北京师范大学研究生阅读文章.doc

Steve Jobs: The Magician By the editorial REUTERS The revolution that Steve Jobs led is only just beginning WHEN it came to putti ng on a show, no body else in the computer ind ustiy 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 conjure up an incredible^ new electronic gadget in front of an awed crowd, were the performances of a master showman. All computers do is fetch and shuffle numbers, he once explained, but do it fast enough and the results appear to be magick Mr Jobs, who died this week 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 the internet humming with tributes from politicians, is proof that Mr. Jobs held become something much more significant than just a clever money-maker. He stood out in three ways——as a technologist, as a corporate 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. Apple of his eye As a technologist, Mr. Jobs was different because he was not an engineer—and that was his great strength. Instead he was obsessed with product design and aesthetics, and with making advanced technology simple to use. He repeatedly took an existing but half-formed idea一the mouse-driven computer, the digital music player, the smartphone, the tablet computer一and showed the rest of the industry how to do it properly. Rival firms scrambled to follow where he led. In the process he triggered upheavals in computing, music, telecoms and the news business that were painful for incumbent firms but welcomed by millions of consumers. Within the wider business world, a man who liked to see himself as a hippy, permanently in revolt