满大街都是苹果时，它看起来还“酷”吗？

    2000年的某个时候，我的同事福林•克林肯伯格开始带着自己的苹果笔记本电脑参加《纽约时报》编委会。一看到这玩意，其他人立刻纷涌上前，围观这台散发酷炫背光、圆润光滑的白色电脑，吃不准福林到底是不是真的要用它工作。一些同事上大学时也用过苹果电脑，但谁没在大学时干过点疯狂的事儿呢？

    苹果电脑真能用来办公吗？福林向我们保证，它可不是什么玩具，我们的电脑能干的这台Mac都能干——上网、发邮件之类的，并信誓旦旦地断言它很可靠，绝不会像PC那样经常死机。福林宣称，他的苹果电脑不会感染一直困扰“微软英特尔联盟”的各种讨厌病毒，我对此将信将疑。等我也买了一台Mac后，立刻觉得自己时尚多了。

    时光飞逝，转眼就到了2015年，现在如果有人在会议上拿出一台不是苹果的笔记本电脑，那才是新鲜事儿呢。同时苹果也保留了其独特性。可以说它一直是在大众化和引领潮流之间走钢丝，在努力赢得前者的同时，不牺牲后者。

    最近，苹果公司公布了美国公司史上盈利最丰厚的一个财季，在过去三个月中，它售出了约7500万台iPhone和550万台Mac。这使首席执行官蒂姆•库克，史蒂夫•乔布斯脚踏实地的继任者，在季报电话会议上情难自禁，称这个财季“具有历史意义”，公司的业绩——按一周七天，每天24小时算，相当于每小时卖出34,000台iPhone——“令人难以置信”。苹果现在是全球价值最高的公司，市值约7000亿美元，手握1800亿美元现金。iTunes商店拥有8亿活跃用户，着实令人惊叹。

    尽管这些数字如此巨大，但最让人目瞪口呆的是，苹果产品远不如一般人所想象的那么普及。它还有很大的成长空间，实际上，它可能才刚起步。

    看看现有产品线就会发现，苹果只不过统治了平板电脑市场。全球有三分之二的智能手机搭载的是安卓操作系统。在全球电脑销量排行中，苹果仅位列第五，在美国市场上也仅位列第三。苹果还能从对手那里抢到很大的市场份额。

    苹果的增长战略是极具原则的。它不会大幅降价或推出性能平平的产品来迎合新兴市场中那些囊中羞涩的消费者。它只会拿出精心设计、价格高昂的产品，将其打造为新兴中产消费者渴望的、彰显身份的象征。

    苹果进军一系列新兴市场的脚步才刚刚启动，它很可能将在很短时间内彻底改变或统治这些市场。号称要成为无所不能的电子钱包的Apple Pay，就是一个强劲的开端。而那些羽翼未丰的项目，如HomeKit，CarPlay，iBeacon以及Apple Watch，则让我们看清了苹果未曾明说的终极目标：提供一个端口或一套操作系统，将你的苹果设备与你的汽车和住宅连接在一起。

    没有哪家公司能像苹果这样，让我们的生活实现无缝连接。意大利小说家安伯托•艾柯1990年代曾说过一句名言，苹果就像天主教，信徒们只能遵循一种行为方式，而微软（如今你也可以说谷歌）则更像是新教，信徒们可以有更多方式得出自己的结论并自行组织起来。

    有鉴于此，苹果的前景看上去比以往任何时候都更加光明。这家公司曾经自称为斗志昂扬的失败者，声称要帮我们“不同凡想”（think different），而如今，过于成功才是它面临的唯一威胁。苹果现在面临的挑战在于：如果苹果的产品成为控制我们生活并与他人联络的不可或缺的手段时，它还能那么酷吗？

    为此我特地去请教目前在耶鲁大学任教的福林，看他是否还固守着苹果的生态系统。确实还这样，而且他现在依然还清楚地记得在2000年开始膜拜Mac电脑之前使用Windows系统的糟糕体验。但他跟即将上市的Apple Watch划清了界线：“我从来就不戴手表，也不能想象现在要开始戴。”（财富中文网）

