Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 274 It's time to set up Adobe

With such an epoch-making product, could it be that you saw something wrong so quickly?
Of course, Don Estridge's vision is not so sharp as to be against the sky. What he is a little bit guilty of is, the various functions mentioned on the stage, the personal computer with small arms and legs, can you really run with them?
If this is the case, not only will IBM's mainframe business be challenged, but DEC's minicomputer business will also feel the pressure.

……

Jobs and the key engineers of the MAC project team unceremoniously occupied the best positions in the audience, because they have been studying the graphical user interface elements such as menus, fonts, and text boxes introduced in Zheru's large-scale office software. Maintaining a high degree of attention, naturally refused to let go of any opportunity to understand technical details.

Jobs, who has become a billionaire, is definitely a diamond king who is young and rich. Therefore, he pursues the ultimate taste in all aspects, which is specifically reflected in his shopping hobbies, ranging from small razors, medium to stereos, and large to Sports cars, all have to be carefully compared in terms of craftsmanship and design, and became enthusiastic about Japanese art, and even participated in related international exchange conferences.

When Tang Huan introduced OpenType, Jobs was refreshed and scribbled on his notebook.

As for PostScript, he has not yet realized its true significance, and just casually joked with Bill Atkinson next to him, "Guess how fast and powerful the laser printer that Don is boasting about is, how heavy is it?" ?”

"At least 60 pounds." Bill Atkinson replied in disbelief. He was also not interested in PostScript, but he was attracted by the graphical operation of PageMaker. Zheru seemed to have made new breakthroughs in this technical field. progress.

"It looks so stupid, I guess it weighs 70 pounds." Jobs, who has a lot of experience in process design, ruthlessly mocked Zheru's laser printer with his own aesthetic standards.

It has to be said that although Jobs did not fully guess correctly, it is not far away. The real weight is 75 pounds, about 34 kilograms. It occupies a separate table on the stage, which is an obvious manifestation of the limitations of the current technical level.

Bill Atkinson watched John Warnock operate PageMaker, import WordEasy documents, use scanners to input images, use text boxes to adjust attributes such as position, size, font, etc., and "what you see is what you get" output graphics and text through laser printers After reading the copy, like most people, they couldn't help but be dumbfounded.

Obviously, this is the simplest desktop publishing process, and people in various fields see different meanings from it.

Among them, the relevant people in the media were the first to wake up and immediately applauded first.They have a hunch that the way they work in the industry may be completely changed by this desktop publishing system.

Bill Atkinson turned his head and said to Jobs: "Zheru obviously has the ability to develop a graphical user interface operating system, and they should take some action."

"Actually not. Tang insisted that the current level of personal computer hardware is not strong enough to support such a system." Jobs shrugged, "Don't forget, although the company exchanged Zheru's shares for Apple IIe, but I am also a personal shareholder of Zheru and can see some internal documents."

Seeing Jobs' swearing, Bill Atkinson basically dispelled his doubts. He belongs to the type of "genius" recognized by Jobs, and he will naturally get a reliable answer.

But at the same time, Bill Atkinson also began to think in his heart that recently, it has been rumored within Apple that the three founders have an exchange of interests with Tang. During the cooperation between Apple and Zheru, they have been compromising with each other. There is basis.

After John Warnock finished his task and left, Tang Huan introduced Charles Geschke, another co-founder of Adobe in the original time and space, who also came from PARC, to the stage and demonstrated The second new software Illustrator.

In the original time and space, Illustrator was released by Adobe in 1987. Like PageMaker of Aldus, it originally ran on Apple's MAC platform.

And now, both of them have come out ahead of schedule, and they are running happily in the high-end second-generation Fangyuan computer that also uses the MC68000 microprocessor.

Illustrator is a vector-based graphics production program that can be used to develop fonts and edit PostScript.

Its biggest feature is the use of Bezier curves. With this tool, users can draw various lines as they like, which is intuitive and reliable.

Of course, the Bezier curve belongs to the category of professional mathematics. Like all mathematics topics, it is boring and difficult to understand.

Therefore, Charles Geschke just briefly mentioned this concept, and then moved on to the functions that ordinary users are more concerned about.

