句的Instead之后。B中的designing elegant和user-friendly分别是原文中design and aesthetics和simple to use的同义替换，故选B。
单选题
Many corporate giants saw Steve Jobs as ---|||________|||--- .
单选题
For those who have suffered failures in business, Steve Jobs’s life experience serves as ---|||________|||--- .
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】[定位] 根据题干中的failures in business定位到第4段倒数第2句。
[解析] 题干中的those who...是对原文该句中的any businessperson whose...的同义改写，都指“事业受挫的商人”，原文提到乔布斯的经历对这些人是一种“激励”，用了inspiration一词，D与原文一致，故为答案。
单选题
What was the most astonishing part of Mr Jobs’s success?
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】[定位] 根据题干中的most astonishing定位到第5段第1句。
[解析] 原文中what was perhaps most astonishing(最令人称奇)揭示了其后的内容是本题的答案所在：让消费者绝对忠于苹果产品，C意为“他赢得苹果用户的绝对忠诚”，是原文的同义改写，故为答案。
单选题
What is mentioned in this issue’s special report about innovation nowadays?