Amelio calling up Wozniak as Jobs hangs back, 1997
Hovering1 Backstage
“It’s rare that you see an artist in his thirties or forties able to really contribute something amazing,” Jobs declared as he was about to turn thirty.
That held true for Jobs in his thirties, during the decade that began with his ouster from Apple in 1985. But after turning forty in 1995, he flourished. Toy Story was released that year, and the following year Apple’s purchase of NeXT offered him reentry into the company he had founded. In returning to Apple, Jobs would show that even people over forty could be great innovators. Having transformed personal computers in his twenties, he would now help to do the same for music players, the recording2 industry’s business model, mobile phones, apps, tablet computers, books, and journalism3.
He had told Larry Ellison that his return strategy was to sell NeXT to Apple, get appointed to the board, and be there ready when CEO Gil Amelio stumbled. Ellison may have been baffled when Jobs insisted that he was not motivated by money, but it was partly true. He had neither Ellison’s conspicuous5 consumption needs nor Gates’s philanthropic impulses nor the competitive urge to see how high on the Forbes list he could get. Instead his ego7 needs and personal drives led him to seek fulfillment by creating a legacy8 that would awe9 people. A dual10 legacy, actually: building innovative11 products and building a lasting12 company. He wanted to be in the pantheon with, indeed a notch13 above, people like Edwin Land, Bill Hewlett, and David Packard. And the best way to achieve all this was to return to Apple and reclaim14 his kingdom.
And yet when the cup of power neared his lips, he became strangely hesitant, reluctant, perhaps coy.
He returned to Apple officially in January 1997 as a part-time advisor15, as he had told Amelio he would. He began to assert himself in some personnel areas, especially in protecting his people who had made the transition from NeXT. But in most other ways he was unusually passive. The decision not to ask him to join the board offended him, and he felt demeaned by the suggestion that he run the company’s operating system division. Amelio was thus able to create a situation in which Jobs was both inside the tent and outside the tent, which was not a prescription16 for tranquillity17. Jobs later recalled:
Gil didn’t want me around. And I thought he was a bozo. I knew that before I sold him the company. I thought I was just going to be trotted18 out now and then for events like Macworld, mainly for show. That was fine, because I was working at Pixar. I rented an office in downtown Palo Alto where I could work a few days a week, and I drove up to Pixar for one or two days. It was a nice life. I could slow down, spend time with my family.
Jobs was, in fact, trotted out for Macworld right at the beginning of January, and this reaffirmed his opinion that Amelio was a bozo. Close to four thousand of the faithful fought for seats in the ballroom20 of the San Francisco Marriott to hear Amelio’s keynote address. He was introduced by the actor Jeff Goldblum. “I play an expert in chaos21 theory in The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” he said. “I figure that will qualify me to speak at an Apple event.” He then turned it over to Amelio, who came onstage wearing a flashy sports jacket and a banded-collar shirt buttoned tight at the neck, “looking like a Vegas comic,” the Wall Street Journal reporter Jim Carlton noted22, or in the words of the technology writer Michael Malone, “looking exactly like your newly divorced uncle on his first date.”
The bigger problem was that Amelio had gone on vacation, gotten into a nasty tussle23 with his speechwriters, and refused to rehearse. When Jobs arrived backstage, he was upset by the chaos, and he seethed25 as Amelio stood on the podium bumbling through a disjointed and endless presentation. Amelio was unfamiliar26 with the talking points that popped up on his teleprompter and soon was trying to wing his presentation. Repeatedly he lost his train of thought. After more than an hour, the audience was aghast. There were a few welcome breaks, such as when he brought out the singer Peter Gabriel to demonstrate a new music program. He also pointed4 out Muhammad Ali in the first row; the champ was supposed to come onstage to promote a website about Parkinson’s disease, but Amelio never invited him up or explained why he was there.
Amelio rambled27 for more than two hours before he finally called onstage the person everyone was waiting to cheer. “Jobs, exuding28 confidence, style, and sheer magnetism29, was the antithesis30 of the fumbling31 Amelio as he strode onstage,” Carlton wrote. “The return of Elvis would not have provoked a bigger sensation.” The crowd jumped to its feet and gave him a raucous32 ovation33 for more than a minute. The wilderness34 decade was over. Finally Jobs waved for silence and cut to the heart of the challenge. “We’ve got to get the spark back,” he said. “The Mac didn’t progress much in ten years. So Windows caught up. So we have to come up with an OS that’s even better.”
Jobs’s pep talk could have been a redeeming35 finale to Amelio’s frightening performance. Unfortunately Amelio came back onstage and resumed his ramblings for another hour. Finally, more than three hours after the show began, Amelio brought it to a close by calling Jobs back onstage and then, in a surprise, bringing up Steve Wozniak as well. Again there was pandemonium36. But Jobs was clearly annoyed. He avoided engaging in a triumphant37 trio scene, arms in the air. Instead he slowly edged offstage. “He ruthlessly ruined the closing moment I had planned,” Amelio later complained. “His own feelings were more important than good press for Apple.” It was only seven days into the new year for Apple, and already it was clear that the center would not hold.
Jobs immediately put people he trusted into the top ranks at Apple. “I wanted to make sure the really good people who came in from NeXT didn’t get knifed in the back by the less competent people who were then in senior jobs at Apple,” he recalled. Ellen Hancock, who had favored choosing Sun’s Solaris over NeXT, was on the top of his bozo list, especially when she continued to want to use the kernel38 of Solaris in the new Apple operating system. In response to a reporter’s question about the role Jobs would play in making that decision, she answered curtly39, “None.” She was wrong. Jobs’s first move was to make sure that two of his friends from NeXT took over her duties.
To head software engineering, he tapped his buddy40 Avie Tevanian. To run the hardware side, he called on Jon Rubinstein, who had done the same at NeXT back when it had a hardware division. Rubinstein was vacationing on the Isle41 of Skye when Jobs called him. “Apple needs some help,” he said. “Do you want to come aboard?” Rubinstein did. He got back in time to attend Macworld and see Amelio bomb onstage. Things were worse than he expected. He and Tevanian would exchange glances at meetings as if they had stumbled into an insane asylum42, with people making deluded43 assertions while Amelio sat at the end of the table in a seeming stupor44.