Bill Atkinson in the audience had his eyes straight at the time. While he was developing the MAC graphical user interface operating system, he was also compiling a graphics package called QuickDraw.

But now compared with Illustrator, QuickDraw is simply the word that Jobs always talked about-garbage.

Jobs noticed the abnormality of his generals, so he pushed him, "What's there to be dazed about, although Don's software looks amazing now, but he can only make his products reach this level, and we develop The MAC can make all the programs running on this platform achieve this effect."

Bill Atkinson was fooled by Jobs casually, and finally calmed down, and then whispered: "Perhaps, we can obtain the authorization of such technology from Zheru to speed up the development progress of the MAC project."

Seeing Jobs' disapproval, Bill Atkinson quickly added, "In this way, it may be possible to launch the MAC before the Lisa project."

At the beginning, when Jobs left the Apple III project midway, he took the initiative to retreat when he saw the situation was not good, but the Lisa project was swept out.

This was a thorn in his heart when he was young and energetic. Now that he was stimulated by Bill Atkinson, he immediately changed his original intention and nodded in agreement with the other party's use-ism.

Seeing this scene, Bill Atkinson finally heaved a sigh of relief. It wasn't that he was spineless, it was because the research and development stage from 0 to 1 was too painful. Now that he encountered a technology that could be used for reference, he naturally wanted to rush without hesitation. Go forward and hug your thigh.

Illustrator's support for PostScript is relatively abstract. Everyone in the audience knows that it is very powerful, but they don't have specific feelings. However, Illustrator's vector graphics function is much more vivid, especially seeing how the unique fonts are step by step by Charles Gerschke. After the ground was formed, everyone never stopped whispering their admiration for this magic.

When Tang Huan came to the stage again, he held the cover of Celine Dion's first album in his hand, and sighed repeatedly, "The little singing girl left the stage so soon, I still plan to talk to her Let's take a photo together."

After pretending to think about it, Tang Huan snapped his fingers, "Yes, I can use the second-generation Fangyuan computer to make up for my regret."

Tang Huan found a photo of himself, showed it to the public, and then input it, together with the album cover, into the second-generation Fangyuan computer through the scanner.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I will use the third new software - Photoshop. Unlike Illustrator, which provides vector drawing functions, it is used to process bitmaps."

Although the performance of the current scanner is not flattering, but fortunately, Tang Huan and Celine Dion's looks have passed the test, and after a pass of PS, they will not be too horrible to look at.

Tang Huan printed out the images processed by Photoshop and distributed them to the audience to witness the power of this software.

In the original time and space, Photoshop came out in 1990, later than PageMaker and Illustrator, but the initial version also only supported Apple's MAC platform.

The MAC has been upgraded from the original Macintosh 128K to the Macintosh Plus. As for the specific hardware specification changes, the operating frequency of the microprocessor MC68000 has been increased from 7.8 MHz to 8 MHz, and the memory capacity has been increased from 128KB to the standard configuration of 1MB, which supports expansion. 4MB.

In 1987, Thomas Knoll, who was a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, wrote a program called "Display" on Apple's MAC in his spare time. Its function was to display grayscale images on black and white bitmap displays.

Thomas Knoll's elder brother, John Knoll, who worked for George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic Special Effects Company——John Knoll, after seeing "Display", he suggested that his brother turn it into a program for processing digital images.

So in 1988, the brothers spent six months working together on the project.

Originally, Thomas Knoll wanted to change the name of the software to "ImagePro", but he never thought that this name had already been used.

Later that year, Thomas Knoll renamed the software "Photoshop" at the suggestion of a visitor to an exhibition.

At this point, Photoshop already has the ability to adjust levels, color balance, saturation, and more.

In terms of business operations, the Knoll brothers started with a short-term cooperation with a scanner company, using Photoshop to process the images scanned by the scanner.

Meanwhile, John Knoll traveled to Silicon Valley to demonstrate Photoshop to Apple engineers and Adobe Systems art director Russell Brown, and both were successful.

Finally, in September 1988, Adobe decided to abandon the similar software ColorStudio of Letraset, another company under consideration, and bought Photoshop.

Since then, Photoshop has also caught up with the upsurge of desktop publishing, and has gradually come to the fore and grown into an industry standard.

