At one point the members of the Pixar animation team were trying to convince Intel to let them make some of its commercials, and Jobs became impatient. During a meeting, in the midst of berating an Intel marketing director, he picked up the phone and called CEO Andy Grove directly. Grove, still playing mentor, tried to teach Jobs a lesson: He supported his Intel manager. “I stuck by my employee,” he recalled. “Steve doesn’t like to be treated like a supplier.”

皮克斯动画团队曾一度试图说服英特尔公司，希望承接对方的部分商业广告制作业务。然而，乔布斯没有一点儿耐性。一次会议上，乔布斯正痛斥英特尔的营销总监，说到一半又拿起电话，直接打给英特尔的CEO安迪·格鲁夫。格鲁夫在某种程度上仍然算是乔布斯的老师，他想要给乔布斯上一课，他支持英特尔公司的经理。“我支持自己的员工，”他回忆道，“史蒂夫不喜欢被当做供应商来对待。”

Grove also played mentor when Jobs proposed that Pixar give Intel suggestions on how to improve the capacity of its processors to render 3-D graphics. When the engineers at Intel accepted the offer, Jobs sent an email back saying Pixar would need to be paid for its advice. Intel’s chief engineer replied, “We have not entered into any financial arrangement in exchange for good ideas for our microprocessors in the past and have no intention for the future.” Jobs forwarded the answer to Grove, saying that he found the engineer’s response to be “extremely arrogant, given Intel’s dismal showing in understanding computer graphics.” Grove sent Jobs a blistering reply, saying that sharing ideas is “what friendly companies and friends do for each other.” Grove added that he had often freely shared ideas with Jobs in the past and that Jobs should not be so mercenary. Jobs relented. “I have many faults, but one of them is not ingratitude,” he responded. “Therefore, I have changed my position 180 degrees—we will freely help. Thanks for the clearer perspective.”

Pixar was able to create some powerful software products aimed at average consumers, or at least those average consumers who shared Jobs’s passion for designing things. Jobs still hoped that the ability to make super-realistic 3-D images at home would become part of the desktop publishing craze. Pixar’s Showplace, for example, allowed users to change the shadings on the 3-D objects they created so that they could display them from various angles with appropriate shadows. Jobs thought it was incredibly compelling, but most consumers were content to live without it. It was a case where his passions misled him: The software had so many amazing features that it lacked the simplicity Jobs usually demanded. Pixar couldn’t compete with Adobe, which was making software that was less sophisticated but far less complicated and expensive.

皮克斯针对普通消费者市场，或者至少是认同乔布斯对于设计的狂热之情的消费群体，创造出了一些强大的软件产品。乔布斯仍然希望，在家中创作超级逼真的3D图像能够成为桌面排版热潮的一部分。例如，皮克斯的Showplace软件，用户能够用它改变3D物体的阴影，这样，在不同的角度下，能以适当的阴影展现出现实物体的模样。乔布斯觉得这个软件很酷，但是大多数消费者觉得这种功能可有可无。乔布斯的激情误导了自己，Showplace软件就是一个例证：该软件拥有如此多神奇的功能，但却缺少乔布斯一向要求的简单性。皮克斯无法与Adobe公司竞争，后者做的软件并不像Showplace那样高级，但更简单，也更便宜。

Even as Pixar’s hardware and software product lines foundered, Jobs kept protecting the animation group. It had become for him a little island of magical artistry that gave him deep emotional pleasure, and he was willing to nurture it and bet on it. In the spring of 1988 cash was running so short that he convened a meeting to decree deep spending cuts across the board. When it was over, Lasseter and his animation group were almost too afraid to ask Jobs about authorizing some extra money for another short. Finally, they broached the topic and Jobs sat silent, looking skeptical. It would require close to $300,000 more out of his pocket. After a few minutes, he asked if there were any storyboards. Catmull took him down to the animation offices, and once Lasseter started his show—displaying his boards, doing the voices, showing his passion for his product—Jobs started to warm up.

即使皮克斯的硬件和软件产品线都失败了，乔布斯也还会保护着动画团队。对他来说，这已经是一个拥有魔力的艺术之岛，能给予他深层次的情感愉悦，他愿意培养它，为它赌上一把。1988年春，资金实在太紧张了，于是他召集了一次痛苦的会议，宣布全面深度削减开支。会议结束后，拉塞特及其动画团队十分害怕，几乎不敢再向乔布斯要更多的钱来拍摄另一部短片。但最后，他们还是提起了这个话题，乔布斯静静地坐着，满脸疑虑。如果同意这个项目，他就得再从自己腰包里掏出近30万美元。过了一会儿，乔布斯问他们是否已有了故事板。卡特穆尔带他来到动画办公室，拉塞特立即开始了自己的表演——展示故事板，自己配音，尽情地展现对自己产品的激情，乔布斯被感染了。故事是关于拉塞特的心爱之物，经典玩具。

The story was about Lasseter’s love, classic toys. It was told from the perspective of a toy one-man band named Tinny, who meets a baby that charms and terrorizes him. Escaping under the couch, Tinny finds other frightened toys, but when the baby hits his head and cries, Tinny goes back out to cheer him up.

