2018考研英语双语阅读：iPhone十年记

　　2018考研复习进行时，考研英语阅读真题中的文章，多摘自英美主流外刊，有时候你认识所有单词、搞清全部语法还不够，还需要了解英美文化，掌握他们的表达方式，这就是阅读的潜台词。下面新东方在线考研整理《2018考研英语双语阅读精选》，速来学习吧！　

　　Ten years after its launch, the iPhone is both a miracle and a menace

　　iPhone十年记：创造奇迹，暗藏威胁

　　On Tuesday 9 January 2007, in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, the late Steve Jobs, dressed in his standard black turtleneck and jeans, announced that Apple had built a mobile phone. “The phone is rectangular,” reported CNN “and the entire front surface is a touchscreen. All of its functions are activated by touch, but when you bring your iPhone to your face, a proximity sensor will turn off the touchscreen so you don’t accidentally face-dial. The phone, which runs the Mac OS X, will be able to download and play both music and movies. It will come in two models – a $499 version with 4 gigabytes of memory and a $599 one with 8 gigabytes.”

　　2007年2月9日是一个星期二，当天，史蒂夫·乔布斯(已故)穿着自己招牌式的黑色高领毛衣和牛仔裤，在莫斯科尼会展中心向世人宣布苹果公司自制手机即将问世。美国有线新闻电视网报道称：“这是一款长方形的手机，前置触摸屏，所有操作通过手指触摸完成，当iPhone贴近面部时，其内置近距离传感器会关闭触摸屏，防止人脸进行误操作。iPhone的操作系统为Mac OS X，能下载并播放音乐和电影。即将上市出售的iPhone包括两个版本：内存4G的售价为499美元，内存8G的售价为599美元。”

　　Apple fans were predictably ecstatic – as they always were when His Steveness addressed them – but the rest of the world yawned. After all, the mobile phone business was a boring, mature global industry, dominated by Nokia. Apple knew nothing about the business, and Jobs had been able to negotiate a deal with only one mobile network company – Cingular, a branch of AT&T. Sure, the new gizmo had a web browser that worked – which Jobs said was “a real revolution” – and it could do email. But hadn’t he also said that “the killer app is making calls”? And the iPhone came with a battery that you couldn’t change! How dumb was that? Accordingly, Nokia executives slept easily in their beds – though their counterparts at RIM, which made BlackBerrys and had an unbreakable lock on mobile email, stirred uneasily in theirs, having noticed an $11 drop in their share price on the day.

　　不出外界所料，果粉们听到这个消息欢欣雀跃，乔老板宣布新消息时这些狂热粉丝的反应大抵如此;其他人对此却不屑一顾。毕竟手机产业乏善可陈，模式成熟，诺基亚牢牢占据着头把交椅。苹果对于手机产业一无所知，愿意和苹果进行合作的也只有美国电话电报公司下属的Cingular公司一家企业而已。诚然，用乔布斯的话说，这款新手机内置浏览器，“是一场真正的革命”，同时还能收发邮件。不过乔布斯不是也说过“王牌应用还是打电话”吗?而且iPhone的电池无法拆卸!还有比这更愚蠢的设计吗?因此尽管乔布斯消息宣布的当天股价应声下跌11美元;尽管竞争对手RIM推出黑莓手机，并专注于手机邮件功能，声势逼人;诺基亚的一众高管仍旧高枕无忧，安稳入睡。

　　Six months later, on 29 June, the first iPhones went on sale and the rest is history. Ten years on, Apple has sold 1.2 billion of them, in the process pulling in $738bn in revenue, and every year earning between 70% and 90% of all profits made by all smartphone manufacturers.

　　半年后的6月29日，首款iPhone手机正式发售，接下来发生的事就众所周知了。转瞬十载，iPhone各款手机的发售量已达12亿，苹果凭此进账7380亿美元，年均利润可达到其他智能手机制造商当年利润总和的70%至90%。

　　The iPhone made Apple the world’s most valuable company (with a market capitalisation of $771.44bn when I last checked) but, in a way, that’s the least interesting thing about it. What’s more significant is that it sparked off the smartphone revolution that changed the way people accessed the internet. Steve Jobs’s seminal insight was that a mobile phone could be a powerful, networked handheld device which could also be used to make voice calls. Turning that insight into a marketable reality was a remarkable achievement – commemorated last week by the Computer History Museum in a fascinating two-hour series of recorded conversations with the engineers who built the phone.