Jobs did not come into the office regularly, but he was on the phone to Amelio often. Once he had succeeded in making sure that Tevanian, Rubinstein, and others he trusted were given top positions, he turned his focus onto the sprawling45 product line. One of his pet peeves46 was Newton, the handheld personal digital assistant that boasted handwriting recognition capability47. It was not quite as bad as the jokes and Doonesbury comic strip made it seem, but Jobs hated it. He disdained48 the idea of having a stylus or pen for writing on a screen. “God gave us ten styluses,” he would say, waving his fingers. “Let’s not invent another.” In addition, he viewed Newton as John Sculley’s one major innovation, his pet project. That alone doomed49 it in Jobs’s eyes.
“You ought to kill Newton,” he told Amelio one day by phone.
It was a suggestion out of the blue, and Amelio pushed back. “What do you mean, kill it?” he said. “Steve, do you have any idea how expensive that would be?”
“Shut it down, write it off, get rid of it,” said Jobs. “It doesn’t matter what it costs. People will cheer you if you got rid of it.”
“I’ve looked into Newton and it’s going to be a moneymaker,” Amelio declared. “I don’t support getting rid of it.” By May, however, he announced plans to spin off the Newton division, the beginning of its yearlong stutter-step march to the grave.
Tevanian and Rubinstein would come by Jobs’s house to keep him informed, and soon much of Silicon51 Valley knew that Jobs was quietly wresting52 power from Amelio. It was not so much a Machiavellian53 power play as it was Jobs being Jobs. Wanting control was ingrained in his nature. Louise Kehoe, the Financial Times reporter who had foreseen this when she questioned Jobs and Amelio at the December announcement, was the first with the story. “Mr. Jobs has become the power behind the throne,” she reported at the end of February. “He is said to be directing decisions on which parts of Apple’s operations should be cut. Mr. Jobs has urged a number of former Apple colleagues to return to the company, hinting strongly that he plans to take charge, they said. According to one of Mr. Jobs’ confidantes, he has decided55 that Mr. Amelio and his appointees are unlikely to succeed in reviving Apple, and he is intent upon replacing them to ensure the survival of ‘his company.’”
That month Amelio had to face the annual stockholders meeting and explain why the results for the final quarter of 1996 showed a 30% plummet56 in sales from the year before. Shareholders57 lined up at the microphones to vent19 their anger. Amelio was clueless about how poorly he handled the meeting. “The presentation was regarded as one of the best I had ever given,” he later wrote. But Ed Woolard, the former CEO of DuPont who was now the chair of the Apple board (Markkula had been demoted to vice58 chair), was appalled59. “This is a disaster,” his wife whispered to him in the midst of the session. Woolard agreed. “Gil came dressed real cool, but he looked and sounded silly,” he recalled. “He couldn’t answer the questions, didn’t know what he was talking about, and didn’t inspire any confidence.”
Woolard picked up the phone and called Jobs, whom he’d never met. The pretext60 was to invite him to Delaware to speak to DuPont executives. Jobs declined, but as Woolard recalled, “the request was a ruse61 in order to talk to him about Gil.” He steered62 the phone call in that direction and asked Jobs point-blank what his impression of Amelio was. Woolard remembers Jobs being somewhat circumspect63, saying that Amelio was not in the right job. Jobs recalled being more blunt:
I thought to myself, I either tell him the truth, that Gil is a bozo, or I lie by omission64. He’s on the board of Apple, I have a duty to tell him what I think; on the other hand, if I tell him, he will tell Gil, in which case Gil will never listen to me again, and he’ll fuck the people I brought into Apple. All of this took place in my head in less than thirty seconds. I finally decided that I owed this guy the truth. I cared deeply about Apple. So I just let him have it. I said this guy is the worst CEO I’ve ever seen, I think if you needed a license65 to be a CEO he wouldn’t get one. When I hung up the phone, I thought, I probably just did a really stupid thing.
That spring Larry Ellison saw Amelio at a party and introduced him to the technology journalist Gina Smith, who asked how Apple was doing. “You know, Gina, Apple is like a ship,” Amelio answered. “That ship is loaded with treasure, but there’s a hole in the ship. And my job is to get everyone to row in the same direction.” Smith looked perplexed66 and asked, “Yeah, but what about the hole?” From then on, Ellison and Jobs joked about the parable67 of the ship. “When Larry relayed this story to me, we were in this sushi place, and I literally68 fell off my chair laughing,” Jobs recalled. “He was just such a buffoon69, and he took himself so seriously. He insisted that everyone call him Dr. Amelio. That’s always a warning sign.”
Brent Schlender, Fortune’s well-sourced technology reporter, knew Jobs and was familiar with his thinking, and in March he came out with a story detailing the mess. “Apple Computer, Silicon Valley’s paragon70 of dysfunctional management and fumbled71 techno-dreams, is back in crisis mode, scrambling72 lugubriously74 in slow motion to deal with imploding75 sales, a floundering technology strategy, and a hemorrhaging brand name,” he wrote. “To the Machiavellian eye, it looks as if Jobs, despite the lure76 of Hollywood—lately he has been overseeing Pixar, maker50 of Toy Story and other computer-animated films—might be scheming to take over Apple.”
Once again Ellison publicly floated the idea of doing a hostile takeover and installing his “best friend” Jobs as CEO. “Steve’s the only one who can save Apple,” he told reporters. “I’m ready to help him the minute he says the word.” Like the third time the boy cried wolf, Ellison’s latest takeover musings didn’t get much notice, so later in the month he told Dan Gillmore of the San Jose Mercury News that he was forming an investor77 group to raise $1 billion to buy a majority stake in Apple. (The company’s market value was about $2.3 billion.) The day the story came out, Apple stock shot up 11% in heavy trading. To add to the frivolity78, Ellison set up an email address, savapple@us.oracle79.com, asking the general public to vote on whether he should go ahead with it.
Jobs was somewhat amused by Ellison’s self-appointed role. “Larry brings this up now and then,” he told a reporter. “I try to explain my role at Apple is to be an advisor.” Amelio, however, was livid. He called Ellison to dress him down, but Ellison wouldn’t take the call. So Amelio called Jobs, whose response was equivocal but also partly genuine. “I really don’t understand what is going on,” he told Amelio. “I think all this is crazy.” Then he added a reassurance80 that was not at all genuine: “You and I have a good relationship.” Jobs could have ended the speculation81 by releasing a statement rejecting Ellison’s idea, but much to Amelio’s annoyance82, he didn’t. He remained aloof83, which served both his interests and his nature.
