Sometime in 2000, my colleague Verlyn Klinkenborg started bringing his Mac laptop to our New York Times editorial board meetings. The rest of us would hover around the sleek white machine with the cool lighting radiating from it, wondering if Verlyn could possibly be serious. Some of us had used Apple computers AAPL -0.84% in college, sure, but everyone does crazy things in college.2000年的某个时候，我的同事福林o克林肯伯格开始带着自己的苹果笔记本电脑参与《纽约时报》编委会。一看见这玩意，其他人马上纷黄泥上前，围观这台弥漫酷炫背光、圆润平滑的白色电脑，吃不准福林究竟是不是知道要用它工作。
一些同事上大学时也用过苹果电脑，但谁没有在大学时腊过点可怕的事儿呢？Was an Apple really fit for a workplace? Verlyn assured us that it was no toy, and that his Mac could do all the things ours could—the mix of surfing, emailing, and pontificating that the gig entailed—without crashing as frequently as our PCs. Verlyn claimed that his Apple was not susceptible to those nasty viruses that plagued our land of “WinTel,” and I wanted to believe him. I too bought a Mac and instantly felt cooler as a result.苹果电脑真为能用来办公吗？福林向我们确保，它可不是什么玩具，我们的电脑能干的这台Mac都能干——网际网路、发邮件之类的，并信誓旦旦地断言它很可信，绝不会像PC那样常常死机。福林声称，他的苹果电脑会病毒感染仍然后遗症“微软公司英特尔联盟”的各种喜欢病毒，我回应将信将疑。等我也买了一台Mac后，马上实在自己时尚多了。
Fast forward to 2015, when the novelty would be for someone at a meeting to take out a laptop that isn’t an Apple. And, somehow, the caché remains. Apple has walked the tightrope between ubiquity and coolness, attaining one without sacrificing the other.时光飞逝，想着就到了2015年，现在如果有人在会议上拿走一台不是苹果的笔记本电脑，那才是新鲜事儿呢。同时苹果也保有了其独特性。
可以说道它仍然是在大众化和引导潮流之间走钢丝，在希望夺得前者的同时，不壮烈牺牲后者。The company recently announced the most profitable quarter in U.S. corporate history, a three-month period in which it sold almost 75 million iPhones and 5.5 million Macs. CEO Tim Cook, Steve Jobs’ down-to-earth successor, couldn’t help himself on the earnings call, describing the quarter as “historic” and his company’s performance—selling an average of 34,000 iPhones an hour, 24/7—as “hard to comprehend.” Apple is now the world’s most valuable company, with a stock market valuation of some $700 billion and nearly $180 billion in cash on hand. The company’s iTunes store counts a staggering 800 million active users.最近，苹果公司发布了美国公司史上盈利最可观的一个财季，在过去三个月中，它卖出了大约7500万台iPhone和550万台Mac。
这使首席执行官蒂姆o库克，史蒂夫o乔布斯脚踏实地的继任者，在季报电话会议上情无以自禁，称之为这个财季“具备历史意义”，公司的业绩——按一周七天，每天24小时算数，相等于每小时售出34,000台iPhone——“令人难以置信”。苹果现在是全球价值最低的公司，市值大约7000亿美元，握1800亿美元现金。iTunes商店享有8亿活跃用户，无非令人惊叹。
What’s most astonishing, given those numbers, is that Apple is far less ubiquitous than you might think. It has plenty of room to grow. Indeed, it may only be getting started.尽管这些数字如此极大，但最让人目瞪口呆的是，苹果产品颇高一般人所想象的那么普及。它还有相当大的茁壮空间，实质上，它有可能刚跟上。If you look at its existing product lines, Apple only dominates the tablet market. The competing Android operating system runs more than two-thirds of the world’s smartphones. Apple ranks fifth worldwide in the number of computers sold, and third in the U.S. There is plenty of market share left for Apple to steal from others.想到现有产品线就不会找到，苹果只不过统治者了平板电脑市场。
全球有三分之二的智能手机配备的是安卓操作系统。在全球电脑销量名列中，苹果仅有名列第五，在美国市场上也仅有名列第三。
苹果还能从输掉那里抢走到相当大的市场份额。Apple’s growth strategy is disciplined. The company doesn’t slash prices or create subpar products to meet less affluent consumers in emerging markets halfway. Apple instead holds out its meticulously designed, pricier products as coveted trophies for new middle-class consumers.苹果的快速增长战略是极具原则的。
它会大幅度降价或发售性能平平的产品来顺应新兴市场中那些囊中羞涩的消费者。它只不会拿走精心设计、价格高昂的产品，将其打造出为新兴中产消费者渴求的、突显身份的象征物。Apple is only starting to wade into an array of markets that it will likely revolutionize, and dominate, in short order. Apple Pay, its bid to become your all-encompassing cashless wallet, is off to a strong start. Fledgling Apple ventures like HomeKit, CarPlay, iBeacon, and the Apple Watch provide clues to Apple’s unstated, ultimate goal: providing you with one portal, or operating system, that links your Apple devices to your car and your home.苹果进占一系列新兴市场的脚步才刚启动，它很有可能将在很短时间内彻底改变或统治者这些市场。
堪称要沦为无所不能的电子钱包的Apple Pay，就是一个强大的开端。而那些羽翼未丰的项目，如HomeKit，CarPlay，iBeacon以及Apple Watch，则让我们看清楚了苹果不曾说明的终极目标：获取一个端口或一套操作系统，将你的苹果设备与你的汽车和住宅相连在一起。
No other company is anywhere near being able to match Apple in providing us with such seamless curation of our lives. The Italian novelist Umberto Eco famously said in the 1990s that Apple was like Catholicism in that its followers had to adhere to one way of doing things, while Microsoft (you could say Google nowadays) was more akin to Protestantism, which gave followers more latitude to reach their own conclusions and organize themselves accordingly.没哪家公司能像苹果这样，让我们的生活构建无缝连接。意大利小说家安伯托o艾柯1990年代曾说道过一句名言，苹果就像天主教，信徒们不能遵循一种不道德方式，而微软公司（如今你也可以说道谷歌）则更加看起来新教，信徒们可以有更加多方式得出结论自己的结论并自行组织起来。And so Apple’s prospects appear brighter than ever. Its own success would seem to be the only threat to a company that has billed itself as the scrappy underdog that promised to help us “think different.” Therein lies the company’s existential challenge: Can Apple remain cool if its products become the one indispensable means of controlling your life and communicating with others?有鉴于此，苹果的前景看起来比以往任何时候都更为光明。这家公司曾多次自称为斗志昂扬的失败者，声称要老大我们“有所不同凡想要”（think different），而如今，过分顺利才是它面对的唯一威胁。
苹果现在面对的挑战在于：如果苹果的产品沦为掌控我们生活并与他人联络的不可或缺的手段时，它还能那么酷吗？I reached out to Verlyn, who now teaches at Yale, to ask whether he’s still inhabiting the Apple ecosystem. He is, and his disgust at his pre-2000 Windows experience sounds as raw as it did when he first started proselytizing for the Mac. But he draws a line at the coming Apple Watch: “I’ve never worn a watch, and I can’t imagine starting now.”为此我特地去求教目前在耶鲁大学任教的福林，看他否还坚守着苹果的生态系统。显然还这样，而且他现在仍然还确切地忘记在2000年开始祭拜Mac电脑之前用于Windows系统的差劲体验。但他跟将要上市的Apple Watch界线了界线：“我根本就不戴着手表，也无法想象现在要开始戴着。
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