Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 13 The Office Software War Unveiled
Since the verbal confrontation, Jobs came to Zerone's office a few times without changing his expression, and he didn't know what kind of thoughts were going on in this guy's mind under the appearance of fresh clothes and angry horses, but Zerone's employees were stimulated to work. Enthusiasm increased.

Although Tang Huan dismissed Jobs' tyranny, he still couldn't hold back his bad taste in archaeology, and decided to do something so that the other party could not be so relaxed and comfortable.

So, Tang Huan took time out of his busy schedule to go to Menlo Park, and finally found the mother and daughter who were living in embarrassment, Steve Jobs's ex-girlfriend Christian Brennan and his illegitimate daughter Lisa.

It has to be said that under the influence of the "Beat Generation", the relationship between men and women among American youths in this era is relatively casual. When a life is lost, they are unwilling to take responsibility or even pull the bird and leave without admitting it.

Tang Huan learned that it was unclear whether Jobs had taken a paternity test at UCLA, but that he was currently in a lawsuit with Brennan for his daughter's support.

In fact, for the current Jobs, the alimony of $385 per month judged by the court is just a trivial matter, but he still strongly denied that Lisa was his daughter in court, and it is said that he did not Fertility.

This entangled situation may not be improved until Jobs wants to understand that once Apple is successfully listed, the lawsuits will adversely affect his future wealth.

In the name of a friend, Tang Huan supported Brennan's mother and daughter with $500, expressed his admiration for her great maternal love, encouraged her to be strong, and revealed seemingly unintentionally that she can safely and boldly ask the lawyer to increase her appeal. Jobs did not dare to delay the lawsuit for too long, otherwise it would affect his image as a company representative during financing, and he would suffer even bigger losses when Apple went public next year.

I don't know if this counts as harming others and benefiting oneself, anyway, after Tang Huan returned from Menlo Park, he felt very happy.

However, after seeing how pitiful Lisa was, he became more eager to start a family.But Deng Lijun's family in Taiwan has not been able to apply for a visa. It is said that the process is extremely complicated. Otherwise, Deng Lijun, who has been flying around Southeast Asia all the year round, would not have made trouble with fake passports.

A few days later, there was a sudden news from Baodao that Deng's father was ill in bed.Deng's mother was very anxious, Tang Yun comforted her, "Why don't you go back and have a look, anyway, we are here to take care of Li Jun."

Deng's mother thinks about it for the same reason. Now that Tang Yun regards her daughter as a prospective daughter-in-law, she is extremely affectionate, so she has no need to worry about anything.

So just like that, Deng's mother hurried back to Baodao alone, and Deng Lijun was inevitably a little depressed. Tang Huan had to spend more time with her, and the two became more and more gluey. Reading things are procrastinated.

Fortunately, the staffing of Zerone Company is getting more and more neat now, so Tang Huan does not need to do everything by himself, such as the follow-up marketing work after the development of the full platform version of CGrid is completed.

At the beginning, Apple’s second-generation machine was quickly accepted by users. In addition to the product itself being excellent enough, it was also related to the public relations personnel Jobs contacted. This person was Regis McKenna, a marketing guru in Silicon Valley.

The son of a large working-class family in Pittsburgh, McKenna dropped out of college and worked for Fairchild and National Semiconductor. In 1970, he founded his own public relations and advertising firm, Regis McKenna Marketing Consultants, in Silicon Valley.

This man's two specialties were giving exclusive interviews to his clients to reporters he knew well and planning memorable advertising campaigns.For example, a series of colorful magazine ads created for Intel, with fast racing cars and poker chips as the main elements, replaced the boring performance charts in the past, enhanced the brand awareness of abstract high-tech products such as microchips, and achieved good results. Ad Performance.

McKenna's marketing schemes have helped fuel some of the most important technological innovations in history, such as Intel Corporation, the world's first microprocessor, Apple Computer, the first personal computer, and Byte, the first retail computer store. shop.He also participated in the technical marketing planning of the first computer local area network, the first micro-supercomputer and the first desktop publishing system, etc., which can be described as brilliant.

And the network resources run by McKenna are also eye-catching. Many companies that have finally become famous in the industry have received his help in the initial stage, such as America Online, Apple, Microsoft, 3COM and so on.