    本文作者安德烈•马丁内斯是《左卡罗广场》的主编，他在该刊上辟有Trade Winds专栏。

    译者：清远

    审校：任文科

    Sometime in 2000, my colleague Verlyn Klinkenborg started bringing his Mac laptop to our New York Times editorial board meetings. The rest of us would hover around the sleek white machine with the cool lighting radiating from it, wondering if Verlyn could possibly be serious. Some of us had used Apple computers AAPL -0.84% in college, sure, but everyone does crazy things in college.

    Was an Apple really fit for a workplace? Verlyn assured us that it was no toy, and that his Mac could do all the things ours could—the mix of surfing, emailing, and pontificating that the gig entailed—without crashing as frequently as our PCs. Verlyn claimed that his Apple was not susceptible to those nasty viruses that plagued our land of “WinTel,” and I wanted to believe him. I too bought a Mac and instantly felt cooler as a result.

    Fast forward to 2015, when the novelty would be for someone at a meeting to take out a laptop that isn’t an Apple. And, somehow, the caché remains. Apple has walked the tightrope between ubiquity and coolness, attaining one without sacrificing the other.

    The company recently announced the most profitable quarter in U.S. corporate history, a three-month period in which it sold almost 75 million iPhones and 5.5 million Macs. CEO Tim Cook, Steve Jobs’ down-to-earth successor, couldn’t help himself on the earnings call, describing the quarter as “historic” and his company’s performance—selling an average of 34,000 iPhones an hour, 24/7—as “hard to comprehend.” Apple is now the world’s most valuable company, with a stock market valuation of some $700 billion and nearly $180 billion in cash on hand. The company’s iTunes store counts a staggering 800 million active users.

    What’s most astonishing, given those numbers, is that Apple is far less ubiquitous than you might think. It has plenty of room to grow. Indeed, it may only be getting started.

    If you look at its existing product lines, Apple only dominates the tablet market. The competing Android operating system runs more than two-thirds of the world’s smartphones. Apple ranks fifth worldwide in the number of computers sold, and third in the U.S. There is plenty of market share left for Apple to steal from others.

    Apple’s growth strategy is disciplined. The company doesn’t slash prices or create subpar products to meet less affluent consumers in emerging markets halfway. Apple instead holds out its meticulously designed, pricier products as coveted trophies for new middle-class consumers.

    Apple is only starting to wade into an array of markets that it will likely revolutionize, and dominate, in short order. Apple Pay, its bid to become your all-encompassing cashless wallet, is off to a strong start. Fledgling Apple ventures like HomeKit, CarPlay, iBeacon, and the Apple Watch provide clues to Apple’s unstated, ultimate goal: providing you with one portal, or operating system, that links your Apple devices to your car and your home.

    No other company is anywhere near being able to match Apple in providing us with such seamless curation of our lives. The Italian novelist Umberto Eco famously said in the 1990s that Apple was like Catholicism in that its followers had to adhere to one way of doing things, while Microsoft (you could say Google nowadays) was more akin to Protestantism, which gave followers more latitude to reach their own conclusions and organize themselves accordingly.

    And so Apple’s prospects appear brighter than ever. Its own success would seem to be the only threat to a company that has billed itself as the scrappy underdog that promised to help us “think different.” Therein lies the company’s existential challenge: Can Apple remain cool if its products become the one indispensable means of controlling your life and communicating with others?

    I reached out to Verlyn, who now teaches at Yale, to ask whether he’s still inhabiting the Apple ecosystem. He is, and his disgust at his pre-2000 Windows experience sounds as raw as it did when he first started proselytizing for the Mac. But he draws a line at the coming Apple Watch: “I’ve never worn a watch, and I can’t imagine starting now.”

    Andrés Martinez is editorial director of Zocalo Public Square, for which he writes the Trade Winds column.