By then the press had turned against Amelio. Business Week ran a cover asking “Is Apple Mincemeat?”; Red Herring ran an editorial headlined “Gil Amelio, Please Resign”; and Wired ran a cover that showed the Apple logo crucified as a sacred heart with a crown of thorns and the headline “Pray.” Mike Barnicle of the Boston Globe, railing against years of Apple mismanagement, wrote, “How can these nitwits still draw a paycheck when they took the only computer that didn’t frighten people and turned it into the technological84 equivalent of the 1997 Red Sox bullpen?”
When Jobs and Amelio had signed the contract in February, Jobs began hopping85 around exuberantly86 and declared, “You and I need to go out and have a great bottle of wine to celebrate!” Amelio offered to bring wine from his cellar and suggested that they invite their wives. It took until June before they settled on a date, and despite the rising tensions they were able to have a good time. The food and wine were as mismatched as the diners; Amelio brought a bottle of 1964 Cheval Blanc and a Montrachet that each cost about $300; Jobs chose a vegetarian87 restaurant in Redwood City where the food bill totaled $72. Amelio’s wife remarked afterward88, “He’s such a charmer, and his wife is too.”
Jobs could seduce89 and charm people at will, and he liked to do so. People such as Amelio and Sculley allowed themselves to believe that because Jobs was charming them, it meant that he liked and respected them. It was an impression that he sometimes fostered by dishing out insincere flattery to those hungry for it. But Jobs could be charming to people he hated just as easily as he could be insulting to people he liked. Amelio didn’t see this because, like Sculley, he was so eager for Jobs’s affection. Indeed the words he used to describe his yearning90 for a good relationship with Jobs are almost the same as those used by Sculley. “When I was wrestling with a problem, I would walk through the issue with him,” Amelio recalled. “Nine times out of ten we would agree.” Somehow he willed himself to believe that Jobs really respected him: “I was in awe over the way Steve’s mind approached problems, and had the feeling we were building a mutually trusting relationship.”
Amelio’s disillusionment came a few days after their dinner. During their negotiations91, he had insisted that Jobs hold the Apple stock he got for at least six months, and preferably longer. That six months ended in June. When a block of 1.5 million shares was sold, Amelio called Jobs. “I’m telling people that the shares sold were not yours,” he said. “Remember, you and I had an understanding that you wouldn’t sell any without advising us first.”
“That’s right,” Jobs replied. Amelio took that response to mean that Jobs had not sold his shares, and he issued a statement saying so. But when the next SEC filing came out, it revealed that Jobs had indeed sold the shares. “Dammit, Steve, I asked you point-blank about these shares and you denied it was you.” Jobs told Amelio that he had sold in a “fit of depression” about where Apple was going and he didn’t want to admit it because he was “a little embarrassed.” When I asked him about it years later, he simply said, “I didn’t feel I needed to tell Gil.”
Why did Jobs mislead Amelio about selling the shares? One reason is simple: Jobs sometimes avoided the truth. Helmut Sonnenfeldt once said of Henry Kissinger, “He lies not because it’s in his interest, he lies because it’s in his nature.” It was in Jobs’s nature to mislead or be secretive when he felt it was warranted. But he also indulged in being brutally93 honest at times, telling the truths that most of us sugarcoat or suppress. Both the dissembling and the truth-telling were simply different aspects of his Nietzschean attitude that ordinary rules didn’t apply to him.
Exit, Pursued by a Bear
Jobs had refused to quash Larry Ellison’s takeover talk, and he had secretly sold his shares and been misleading about it. So Amelio finally became convinced that Jobs was gunning for him. “I finally absorbed the fact that I had been too willing and too eager to believe he was on my team,” Amelio recalled. “Steve’s plans to manipulate my termination were charging forward.”
Jobs was indeed bad-mouthing Amelio at every opportunity. He couldn’t help himself. But there was a more important factor in turning the board against Amelio. Fred Anderson, the chief financial officer, saw it as his fiduciary95 duty to keep Ed Woolard and the board informed of Apple’s dire54 situation. “Fred was the guy telling me that cash was draining, people were leaving, and more key players were thinking of it,” said Woolard. “He made it clear the ship was going to hit the sand soon, and even he was thinking of leaving.” That added to the worries Woolard already had from watching Amelio bumble the shareholders meeting.
At an executive session of the board in June, with Amelio out of the room, Woolard described to current directors how he calculated their odds96. “If we stay with Gil as CEO, I think there’s only a 10% chance we will avoid bankruptcy,” he said. “If we fire him and convince Steve to come take over, we have a 60% chance of surviving. If we fire Gil, don’t get Steve back, and have to search for a new CEO, then we have a 40% chance of surviving.” The board gave him authority to ask Jobs to return.
Woolard and his wife flew to London, where they were planning to watch the Wimbledon tennis matches. He saw some of the tennis during the day, but spent his evenings in his suite97 at the Inn on the Park calling people back in America, where it was daytime. By the end of his stay, his telephone bill was $2,000.
First, he called Jobs. The board was going to fire Amelio, he said, and it wanted Jobs to come back as CEO. Jobs had been aggressive in deriding98 Amelio and pushing his own ideas about where to take Apple. But suddenly, when offered the cup, he became coy. “I will help,” he replied.
“As CEO?” Woolard asked.
Jobs said no. Woolard pushed hard for him to become at least the acting99 CEO. Again Jobs demurred100. “I will be an advisor,” he said. “Unpaid.” He also agreed to become a board member—that was something he had yearned101 for—but declined to be the board chairman. “That’s all I can give now,” he said. After rumors102 began circulating, he emailed a memo103 to Pixar employees assuring them that he was not abandoning them. “I got a call from Apple’s board of directors three weeks ago asking me to return to Apple as their CEO,” he wrote. “I declined. They then asked me to become chairman, and I again declined. So don’t worry—the crazy rumors are just that. I have no plans to leave Pixar. You’re stuck with me.”
Why did Jobs not seize the reins104? Why was he reluctant to grab the job that for two decades he had seemed to desire? When I asked him, he said:
We’d just taken Pixar public, and I was happy being CEO there. I never knew of anyone who served as CEO of two public companies, even temporarily, and I wasn’t even sure it was legal. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was enjoying spending more time with my family. I was torn. I knew Apple was a mess, so I wondered: Do I want to give up this nice lifestyle that I have? What are all the Pixar shareholders going to think? I talked to people I respected. I finally called Andy Grove105 at about eight one Saturday morning—too early. I gave him the pros106 and the cons6, and in the middle he stopped me and said, “Steve, I don’t give a shit about Apple.” I was stunned107. It was then I realized that I do give a shit about Apple—I started it and it is a good thing to have in the world. That was when I decided to go back on a temporary basis to help them hire a CEO.