It was precisely based on McKenna's current ability and future energy that Tang Huan personally contacted his high-tech marketing company and negotiated cooperation matters. Of course, the corresponding expenses were expensive, but in front of Zerone's strong ability to attract money, it seemed It's commonplace.

In fact, during this period, software companies were indeed not as profitable as hardware companies.For example, in 1978, Microsoft's sales revenue was 100 million US dollars, and Apple has already launched its second round of financing this year.

But this limitation is not a problem at all for Tang Huan, a reborn person. Both the intellectual cost and the time cost are ridiculously low. After the product is successfully developed, compared with the computer manufacturer's production line, he only needs to buy some copies. A software disk will do.

With his spare efforts, Tang Huan alone developed another heavyweight office software, a word processing program, for the CP/M platform, named WordEasy, which made other technicians who worked together feel a little ashamed. Psychologically, my boss is too capable.

In fact, the reason why Tang Huan's research and development process is so easy is entirely due to the fact that there were too many open source projects in this area in his previous life.But other people didn't know where to go. They only felt that they were bathed in the glory of the chief software architect, and they were under a lot of pressure, because the development of WordEasy on the Macintosh platform fell on them, and everyone felt that it would be too shameful if the progress was slow.

Now that word processing software is also available, let McKenna's company do the promotion plan together.

Therefore, starting from July 1979, the microcomputer market ushered in a sales boom. The root cause was that CGrid and WordEasy had a huge pulling effect.Since then, these two softwares have frequently appeared in computer professional magazines, and even traditional media have frequently mentioned them, and they all exclaimed that the way of working will usher in a new round of revolution.

Under such circumstances, traditional giants such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard, whose main business is mainframes and minicomputers, have also turned their attention to evaluating the business opportunities contained in them. Frank Cary, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of IBM, was even more shocked. He immediately called the company's president, John Oberl, to discuss its possible impact on the company's business. Even Watson Jr. was shocked , they felt that the value of the personal computer could no longer be underestimated.

Compared with CGrid's success in the market, WordEasy encountered a competitor, WordStar of MicroPro International, at the beginning of its listing.

Historically, WordStar, its predecessor "ElectricPencil" and its later replacement "Microsoft Word" were all top-notch word processing software. In the 80s, WordPerfect even dominated the market on a par with WordPerfect. It was not until the 90s that Microsoft Office was wiped out that this situation ended.

In 1982, with the sales volume of more than 100 million sets, WordStar made the sales of that year close to 7000 million US dollars, helping the company become the largest microcomputer software company in the world in 1983.

Encountering such a dangerous competitor naturally made Tang Huan attach great importance to it, especially the person who ran WordStar was Seymour Rubinstein, and even Gates suffered a secret loss from this person in the sales of BASIC interpreters.

Compared with Tang Huan's targeted and orderly response to market competition, Jobs gradually felt the heavy pressure.

Zerone's two bursts of office software let users know that microcomputers can also do so many valuable business tasks, which naturally creates a huge demand. At present, CGrid includes both Macintosh and CP?M. However, WordRasy only has the CP?M version. It is difficult to assess how much this will affect the market share of the Macintosh.

Jobs grabbed the phone irritably and contacted Gates, "How is your development progress?"

"It's going well, but it will take some time to complete." Gates replied confidently.

"What the hell, why are you so procrastinating, while Tang can launch products one after another?" Jobs threw the phone down angrily.

Gates shrugged helplessly, put down the phone gently, and came to the office of his entrepreneurial partner Paul Allen.

"That guy Jobs called again to urge you." Gates finally showed a trace of worry on his face.

Allen withdrew his gaze from the computer screen and rubbed his eyes, "The office software market is so huge, we must participate in it, but as you can see, if we want to achieve the functions of CGrid and WordEasy, we need more engineers and more time.”

"I'll find a chance and I'll visit that Don again. He looks very hospitable. When we met last time, he was very warm to me." Gates said slowly after thinking.

"I'll go too. Recently, this person has been making frequent moves. Some newspapers say that he is leading an office revolution. I would like to see what kind of outstanding person he is."

(End of this chapter)