　　凭借iPhone，苹果成为了世界上估值最高的公司(笔者最近查阅资料时显示苹果的市场估值为7714亿4千万美元)然而从某种意义上来说，苹果的估值往往让人兴趣寥寥。更为重要的是，苹果主导了智能手机革命，人们上网的方式从此发生了翻天覆地的变化。乔布斯提出的见地可谓前无古人：手机在语音通话之外还可以成为功能强大的掌上联网工具，而将上述理念转化为实际的市场产品可谓一大壮举。上周，计算机历史博物馆和制造的iPhone的工程师进行了两个小时的录音谈话，以纪念iPhone的诞生。

　　The result of this revolution is a world in which most people carry their internet connection around in their bags and pockets. It’s a world of ubiquitous connectivity in which people are never offline and are increasingly addicted to their devices. It’s got to the point where someone has coined a new term – smombies (zombies on smartphones) – to describe pedestrians who walk into obstacles because they are looking at screens rather than at where they’re going.

　　世界面目一新，平时放在背包和口袋中的小巧设备如今竟然成为了连接互联网的必备工具。用户与互联网的连接随处可见，人们无时无刻不在使用手机上网，而且越发成瘾。“智能手机僵尸”这一新名词应运而生，描述的就是那些走在路上也要紧盯手机屏幕，撞到东西也浑然不知的人。

　　The smartphone is the most vivid example available of how technology can be – simultaneously – both good and bad, enabling and disabling, inspiring and disillusioning. The technical capabilities of modern phones are formidable and the ingenuity of the apps that harness those capabilities are often mindblowing. But at the same time, smartphones are also surveillance devices made in hell – pocketable slot-machines using GPS chips to track one’s every move, click, swipe and shake. And some of the apps that run on them are tailor-made vehicles for stalking, bullying, harassment and theft – to the point where parents who give smartphones to young children ought to be prosecuted for neglect.

　　智能手机鲜活地诠释了技术的上限，同时智能手机的发展总有利弊两面：方便了广大用户，却也让他们备受限制;鼓舞人心却又前景幻灭。现代手机的技术能力让人心生敬畏，手机应用的精妙设计让人为之惊叹。然而与此同时，智能手机堪称产自地狱的监控设备，这些口袋大小的设备内置全球定位系统芯片，用户的每次操作都被纪录于其中。而某些在智能手机上运行的手机应用甚至成为了跟踪﹑霸凌﹑骚扰和偷窃等行为的独门利器，给孩子们配备智能手机的家长理应因忽视的罪名而受到起诉。

　　The other consequence of a world in which most people connect to the internet via a smartphone is a vast increase in corporate power. This is because the smartphone – unlike a PC – is a tethered, closed device. Nothing gets on to an iPhone that Apple hasn’t explicitly approved; and although Android phones are less tightly controlled, Google is increasingly trying to enforce the same kind of order in that software ecosystem.

　　此外，企业权力空前高涨，因为智能手机与个人电脑相比有所不同，属于封闭设备，未经苹果允许，任何应用也无法占据一席之地。尽管安卓手机的管控相对宽松，谷歌也谋求在安卓的生态系统中实施相似的政策。

　　So while you may think that “your” iPhone is yours, in fact an invisible thread links it back to the mothership in Cupertino. And of course, much mobile connectivity comes not just via wifi, but courtesy of mobile phone networks, who are some of the biggest control freaks in corporate history. So even as we put on record our gratitude to Steve Jobs, we should also acknowledge that he has a lot to answer for. And that we should be careful what we wish for.

　　所以当用户认为买到的iPhone手机属于自己时，座落于库比蒂诺的苹果公司实际上却在通过无形的方式操纵着它们。当然除无线网络外，手机网络也是用户上网的重要方式，并且成为了企业历史上最大的控制狂之一。所以即使人们对乔布斯的感激之情载于史册，在诸多问题上乔布斯同样难辞其咎。面对所盼之物，我们理应更为谨慎。

　　来源:雅虎新闻

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