The claim that he was enjoying spending more time with his family was not convincing. He was never destined108 to win a Father of the Year trophy109, even when he had spare time on his hands. He was getting better at paying heed110 to his children, especially Reed, but his primary focus was on his work. He was frequently aloof from his two younger daughters, estranged111 again from Lisa, and often prickly as a husband.
So what was the real reason for his hesitancy in taking over at Apple? For all of his willfulness and insatiable desire to control things, Jobs was indecisive and reticent112 when he felt unsure about something. He craved113 perfection, and he was not always good at figuring out how to settle for something less. He did not like to wrestle114 with complexity115 or make accommodations. This was true in products, design, and furnishings for the house. It was also true when it came to personal commitments. If he knew for sure a course of action was right, he was unstoppable. But if he had doubts, he sometimes withdrew, preferring not to think about things that did not perfectly116 suit him. As happened when Amelio had asked him what role he wanted to play, Jobs would go silent and ignore situations that made him uncomfortable.
This attitude arose partly out of his tendency to see the world in binary117 terms. A person was either a hero or a bozo, a product was either amazing or shit. But he could be stymied118 by things that were more complex, shaded, or nuanced: getting married, buying the right sofa, committing to run a company. In addition, he didn’t want to be set up for failure. “I think Steve wanted to assess whether Apple could be saved,” Fred Anderson said.
Woolard and the board decided to go ahead and fire Amelio, even though Jobs was not yet forthcoming about how active a role he would play as an advisor. Amelio was about to go on a picnic with his wife, children, and grandchildren when the call came from Woolard in London. “We need you to step down,” Woolard said simply. Amelio replied that it was not a good time to discuss this, but Woolard felt he had to persist. “We are going to announce that we’re replacing you.”
Amelio resisted. “Remember, Ed, I told the board it was going to take three years to get this company back on its feet again,” he said. “I’m not even halfway120 through.”
“The board is at the place where we don’t want to discuss it further,” Woolard replied. Amelio asked who knew about the decision, and Woolard told him the truth: the rest of the board plus Jobs. “Steve was one of the people we talked to about this,” Woolard said. “His view is that you’re a really nice guy, but you don’t know much about the computer industry.”
“Why in the world would you involve Steve in a decision like this?” Amelio replied, getting angry. “Steve is not even a member of the board of directors, so what the hell is he doing in any of this conversation?” But Woolard didn’t back down, and Amelio hung up to carry on with the family picnic before telling his wife.
At times Jobs displayed a strange mixture of prickliness and neediness121. He usually didn’t care one iota122 what people thought of him; he could cut people off and never care to speak to them again. Yet sometimes he also felt a compulsion to explain himself. So that evening Amelio received, to his surprise, a phone call from Jobs. “Gee, Gil, I just wanted you to know, I talked to Ed today about this thing and I really feel bad about it,” he said. “I want you to know that I had absolutely nothing to do with this turn of events, it was a decision the board made, but they had asked me for advice and counsel.” He told Amelio he respected him for having “the highest integrity of anyone I’ve ever met,” and went on to give some unsolicited advice. “Take six months off,” Jobs told him. “When I got thrown out of Apple, I immediately went back to work, and I regretted it.” He offered to be a sounding board if Amelio ever wanted more advice.
Amelio was stunned but managed to mumble123 a few words of thanks. He turned to his wife and recounted what Jobs said. “In ways, I still like the man, but I don’t believe him,” he told her.
“I was totally taken in by Steve,” she said, “and I really feel like an idiot.”
“Join the crowd,” her husband replied.
Steve Wozniak, who was himself now an informal advisor to the company, was thrilled that Jobs was coming back. (He forgave easily.) “It was just what we needed,” he said, “because whatever you think of Steve, he knows how to get the magic back.” Nor did Jobs’s triumph over Amelio surprise him. As he told Wired shortly after it happened, “Gil Amelio meets Steve Jobs, game over.”
That Monday Apple’s top employees were summoned to the auditorium124. Amelio came in looking calm and relaxed. “Well, I’m sad to report that it’s time for me to move on,” he said. Fred Anderson, who had agreed to be interim125 CEO, spoke126 next, and he made it clear that he would be taking his cues from Jobs. Then, exactly twelve years since he had lost power in a July 4 weekend struggle, Jobs walked back onstage at Apple.
It immediately became clear that, whether or not he wanted to admit it publicly (or even to himself), Jobs was going to take control and not be a mere127 advisor. As soon as he came onstage that day—wearing shorts, sneakers, and a black turtleneck—he got to work reinvigorating his beloved institution. “Okay, tell me what’s wrong with this place,” he said. There were some murmurings, but Jobs cut them off. “It’s the products!” he answered. “So what’s wrong with the products?” Again there were a few attempts at an answer, until Jobs broke in to hand down the correct answer. “The products suck!” he shouted. “There’s no sex in them anymore!”
Woolard was able to coax128 Jobs to agree that his role as an advisor would be a very active one. Jobs approved a statement saying that he had “agreed to step up my involvement with Apple for up to 90 days, helping129 them until they hire a new CEO.” The clever formulation that Woolard used in his statement was that Jobs was coming back “as an advisor leading the team.”
Jobs took a small office next to the boardroom on the executive floor, conspicuously130 eschewing131 Amelio’s big corner office. He got involved in all aspects of the business: product design, where to cut, supplier negotiations, and advertising132 agency review. He believed that he had to stop the hemorrhaging of top Apple employees, and to do so he wanted to reprice their stock options. Apple stock had dropped so low that the options had become worthless. Jobs wanted to lower the exercise price, so they would be valuable again. At the time, that was legally permissible133, but it was not considered good corporate134 practice. On his first Thursday back at Apple, Jobs called for a telephonic board meeting and outlined the problem. The directors balked135. They asked for time to do a legal and financial study of what the change would mean. “It has to be done fast,” Jobs told them. “We’re losing good people.”
Even his supporter Ed Woolard, who headed the compensation committee, objected. “At DuPont we never did such a thing,” he said.
“You brought me here to fix this thing, and people are the key,” Jobs argued. When the board proposed a study that could take two months, Jobs exploded: “Are you nuts?!?” He paused for a long moment of silence, then continued. “Guys, if you don’t want to do this, I’m not coming back on Monday. Because I’ve got thousands of key decisions to make that are far more difficult than this, and if you can’t throw your support behind this kind of decision, I will fail. So if you can’t do this, I’m out of here, and you can blame it on me, you can say, ‘Steve wasn’t up for the job.’”