故事以一个单人乐队玩具小锡兵（Tinny）的视角展开，它遇见了一个让自己又爱又怕的人类小宝宝。逃到沙发下后，小锡兵发现其他玩具也被吓坏了躲进这里。但是，当小宝宝撞到头后，小锡兵又爬出来哄他开心。

Jobs said he would provide the money. “I believed in what John was doing,” he later said. “It was art. He cared, and I cared. I always said yes.” His only comment at the end of Lasseter’s presentation was, “All I ask of you, John, is to make it great.”

乔布斯表示自己会提供资金。“我看好约翰在做的东西，”他后来说道，“那是艺术，是他关心的东西，也是我关心的东西。我总是同意他的计划。”看完拉塞特的单人表演展示后，乔布斯只说了一句活，“我只要求一件事，约翰，把它做好。”

Tin Toy went on to win the 1988 Academy Award for animated short films, the first computer-generated film to do so. To celebrate, Jobs took Lasseter and his team to Greens, a vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco. Lasseter grabbed the Oscar, which was in the center of the table, held it aloft, and toasted Jobs by saying, “All you asked is that we make a great movie.”

《锡铁小兵》（TinToy）赢得了1988年奥斯卡最佳动画短片奖，这是首部获此殊荣的电脑制作动画短片。为了庆祝，乔布斯带着拉塞特和整个制作团队来到绿地餐厅——旧金山一家素食馆。拉塞特抓起放在桌子中央的小金人，举得髙髙的，向乔布斯敬酒道：“你所有的要求，便是要我们做一部伟大的电影。”

The new team at Disney—Michael Eisner the CEO and Jeffrey Katzenberg in the film division—began a quest to get Lasseter to come back. They liked Tin Toy, and they thought that something more could be done with animated stories of toys that come alive and have human emotions. But Lasseter, grateful for Jobs’s faith in him, felt that Pixar was the only place where he could create a new world of computer-generated animation. He told Catmull, “I can go to Disney and be a director, or I can stay here and make history.” So Disney began talking about making a production deal with Pixar. “Lasseter’s shorts were really breathtaking both in storytelling and in the use of technology,” recalled Katzenberg. “I tried so hard to get him to Disney, but he was loyal to Steve and Pixar. So if you can’t beat them, join them. We decided to look for ways we could join up with Pixar and have them make a film about toys for us.”

迪士尼的新团队——CEO迈克尔·艾斯纳，电影部门主管杰弗里·卡曾伯格（JeffreyKatzenberg）——开始要求拉塞特重回迪士尼。他们喜欢《锡铁小兵》，认为这种动画故事——让玩具拥有生命和人类的感情——还有很大的发挥余地。但是，拉塞特感激乔布斯对自己的信任，认为皮克斯才是自己能够创作电脑动画的唯一地方。他告诉卡特穆尔，“我可以去迪士尼，在那儿做个总监；或者留在这儿，谱写历史。”于是，迪士尼反过来开始接触皮克斯，希望签署制作协议。“无论是从讲故事还是从技术运用的层面上来看，拉塞特的动画短片真的令人叹为观止，”卡曾伯格回忆说，“我非常努力想让他回到迪士尼，但是他忠于史蒂夫和皮克斯。如果你打不过对方，那么就加入他们。我们决定找出能够加入皮克斯的方法，让他们为迪士尼制作关于玩具的电影。”

By this point Jobs had poured close to $50 million of his own money into Pixar—more than half of what he had pocketed when he cashed out of Apple—and he was still losing money at NeXT. He was hard-nosed about it; he forced all Pixar employees to give up their options as part of his agreement to add another round of personal funding in 1991. But he was also a romantic in his love for what artistry and technology could do together. His belief that ordinary consumers would love to do 3-D modeling on Pixar software turned out to be wrong, but that was soon replaced by an instinct that turned out to be right: that combining great art and digital technology would transform animated films more than anything had since 1937, when Walt Disney had given life to Snow White.

至此，乔布斯已经在皮克斯投入了近5000万美元，占其离开苹果时所拿到钱的一半以上，而NeXT公司当时还在亏钱。对此，他非常精明实际。1991年，乔布斯强迫皮克斯所有员工放弃期杈，作为交换，他会再投入一笔私人资金。不过，对于艺术和科技融合所能做出的成就，乔布斯却倾注了浪漫之爱。他曾认为，普通消费者会喜欢用皮克斯的软件来制作3D图形，但现实并非如此。不过替代的是他直觉上的先见之明，那就是自1937年迪士尼公司拍出《白雪公主》后，再没有比让艺术和数字技术相融合能给动画电影带来更大变革的了。

Looking back, Jobs said that, had he known more, he would have focused on animation sooner and not worried about pushing the company’s hardware or software applications. On the other hand, had he known the hardware and software would never be profitable, he would not have taken over Pixar. “Life kind of snookered me into doing that, and perhaps it was for the better.”

乔布斯表示，回首过去，如果自己能知道得更多，就会更早地专注于动画，而不会费心去推动皮克斯的硬件和软件应用。但另一方面，如果乔布斯早就知道硬件和软件都不会赢利，那么他也不会接手皮克斯。“命运似乎诱骗我去做这件事，而这也许是为了把它做得更好。”