The final agreement was reached in January 1986. It provided that, for his $10 million investment, Jobs would own 70% of the company, with the rest of the stock distributed to Ed Catmull, Alvy Ray Smith, and the thirty-eight other founding employees, down to the receptionist. The division’s most important piece of hardware was called the Pixar Image Computer, and from it the new company took its name.

1986年1月，他们达成了最终协议。协议约定，乔布斯投资1000万美元后，可持有该公司70%的股份，其他股份分配给埃德·卡特穆尔、阿尔维·雷·史密斯及其他38名创始员工，包括前台接待。该部门最重要的硬件是皮克斯图像电脑（PixarImagesComputer），新公司便以此命名。最后的问题就是在哪里签合同，乔布斯想在自己位于NeXT的办公室，而卢卡靳影业的人想在天行者牧场。最后，双方都作出了妥协，在旧金山一家律师事务所会面。

For a while Jobs let Catmull and Smith run Pixar without much interference. Every month or so they would gather for a board meeting, usually at NeXT headquarters, where Jobs would focus on the finances and strategy. Nevertheless, by dint of his personality and controlling instincts, Jobs was soon playing a stronger role. He spewed out a stream of ideas—some reasonable, others wacky—about what Pixar’s hardware and software could become. And on his occasional visits to the Pixar offices, he was an inspiring presence. “I grew up a Southern Baptist, and we had revival meetings with mesmerizing but corrupt preachers,” recounted Alvy Ray Smith. “Steve’s got it: the power of the tongue and the web of words that catches people up. We were aware of this when we had board meetings, so we developed signals—nose scratching or ear tugs—for when someone had been caught up in Steve’s distortion field and he needed to be tugged back to reality.”

有那么一段时间，乔布斯没有进行过多干预，让卡特穆尔和史密斯自行掌管皮克斯。每隔一个月左右，他们就会进行一次董事会会议，通常是在NeXT的总部，乔布斯主要关注财务和战略。然而，由于个性使然以及控制本能的驱使，乔布斯很快就变成了强势的角色，显然比卡特穆尔和史密斯预想的更为强势。针对皮克斯公司硬件和软件的未来，他提出了一堆想法，有的合理，有的古怪。而他虽然只是偶尔前往皮克斯的办公室，但每次出现他都能让人心潮澎湃。“我从小就加入了美南浸信会（SouthernBaptist），我们经常同那些生活腐化但却极具蛊惑力的牧师们一起开培灵会。”阿尔维·雷·史密斯说，“史蒂夫显然精于此道，深知口舌的力量和语言的网络能让人陷进去。开董事会会议的时候，大家意识到了这个问题，于是我们发展出一套信号——抓凫子或拽耳朵，如果有人陷入了史蒂夫的现实扭曲力场，需要被拉回现实，我们就会使用这个信号。”

Jobs had always appreciated the virtue of integrating hardware and software, which is what Pixar did with its Image Computer and rendering software. It also produced creative content, such as animated films and graphics. All three elements benefited from Jobs’s combination of artistic creativity and technological geekiness. “Silicon Valley folks don’t really respect Hollywood creative types, and the Hollywood folks think that tech folks are people you hire and never have to meet,” Jobs later said. “Pixar was one place where both cultures were respected.”

乔布斯一直都很欣赏硬件和软件的整合，皮克斯的图像电脑和渲染软件就是如此。事实上，皮克斯还拥有另一个要素：它制作出色的内容，如动画电影和图像。这三种要素都得益于乔布斯将艺术创意和技术的结合。“硅谷的人并不尊重好莱坞的创意特质，而好莱坞的人则认为技术人员是那些只需雇用而无需见面的人。”乔布斯后来说道，“皮克斯则同时尊重好莱鸟和硅谷的文化。”

Initially the revenue was supposed to come from the hardware side. The Pixar Image Computer sold for $125,000. The primary customers were animators and graphic designers, but the machine also soon found specialized markets in the medical industry (CAT scan data could be rendered in three-dimensional graphics) and intelligence fields (for rendering information from reconnaissance flights and satellites). Because of the sales to the National Security Agency, Jobs had to get a security clearance, which must have been fun for the FBI agent assigned to vet him. At one point, a Pixar executive recalled, Jobs was called by the investigator to go over the drug use questions, which he answered unabashedly. “The last time I used that . . . ,” he would say, or on occasion he would answer that no, he had actually never tried that particular drug.

最初，皮克斯公司希望硬件能带来收入。皮克斯图像电脑售价12.5万美元，主要购买者是动画师和平面设计师，不过这款电脑也在医疗行业和情报领域找到了特殊市场。（医疗CAT扫描数据能够被转换成三维图形；来自侦察飞机和卫星的信息也能通过该款电脑进行转换。）由于要销售给美国国家安全局，乔布斯必须接受安全调查，对于被指派来调查他的FBI（美国联邦调查局）特工来说一定感觉有趣极了。据一位皮克斯髙管讲述，有一次，调查员打来电话询问毒品使用问题，乔布斯如实回答，丝毫不加掩饰。他会说“我上回用这种毒品是在……”，偶尔他也会回答不，他从未用过那种毒品。

Jobs pushed Pixar to build a lower-cost version of the computer that would sell for around $30,000. He insisted that Hartmut Esslinger design it, despite protests by Catmull and Smith about his fees. It ended up looking like the original Pixar Image Computer, which was a cube with a round dimple in the middle, but it had Esslinger’s signature thin grooves.