The next day, after consulting with the board, Woolard called Jobs back. “We’re going to approve this,” he said. “But some of the board members don’t like it. We feel like you’ve put a gun to our head.” The options for the top team (Jobs had none) were reset136 at $13.25, which was the price of the stock the day Amelio was ousted137.
Instead of declaring victory and thanking the board, Jobs continued to seethe24 at having to answer to a board he didn’t respect. “Stop the train, this isn’t going to work,” he told Woolard. “This company is in shambles138, and I don’t have time to wet-nurse the board. So I need all of you to resign. Or else I’m going to resign and not come back on Monday.” The one person who could stay, he said, was Woolard.
Most members of the board were aghast. Jobs was still refusing to commit himself to coming back full-time139 or being anything more than an advisor, yet he felt he had the power to force them to leave. The hard truth, however, was that he did have that power over them. They could not afford for him to storm off in a fury, nor was the prospect140 of remaining an Apple board member very enticing141 by then. “After all they’d been through, most were glad to be let off,” Woolard recalled.
Once again the board acquiesced142. It made only one request: Would he permit one other director to stay, in addition to Woolard? It would help the optics. Jobs assented143. “They were an awful board, a terrible board,” he later said. “I agreed they could keep Ed Woolard and a guy named Gareth Chang, who turned out to be a zero. He wasn’t terrible, just a zero. Woolard, on the other hand, was one of the best board members I’ve ever seen. He was a prince, one of the most supportive and wise people I’ve ever met.”
Among those being asked to resign was Mike Markkula, who in 1976, as a young venture capitalist, had visited the Jobs garage, fallen in love with the nascent144 computer on the workbench, guaranteed a $250,000 line of credit, and become the third partner and one-third owner of the new company. Over the subsequent two decades, he was the one constant on the board, ushering145 in and out a variety of CEOs. He had supported Jobs at times but also clashed with him, most notably146 when he sided with Sculley in the showdowns of 1985. With Jobs returning, he knew that it was time for him to leave.
Jobs could be cutting and cold, especially toward people who crossed him, but he could also be sentimental147 about those who had been with him from the early days. Wozniak fell into that favored category, of course, even though they had drifted apart; so did Andy Hertzfeld and a few others from the Macintosh team. In the end, Mike Markkula did as well. “I felt deeply betrayed by him, but he was like a father and I always cared about him,” Jobs later recalled. So when the time came to ask him to resign from the Apple board, Jobs drove to Markkula’s chateau-like mansion148 in the Woodside hills to do it personally. As usual, he asked to take a walk, and they strolled the grounds to a redwood grove with a picnic table. “He told me he wanted a new board because he wanted to start fresh,” Markkula said. “He was worried that I might take it poorly, and he was relieved when I didn’t.”
They spent the rest of the time talking about where Apple should focus in the future. Jobs’s ambition was to build a company that would endure, and he asked Markkula what the formula for that would be. Markkula replied that lasting companies know how to reinvent themselves. Hewlett-Packard had done that repeatedly; it started as an instrument company, then became a calculator company, then a computer company. “Apple has been sidelined by Microsoft in the PC business,” Markkula said. “You’ve got to reinvent the company to do some other thing, like other consumer products or devices. You’ve got to be like a butterfly and have a metamorphosis.” Jobs didn’t say much, but he agreed.
The old board met in late July to ratify149 the transition. Woolard, who was as genteel as Jobs was prickly, was mildly taken aback when Jobs appeared dressed in jeans and sneakers, and he worried that Jobs might start berating150 the veteran board members for screwing up. But Jobs merely offered a pleasant “Hi, everyone.” They got down to the business of voting to accept the resignations, elect Jobs to the board, and empower Woolard and Jobs to find new board members.
Jobs’s first recruit was, not surprisingly, Larry Ellison. He said he would be pleased to join, but he hated attending meetings. Jobs said it would be fine if he came to only half of them. (After a while Ellison was coming to only a third of the meetings. Jobs took a picture of him that had appeared on the cover of Business Week and had it blown up to life size and pasted on a cardboard cutout to put in his chair.)
Jobs also brought in Bill Campbell, who had run marketing152 at Apple in the early 1980s and been caught in the middle of the Sculley-Jobs clash. Campbell had ended up sticking with Sculley, but he had grown to dislike him so much that Jobs forgave him. Now he was the CEO of Intuit and a walking buddy of Jobs. “We were sitting out in the back of his house,” recalled Campbell, who lived only five blocks from Jobs in Palo Alto, “and he said he was going back to Apple and wanted me on the board. I said, ‘Holy shit, of course I will do that.’” Campbell had been a football coach at Columbia, and his great talent, Jobs said, was to “get A performances out of B players.” At Apple, Jobs told him, he would get to work with A players.
Woolard helped bring in Jerry York, who had been the chief financial officer at Chrysler and then IBM. Others were considered and then rejected by Jobs, including Meg Whitman, who was then the manager of Hasbro’s Playskool division and had been a strategic planner at Disney. (In 1998 she became CEO of eBay, and she later ran unsuccessfully for governor of California.) Over the years Jobs would bring in some strong leaders to serve on the Apple board, including Al Gore153, Eric Schmidt of Google, Art Levinson of Genentech, Mickey Drexler of the Gap and J. Crew, and Andrea Jung of Avon. But he always made sure they were loyal, sometimes loyal to a fault. Despite their stature154, they seemed at times awed155 or intimidated156 by Jobs, and they were eager to keep him happy.
At one point he invited Arthur Levitt, the former SEC chairman, to become a board member. Levitt, who bought his first Macintosh in 1984 and was proudly “addicted” to Apple computers, was thrilled. He was excited to visit Cupertino, where he discussed the role with Jobs. But then Jobs read a speech Levitt had given about corporate governance, which argued that boards should play a strong and independent role, and he telephoned to withdraw the invitation. “Arthur, I don’t think you’d be happy on our board, and I think it best if we not invite you,” Levitt said Jobs told him. “Frankly, I think some of the issues you raised, while appropriate for some companies, really don’t apply to Apple’s culture.” Levitt later wrote, “I was floored. . . . It’s plain to me that Apple’s board is not designed to act independently of the CEO.”