The high-end model of the second-generation Fangyuan computer is also sufficient to support the smooth operation of Photoshop, so at the annual developer conference in San Francisco, there was a spectacular phenomenon of three software releases.

Appreciating the admiring expressions of the participants, Tang Huan smiled with satisfaction, raised his hands and waved back, "Ladies and gentlemen, just as you have seen, the second-generation Fangyuan computer that provides a graphical user interface, what you see is what you see The resulting software—PageMaker, Illustrator, Photoshop, output devices—laser printers that support PostScript, font technology—OpenType, and all aspects of desktop publishing are already available, and a new industrial revolution is about to begin.”

After thunderous applause, Tang Huan solemnly announced, "The OpenType and PostScript standards will be released to the public immediately, so as to lay a good foundation for the development of the entire desktop publishing industry."

This kind of industry leader's tone of giving up to me did not cause dissatisfaction, but it ushered in even warmer applause.

……

After leaving the stage, Tang Huan met with acquaintances in and out of the industry one by one in the temporary reception room at the back.

Robert Bartley joked: "Our "Wall Street Journal" has just been captured by your wolf-like salesmen, and we have begun to fully use the second-generation Fangyuan computer for office work. But judging from today's situation, the boss's pocketbook has to be used again. opened."

"It's not that exaggerated. It takes time to distribute products." Tang Huan was modest.

"By the way, how much is that kind of laser printer?" Robert Bartley asked curiously.

"$8999." Seeing Robert Bartley's mouth wide open in surprise, Tang Huan shook his head helplessly, "Dude, you can't take everything related to personal computers as cheap. Xerox products cost $17000 .This laser printer is equivalent to installing a computer with a lot of CPU and memory. It specializes in processing PostScript command files, and then controls the physical parts of the printer to print according to the above instructions. Now the price is as cheap as possible. .”

"I said why it's so expensive." Robert Bartley nodded knowingly.

Tang Huan suppressed a smile, and flicked away Reagan's economic think tank, then came back and said to John Warnock and Charles Geschke who had been waiting by the side: "It's time to set up an independent operation for the desktop publishing business. company."

Hearing this, the two couldn't help but feel refreshed, and Tang Huan continued to say, "The name of the company is Adobe, which comes from a river named Adobe in Los Altos, Santa Clara County, Silicon Valley. The two serve as president and CEO respectively.”

Seeing the faces of John Warnock and Charles Gershke couldn't hide their joy, Tang Huan pointed his fingers and said leisurely: "I use the two major standards of OpenType and PostScript, and the three major software of PageMaker, Illustrator and Photoshop to hand over Work for Adobe. Remember, we can’t be superior just because we have a first-mover advantage in the field of desktop publishing. The first thing you have to do is to implement an aggressive sales strategy, staking the horses and grasping the market share.”

In the original time and space, Adobe started with PostScript. Throughout the 1980s since its establishment, most of its profits came from the implementation of the PostScript solution on the printer, that is, the high licensing fee of the Raster Image Processor - a raster image processor. .

During this period, Adobe’s operating mode was still a typical engineer’s thinking. It was a nail to spit out. It lacked flexibility in sales strategy and relied entirely on original technology to enter the market.

The PostScript solution implements chip solutions similar to smartphones. Qualcomm has a large number of 3G patents. No matter how dark the products are, mobile phone manufacturers can only recognize them.

However, the market has never lacked spoilers.As a result, MediaTek appeared, and Qualcomm could no longer absorb money comfortably.

Adobe's market situation on PostScript is roughly the same.

With the rise of RISC technology, many new platforms based on this processor have emerged, and third-party PostScript implementations have become quite common. The disadvantages of running on hardware, and Adobe is often a step behind in supporting new platforms.

This kind of passivity is most obvious in the high-end and low-end fields. With the new features provided by new hardware, printers that achieve higher indicators cannot be realized by Adobe's timely PostScript solution; while low-end printers cannot accept the high price authorization fee.

Many cheap laser printers don't support PostScript at all, and their drivers don't use PostScript at all.

When you need to use PostScript on such a printer, you can use a free software called GhostScript, which belongs to a type of PostScript interpreter.

(End of this chapter)