乔布斯要求皮克斯开发一款成本更低的图像电脑，售价在3万美元左右。他坚持由哈特穆特·艾斯林格进行设计，尽管卡特穆尔和史密斯对其收费价格表示反对。最后，这款新电脑跟皮克斯图像电脑很相似，是一个立方体，中间有一处圆形凹陷，但带有艾斯林格招牌式的纤细纹路。

Jobs wanted to sell Pixar’s computers to a mass market, so he had the Pixar folks open up sales offices—for which he approved the design—in major cities, on the theory that creative people would soon come up with all sorts of ways to use the machine. “My view is that people are creative animals and will figure out clever new ways to use tools that the inventor never imagined,” he later said. “I thought that would happen with the Pixar computer, just as it did with the Mac.” But the machine never took hold with regular consumers. It cost too much, and there were not many software programs for it.

乔布斯想要把皮克斯的电脑卖给大众市场，于是他让皮克斯的人员在各大城市开辟销售办事处，办事处的设计由他本人审核通过。他的想法是，有创意的人很快会想到使用这款电脑的各种方法。“我认为，人是创造性动物，面对工具，他们能想出发明者未曾想过的各种聪明的使用方法，”乔布斯后来说道，“我觉得这会同样适用于皮克斯电脑，就像Mac—样。”但是，皮克斯电脑从未完全进入普通消费者市场。它们售价太髙，专门为之编写的软件应用程序也不多。

On the software side, Pixar had a rendering program, known as Reyes (Renders everything you ever saw), for making 3-D graphics and images. After Jobs became chairman, the company created a new language and interface, named RenderMan, that it hoped would become a standard for 3-D graphics rendering, just as Adobe’s PostScript was for laser printing.

在软件方面，皮克斯有一个渲染程序，名为雷耶斯（Reyes，RendersEverythingYouEverSaw），意为渲染你所见的一切，用于制作3D图形和图像。乔布斯担任董事长后，皮克斯开发了一种新语言和界面，名为RenderMan。他们期望这款软件能够成为3D图形渲染领域的标准，就像Adobe公司的PostScript①之于激光打印那样。

As he had with the hardware, Jobs decided that they should try to find a mass market, rather than just a specialized one, for the software they made. He was never content to aim only at the corporate or high-end specialized markets. “He would have these great visions of how RenderMan could be for everyman,” recalled Pam Kerwin, Pixar’s marketing director. “He kept coming up with ideas about how ordinary people would use it to make amazing 3-D graphics and photorealistic images.” The Pixar team would try to dissuade him by saying that RenderMan was not as easy to use as, say, Excel or Adobe Illustrator. Then Jobs would go to a whiteboard and show them how to make it simpler and more user-friendly. “We would be nodding our heads and getting excited and say, ‘Yes, yes, this will be great!’” Kerwin recalled. “And then he would leave and we would consider it for a moment and then say, ‘What the heck was he thinking!’ He was so weirdly charismatic that you almost had to get deprogrammed after you talked to him.” As it turned out, average consumers were not craving expensive software that would let them render realistic images. RenderMan didn’t take off.

乔布斯认为，皮克斯的软件也应该像硬件那样，尝试进入大众市场，而不是仅限于专业市场。只针对企业市场或髙端专业市场的做法，他从来都没兴趣。“他非常沉迷于大众市场产品，”帕姆·克尔温（PamKerwin）说，她是皮克斯的营销总监，“他会构造一些宏大的愿景，想象RenderMan能够怎样为所有人服务。他在会议中不断产生新想法，设想普通用户将如何用它做出惊人的3D图形和逼真的图像。”皮克斯团队试图劝阻他，他们认为RenderMan并不像Excel或AdobeIllustrator那样易于使用。这时，乔布斯就会走到一块白板前，告诉他们如何把它做得更简单，更便于使用。“我们不禁频频点头，兴奋地说：‘是的，是的，这样很棒！’”克尔温回忆说，“等他走了以后，我们又考虑了一会儿，觉得‘他想的都是些什么鬼主意！’他身上的奇特魅力实在是强大，你和他交谈之后就几乎被洗脑了。”后来事实证明，普通消费者对于这种能让他们渲染出逼真图像的昂贵软件并无兴趣。RenderMan没有成功进入大众市场。

There was, however, one company that was eager to automate the rendering of animators’ drawings into color images for film. When Roy Disney led a board revolution at the company that his uncle Walt had founded, the new CEO, Michael Eisner, asked what role he wanted. Disney said that he would like to revive the company’s venerable but fading animation department. One of his first initiatives was to look at ways to computerize the process, and Pixar won the contract. It created a package of customized hardware and software known as CAPS, Computer Animation Production System. It was first used in 1988 for the final scene of The Little Mermaid, in which King Triton waves good-bye to Ariel. Disney bought dozens of Pixar Image Computers as CAPS became an integral part of its production.

不过，倒是有一家企业渴望将动画师的绘画自动渲染成彩色图像用于电影拍摄。罗伊·迪士尼（RoyDisney）在迪士尼公司发动了一场董事会革命，他是该公司创始人沃尔特·迪士尼的侄子。迪士尼公司的新任CEO迈克尔·艾斯纳（MichaelEisner）问罗伊想要担任什么角色，罗伊表示他想要重振公司历史悠久却日渐衰落的动画部门。他的首轮举措之一就是设法将动画流程计算机化，而皮克斯赢得了迪士尼的这份合同。皮克斯为迪士尼量身定做了一款软硬件套装，名为CAPS,即电脑动画制作系统（ComputerAnimationProductionSystem）。1988年，这套设备首次投入使用，负责制作动画片《小美人鱼》（TheLittleMermaid）中的最后一幕——国王特里同挥别爱丽儿。在此之后，CAPS就成了迪士尼极为依赖的设备，迪士尼为此又购买了数十台皮克斯图像电脑——

注释：

①PostScript是一种主要用于电子产业和桌面出版领域的页面描述语言和编程语言。