Macworld Boston, August 1997
The staff memo announcing the repricing of Apple’s stock options was signed “Steve and the executive team,” and it soon became public that he was running all of the company’s product review meetings. These and other indications that Jobs was now deeply engaged at Apple helped push the stock up from about $13 to $20 during July. It also created a frisson of excitement as the Apple faithful gathered for the August 1997 Macworld in Boston. More than five thousand showed up hours in advance to cram73 into the Castle convention hall of the Park Plaza157 hotel for Jobs’s keynote speech. They came to see their returning hero—and to find out whether he was really ready to lead them again.
Huge cheers erupted when a picture of Jobs from 1984 was flashed on the overhead screen. “Steve! Steve! Steve!” the crowd started to chant, even as he was still being introduced. When he finally strode onstage—wearing a black vest, collarless white shirt, jeans, and an impish smile—the screams and flashbulbs rivaled those for any rock star. At first he punctured158 the excitement by reminding them of where he officially worked. “I’m Steve Jobs, the chairman and CEO of Pixar,” he introduced himself, flashing a slide onscreen with that title. Then he explained his role at Apple. “I, like a lot of other people, are pulling together to help Apple get healthy again.”
But as Jobs paced back and forth119 across the stage, changing the overhead slides with a clicker in his hand, it was clear that he was now in charge at Apple—and was likely to remain so. He delivered a carefully crafted presentation, using no notes, on why Apple’s sales had fallen by 30% over the previous two years. “There are a lot of great people at Apple, but they’re doing the wrong things because the plan has been wrong,” he said. “I’ve found people who can’t wait to fall into line behind a good strategy, but there just hasn’t been one.” The crowd again erupted in yelps159, whistles, and cheers.
As he spoke, his passion poured forth with increasing intensity160, and he began saying “we” and “I”—rather than “they”—when referring to what Apple would be doing. “I think you still have to think differently to buy an Apple computer,” he said. “The people who buy them do think different. They are the creative spirits in this world, and they’re out to change the world. We make tools for those kinds of people.” When he stressed the word “we” in that sentence, he cupped his hands and tapped his fingers on his chest. And then, in his final peroration161, he continued to stress the word “we” as he talked about Apple’s future. “We too are going to think differently and serve the people who have been buying our products from the beginning. Because a lot of people think they’re crazy, but in that craziness we see genius.” During the prolonged standing92 ovation, people looked at each other in awe, and a few wiped tears from their eyes. Jobs had made it very clear that he and the “we” of Apple were one.
The Microsoft Pact162
The climax163 of Jobs’s August 1997 Macworld appearance was a bombshell announcement, one that made the cover of both Time and Newsweek. Near the end of his speech, he paused for a sip164 of water and began to talk in more subdued165 tones. “Apple lives in an ecosystem,” he said. “It needs help from other partners. Relationships that are destructive don’t help anybody in this industry.” For dramatic effect, he paused again, and then explained: “I’d like to announce one of our first new partnerships166 today, a very meaningful one, and that is one with Microsoft.” The Microsoft and Apple logos appeared together on the screen as people gasped167.
Apple and Microsoft had been at war for a decade over a variety of copyright and patent issues, most notably whether Microsoft had stolen the look and feel of Apple’s graphical user interface168. Just as Jobs was being eased out of Apple in 1985, John Sculley had struck a surrender deal: Microsoft could license the Apple GUI for Windows 1.0, and in return it would make Excel exclusive to the Mac for up to two years. In 1988, after Microsoft came out with Windows 2.0, Apple sued. Sculley contended that the 1985 deal did not apply to Windows 2.0 and that further refinements169 to Windows (such as copying Bill Atkinson’s trick of “clipping” overlapping170 windows) had made the infringement171 more blatant172. By 1997 Apple had lost the case and various appeals, but remnants of the litigation and threats of new suits lingered. In addition, President Clinton’s Justice Department was preparing a massive antitrust case against Microsoft. Jobs invited the lead prosecutor173, Joel Klein, to Palo Alto. Don’t worry about extracting a huge remedy against Microsoft, Jobs told him over coffee. Instead simply keep them tied up in litigation. That would allow Apple the opportunity, Jobs explained, to “make an end run” around Microsoft and start offering competing products.
Under Amelio, the showdown had become explosive. Microsoft refused to commit to developing Word and Excel for future Macintosh operating systems, which could have destroyed Apple. In defense174 of Bill Gates, he was not simply being vindictive175. It was understandable that he was reluctant to commit to developing for a future Macintosh operating system when no one, including the ever-changing leadership at Apple, seemed to know what that new operating system would be. Right after Apple bought NeXT, Amelio and Jobs flew together to visit Microsoft, but Gates had trouble figuring out which of them was in charge. A few days later he called Jobs privately176. “Hey, what the fuck, am I supposed to put my applications on the NeXT OS?” Gates asked. Jobs responded by “making smart-ass remarks about Gil,” Gates recalled, and suggesting that the situation would soon be clarified.
When the leadership issue was partly resolved by Amelio’s ouster, one of Jobs’s first phone calls was to Gates. Jobs recalled:
I called up Bill and said, “I’m going to turn this thing around.” Bill always had a soft spot for Apple. We got him into the application software business. The first Microsoft apps were Excel and Word for the Mac. So I called him and said, “I need help.” Microsoft was walking over Apple’s patents. I said, “If we kept up our lawsuits177, a few years from now we could win a billion-dollar patent suit. You know it, and I know it. But Apple’s not going to survive that long if we’re at war. I know that. So let’s figure out how to settle this right away. All I need is a commitment that Microsoft will keep developing for the Mac and an investment by Microsoft in Apple so it has a stake in our success.”
When I recounted to him what Jobs said, Gates agreed it was accurate. “We had a group of people who liked working on the Mac stuff, and we liked the Mac,” Gates recalled. He had been negotiating with Amelio for six months, and the proposals kept getting longer and more complicated. “So Steve comes in and says, ‘Hey, that deal is too complicated. What I want is a simple deal. I want the commitment and I want an investment.’ And so we put that together in just four weeks.”
Gates and his chief financial officer, Greg Maffei, made the trip to Palo Alto to work out the framework for a deal, and then Maffei returned alone the following Sunday to work on the details. When he arrived at Jobs’s home, Jobs grabbed two bottles of water out of the refrigerator and took Maffei for a walk around the Palo Alto neighborhood. Both men wore shorts, and Jobs walked barefoot. As they sat in front of a Baptist church, Jobs cut to the core issues. “These are the things we care about,” he said. “A commitment to make software for the Mac and an investment.”
