联想ThinkPad：经典设计背后的故事
羽量级选手：联想的ThinkPad X1 Carbon是世界上最轻的14英寸超级本
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联想公司（Lenovo）位于莫里斯维尔的美国总部有个房间能将北卡罗莱纳州的乡村美景尽收眼底，房间的地板上用螺栓固定了好几排飞机座椅。这个情景显得有些突兀，直到你恍然大悟，如果要为商务旅客打造一款经久不衰的利器，必须确保该产品在飞机上同样能够表现出色。 这间房是ThinkPad笔记本的陈列室，IBM在1992年首次推出了这款标志性的黑盒造型笔记本。如今，21年过去了，伴随着几十种型号，ThinkPad如今的主人已经换成了联想（Lenovo）。联想于2005年收购IBM PC事业部，继续制造ThinkPad笔记本。它们理所成章地成为IBM ThinkPad的正统传人。ThinkPad不仅仅是有史以来最畅销的商务笔记本，它经典的造型也堪称计算机界最长寿的设计。 ThinkPad经久不衰的设计多半要归功于大卫•希尔。现年56岁的希尔是位温文尔雅的俄克拉荷马人，于1985年加入IBM。他在1995年接手了ThinkPad产品线的设计工作，当时ThinkPad已经面市三年，取得了轰动效应，而IBM正考虑升级这款产品。 回忆当年的情形，希尔说：“当时的问题是，我们要怎么做？我的看法是，既然它卖得不错，为什么要忙着修修补补呢？”ThinkPad产品当时大卖特卖，市场上也出现了许多仿造者。“我们为什么不更上层楼呢？”希尔反问道。 自那时起，希尔和他在北卡罗来纳以及日本的设计团队就一直在忙这件事。 第一代ThinkPad笔记本是由著名德国设计师理查德•萨帕设计的。他希望设计出一款如同香烟盒或者饭盒般朴实无华的产品。当然，设计并不总是一帆风顺。萨帕当时打算在键盘中部设计一个特殊的红色触控杆来操作光标，不过IBM的安全团队提出了反对意见。希尔说，这帮人认为红色只能用于类似紧急关闭这类按钮。 萨帕迅速找到了迂回的解决办法。他把颜色稍稍做了调整，变成了所谓的“IBM品红。”新方案马上得到了批准，萨帕随后逐渐改变颜色，直到最后又变回了最初的红色，这下似乎再没人提意见了。如今，小红帽成为了ThinkPad的标志性设计，同时也是用户反响最大的设计：大家要么对它爱不释手，要么对它恨之入骨。 |
A few rows of airline seats are bolted to the floor in a room with sweeping views of the North Carolina countryside at Lenovo's U.S. headquarters in Morrisville. It's an incongruous sight, until you realize that if you are going to make one of the most enduring tools for business travelers, well, you need to make sure it's going to work well on airplanes. The room is a showcase for the ThinkPad, the iconic black-box notebook computer that IBM (IBM) first introduced in 1992. Twenty-one years and dozens of models later, Lenovo, which bought IBM's PC business in 2005, is still making ThinkPads, which are instantly recognizable as descendants of that original model. Indeed, the ThinkPad is not only one of the bestselling business laptops of all time, but also the most enduring design in the history of the computer industry. Much of the responsibility for the ThinkPad's slowly evolving look falls on David Hill, 56, a soft-spoken Oklahoman, who joined IBM in 1985. He took over design of the ThinkPad line in 1995, as IBM was considering how to update a three-year-old computer that had become a mega-hit. "The question was, What are we going to do now?" Hill says of the time when he joined. "My view was that if it is not broken, why fix it?" The ThinkPads were selling so well that they had sparked a string of copycats. "So why not make it better?" he asked. Hill and his team of designers in North Carolina and Japan have been doing that ever since. The first ThinkPad was conceived by Richard Sapper, a renowned German-born designer. Sapper envisioned a device that would have the simplicity of a cigar box or a bento box. The process was not without hiccups. When Sapper chose a particular kind of red for a pointing stick that would be embedded into the keyboard to control the cursor, IBM's product safety group balked. Red, apparently, could only be used for emergency shutoff buttons, says Hill. Sapper quickly came up with a workaround. He varied the tone a bit a created a new color that he called "IBM magenta." After the new color got the okay from the product safety police, he gradually reverted the tone back to the red he had originally chosen, and no one seemed to notice. Nowadays, the red dot is an integral part of the ThinkPad design, and one that still elicits strong reactions: Users either love it or hate it. |