Although the negotiations went quickly, the final details were not finished until hours before Jobs’s Macworld speech in Boston. He was rehearsing at the Park Plaza Castle when his cell phone rang. “Hi, Bill,” he said as his words echoed through the old hall. Then he walked to a corner and spoke in a soft tone so others couldn’t hear. The call lasted an hour. Finally, the remaining deal points were resolved. “Bill, thank you for your support of this company,” Jobs said as he crouched178 in his shorts. “I think the world’s a better place for it.”
During his Macworld keynote address, Jobs walked through the details of the Microsoft deal. At first there were groans179 and hisses180 from the faithful. Particularly galling181 was Jobs’s announcement that, as part of the peace pact, “Apple has decided to make Internet Explorer its default browser182 on the Macintosh.” The audience erupted in boos, and Jobs quickly added, “Since we believe in choice, we’re going to be shipping183 other Internet browsers184, as well, and the user can, of course, change their default should they choose to.” There were some laughs and scattered185 applause. The audience was beginning to come around, especially when he announced that Microsoft would be investing $150 million in Apple and getting nonvoting shares.
But the mellower186 mood was shattered for a moment when Jobs made one of the few visual and public relations gaffes187 of his onstage career. “I happen to have a special guest with me today via satellite downlink,” he said, and suddenly Bill Gates’s face appeared on the huge screen looming188 over Jobs and the auditorium. There was a thin smile on Gates’s face that flirted189 with being a smirk190. The audience gasped in horror, followed by some boos and catcalls. The scene was such a brutal94 echo of the 1984 Big Brother ad that you half expected (and hoped?) that an athletic191 woman would suddenly come running down the aisle192 and vaporize the screenshot with a well-thrown hammer.
But it was all for real, and Gates, unaware193 of the jeering194, began speaking on the satellite link from Microsoft headquarters. “Some of the most exciting work that I’ve done in my career has been the work that I’ve done with Steve on the Macintosh,” he intoned in his high-pitched singsong. As he went on to tout151 the new version of Microsoft Office that was being made for the Macintosh, the audience quieted down and then slowly seemed to accept the new world order. Gates even was able to rouse some applause when he said that the new Mac versions of Word and Excel would be “in many ways more advanced than what we’ve done on the Windows platform.”
Jobs realized that the image of Gates looming over him and the audience was a mistake. “I wanted him to come to Boston,” Jobs later said. “That was my worst and stupidest staging event ever. It was bad because it made me look small, and Apple look small, and as if everything was in Bill’s hands.” Gates likewise was embarrassed when he saw the videotape of the event. “I didn’t know that my face was going to be blown up to looming proportions,” he said.
Jobs tried to reassure195 the audience with an impromptu196 sermon. “If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy again, we have to let go of a few things here,” he told the audience. “We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win Microsoft has to lose. . . . I think if we want Microsoft Office on the Mac, we better treat the company that puts it out with a little bit of gratitude197.”
The Microsoft announcement, along with Jobs’s passionate198 reengagement with the company, provided a much-needed jolt199 for Apple. By the end of the day, its stock had skyrocketed $6.56, or 33%, to close at $26.31, twice the price of the day Amelio resigned. The one-day jump added $830 million to Apple’s stock market capitalization. The company was back from the edge of the grave.
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1
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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journalism
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| n.新闻工作，报业 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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cons
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| n.欺骗，骗局( con的名词复数 )v.诈骗，哄骗( con的第三人称单数 ) | |
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ego
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| n.自我，自己，自尊 | |
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legacy
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| n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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dual
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| adj.双的；二重的，二元的 | |
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innovative
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| adj.革新的，新颖的，富有革新精神的 | |
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lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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notch
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| n.(V字形)槽口，缺口，等级 | |
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reclaim
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| v.要求归还，收回；开垦 | |
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advisor
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| n.顾问，指导老师，劝告者 | |
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prescription
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| n.处方，开药；指示，规定 | |
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tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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vent
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| n.通风口，排放口；开衩；vt.表达，发泄 | |
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ballroom
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| n.舞厅 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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tussle
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| n.&v.扭打，搏斗，争辩 | |
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seethe
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| vi.拥挤，云集；发怒，激动，骚动 | |
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seethed
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| （液体）沸腾( seethe的过去式和过去分词 )； 激动，大怒； 强压怒火； 生闷气(~with sth|~ at sth) | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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rambled
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| （无目的地）漫游( ramble的过去式和过去分词 )； （喻）漫谈； 扯淡； 长篇大论 | |
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exuding
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| v.缓慢流出，渗出，分泌出( exude的现在分词 )；流露出对（某物）的神态或感情 | |
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magnetism
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| n.磁性，吸引力，磁学 | |
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antithesis
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| n.对立；相对 | |
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fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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raucous
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| adj.(声音)沙哑的，粗糙的 | |
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ovation
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| n.欢呼，热烈欢迎，热烈鼓掌 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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redeeming
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| 补偿的，弥补的 | |
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pandemonium
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| n.喧嚣，大混乱 | |
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triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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kernel
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| n.(果实的)核，仁；(问题)的中心，核心 | |
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curtly
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| adv.简短地 | |
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buddy
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| n.（美口）密友，伙伴 | |
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isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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deluded
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| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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stupor
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| v.昏迷；不省人事 | |
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sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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46
peeves
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| n.麻烦的事物，怨恨，触怒( peeve的名词复数 ) | |
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capability
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| n.能力；才能；(pl)可发展的能力或特性等 | |
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disdained
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| 鄙视( disdain的过去式和过去分词 )； 不屑于做，不愿意做 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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51
silicon
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| n.硅(旧名矽) | |
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52
wresting
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| 动词wrest的现在进行式 | |
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machiavellian
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| adj.权谋的，狡诈的 | |
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54
dire
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| adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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56
plummet
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| vi.(价格、水平等)骤然下跌；n.铅坠；重压物 | |
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shareholders
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| n.股东( shareholder的名词复数 ) | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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ruse
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| n.诡计，计策；诡计 | |
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steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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circumspect
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| adj.慎重的，谨慎的 | |
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omission
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| n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长 | |
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65
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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parable
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| n.寓言，比喻 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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69
buffoon
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| n.演出时的丑角 | |
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70
paragon
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| n.模范，典型 | |
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71
fumbled
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| （笨拙地）摸索或处理（某事物）( fumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 乱摸，笨拙地弄； 使落下 | |
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72
scrambling
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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73
cram
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| v.填塞，塞满，临时抱佛脚，为考试而学习 | |
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74
lugubriously
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75
imploding
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| v.（使）向心聚爆( implode的现在分词 ) | |
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76
lure
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| n.吸引人的东西，诱惑物；vt.引诱，吸引 | |
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77
investor
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| n.投资者，投资人 | |
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78
frivolity
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| n.轻松的乐事，兴高采烈；轻浮的举止 | |
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79
oracle
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| n.神谕，神谕处，预言 | |
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80
reassurance
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| n.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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81
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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82
annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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83
aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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84
technological
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| adj.技术的；工艺的 | |
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85
hopping
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| n. 跳跃 动词hop的现在分词形式 | |
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86
exuberantly
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| adv.兴高采烈地，活跃地，愉快地 | |
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87
vegetarian
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| n.素食者；adj.素食的 | |
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88
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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89
seduce
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| vt.勾引，诱奸，诱惑，引诱 | |
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90
yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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91
negotiations
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| 协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过 | |
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92
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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93
brutally
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| adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地 | |
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94
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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95
fiduciary
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| adj.受托的，信托的 | |
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96
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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97
suite
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| n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员 | |
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98
deriding
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| v.取笑，嘲笑( deride的现在分词 ) | |
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99
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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100
demurred
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| v.表示异议，反对( demur的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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101
yearned
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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102
rumors
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| n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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103
memo
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| n.照会，备忘录；便笺；通知书；规章 | |
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104
reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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105
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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106
pros
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| abbr.prosecuting 起诉；prosecutor 起诉人；professionals 自由职业者；proscenium （舞台）前部n.赞成的意见( pro的名词复数 )；赞成的理由；抵偿物；交换物 | |
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107
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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108
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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109
trophy
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| n.优胜旗，奖品，奖杯，战胜品，纪念品 | |
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110
heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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111
estranged
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| adj.疏远的，分离的 | |
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112
reticent
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| adj.沉默寡言的；言不如意的 | |
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113
craved
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| 渴望，热望( crave的过去式 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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114
wrestle
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| vi.摔跤，角力；搏斗；全力对付 | |
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115
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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116
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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117
binary
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| adj.二，双；二进制的；n.双(体)；联星 | |
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118
stymied
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| n.被侵袭的v.妨碍，阻挠( stymie的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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119
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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120
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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121
neediness
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| n.穷困，贫穷 | |
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122
iota
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| n.些微，一点儿 | |
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123
mumble
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| n./v.喃喃而语，咕哝 | |
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124
auditorium
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| n.观众席，听众席；会堂，礼堂 | |
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125
interim
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| adj.暂时的，临时的；n.间歇，过渡期间 | |
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126
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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127
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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128
coax
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| v.哄诱，劝诱，用诱哄得到，诱取 | |
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129
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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130
conspicuously
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| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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131
eschewing
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| v.（尤指为道德或实际理由而）习惯性避开，回避( eschew的现在分词 ) | |
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132
advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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133
permissible
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| adj.可允许的，许可的 | |
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134
corporate
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| adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的 | |
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135
balked
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| v.畏缩不前，犹豫( balk的过去式和过去分词 )；（指马）不肯跑 | |
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136
reset
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| v.重新安排，复位；n.重新放置；重放之物 | |
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137
ousted
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| 驱逐( oust的过去式和过去分词 )； 革职； 罢黜； 剥夺 | |
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138
shambles
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| n.混乱之处；废墟 | |
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139
full-time
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| adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的 | |
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140
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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141
enticing
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| adj.迷人的；诱人的 | |
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142
acquiesced
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| v.默认，默许( acquiesce的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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143
assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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144
nascent
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| adj.初生的，发生中的 | |
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145
ushering
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的现在分词 ) | |
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146
notably
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| adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地 | |
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147
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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148
mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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149
ratify
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| v.批准，认可，追认 | |
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150
berating
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| v.严厉责备，痛斥( berate的现在分词 ) | |
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151
tout
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| v.推销，招徕；兜售；吹捧，劝诱 | |
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152
marketing
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| n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西 | |
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153
gore
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| n.凝血，血污；v.（动物）用角撞伤，用牙刺破；缝以补裆；顶 | |
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154
stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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155
awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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156
intimidated
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| v.恐吓；威胁adj.害怕的；受到威胁的 | |
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157
plaza
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| n.广场，市场 | |
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158
punctured
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| v.在（某物）上穿孔( puncture的过去式和过去分词 )；刺穿（某物）；削弱（某人的傲气、信心等）；泄某人的气 | |
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159
yelps
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| n.（因痛苦、气愤、兴奋等的）短而尖的叫声( yelp的名词复数 )v.发出短而尖的叫声( yelp的第三人称单数 ) | |
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160
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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161
peroration
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| n.（演说等之）结论 | |
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162
pact
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| n.合同，条约，公约，协定 | |
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163
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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164
sip
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| v.小口地喝，抿，呷；n.一小口的量 | |
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165
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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166
partnerships
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| n.伙伴关系( partnership的名词复数 )；合伙人身份；合作关系 | |
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167
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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168
interface
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| n.接合部位，分界面；v.(使)互相联系 | |
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169
refinements
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| n.（生活）风雅；精炼( refinement的名词复数 )；改良品；细微的改良；优雅或高贵的动作 | |
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170
overlapping
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| adj./n.交迭（的） | |
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171
infringement
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| n.违反；侵权 | |
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172
blatant
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| adj.厚颜无耻的；显眼的；炫耀的 | |
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173
prosecutor
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| n.起诉人；检察官，公诉人 | |
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174
defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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175
vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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176
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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177
lawsuits
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| n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 ) | |
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178
crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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179
groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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180
hisses
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| 嘶嘶声( hiss的名词复数 ) | |
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181
galling
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| adj.难堪的,使烦恼的,使焦躁的 | |
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182
browser
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| n.浏览者 | |
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183
shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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184
browsers
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| 浏览器 | |
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185
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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186
mellower
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| 成熟的( mellow的比较级 )； （水果）熟透的； （颜色或声音）柔和的； 高兴的 | |
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187
gaffes
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| n.失礼，出丑( gaffe的名词复数 ) | |
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188
looming
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| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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189
flirted
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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190
smirk
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| n.得意地笑；v.傻笑；假笑着说 | |
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191
athletic
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| adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的 | |
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192
aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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193
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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194
jeering
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| adj.嘲弄的，揶揄的v.嘲笑( jeer的现在分词 ) | |
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195
reassure
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| v.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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196
impromptu
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| adj.即席的，即兴的；adv.即兴的(地)，无准备的(地) | |
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197
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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198
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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199
jolt
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| v.（使）摇动，（使）震动，（使）颠簸 | |
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