Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 357
In Tang Huan's view, the fact that his technology and products have entered the restricted sales list is also a recognition of his strength to a certain extent.

Since then, he is no longer a lucky upstart who only provides toys such as personal computers and video game consoles, but a respectable celebrity who can walk freely in the elegant hall.

Of course, the price is not without it. Some money cannot continue to be earned openly, which is really uncomfortable.

Compared with Intel and others who were also treated like this in the original time and space, there may be only one point of strength in themselves. The former can only cling to the CPU, while the traversers who have asymmetric information have more money to come.

Fortunately, he had already prepared and left a back door, so that certain layouts would not completely cut off the room for activities.

Tang Huan is open-minded and understands this, but it does not mean that he has no objections, because the restricted sales list actually includes some types of special Fangyuan personal computers, such as desktop publishing system models and industrial control system models.

If it is said that CAD personal workstations may be used to design aircraft and tanks, then these personal computers are somewhat overkill.

Since the compatibility of Fangyuan Personal Computers was released, the main difference between Fangyuan Computers and these third-party manufacturers is reflected in these special-purpose personal computers. How to play without any worries.

Tang Huan frowned tightly, and it seemed that competitors like IBM gloated and sneered.

It is undeniable that with the launch of Fangyuan personal workstations, Fangyuan network servers, and Fangyuan supercomputers, he and IBM, HP, DEC, CDC, and other traditional computer manufacturers have had direct conflicts of interest, and the relationship between them The complexity can be imagined.

Tang Huan has no intention of becoming the target of public criticism, so he has been trying to deepen the relationship with HP, who is also in Silicon Valley, and let the other party obtain the compatible machine authorization of Fangyuan PC, so that it can extend its business into the emerging field of personal computers.

It's just that so far, Tang Huan has not established a powerful enough alliance in Silicon Valley, and he has not been able to form a supporting political lobbying group.

For a little boy like Apple, his loyalty is commendable at present, but the weight is far from enough. It is impossible to intervene in such a ruling of the US Department of Commerce on sales restrictions.

Tang Huan was squinting his eyes and making various calculations, when he heard a bang, he quickly opened his eyes and saw that the water cup on the coffee table was tilted to one side, and the flowing water soaked the documents, and the instigator—his twins The son, one on the left and the other on the right, staggered away from the scene.

"A-Jiao, look at what your son has done." Tang Huan shouted angrily.

"What's wrong? What trouble did you get into again?" Lin Fengjiao heard the sound and rushed over. After seeing this scene, he glared at Tang Huan disapprovingly, "Are you so stingy? Tell me, who is the boss or the second child? I'll fight. His ass."

"Yes..." Tang Huan was furious over it, and he was lost in thought. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the two brothers had separated and ran away. Where would they go to determine the specific person responsible.

"Tell me, my lord." Lin Fengjiao came over to clean up the mess on the coffee table, and at the same time began to complain, "If the water glass is down, then help it up yourself, and you must call me over."

Tang Huan shook his head dejectedly, stood up, grabbed two little troublemakers, and spanked each of them, "Two little bastards dare to tease your father, what kind of ghosts are there."

Lin Fengjiao chuckled, "Then you have to find the reason from yourself, most likely it was inherited from you."

The speaker was unintentional, but the listener was interested. Tang Huan glanced at the two brothers who had been spanked, but they were not crying or fussing, and were still running around in the study lively, thoughtfully.

The probability of having twins in one's own offspring is too weird, and now it seems that these three pairs of babies are obviously precocious, so it must be related to hundreds of memories in their minds.

Tang Huan shook his head, stopped thinking about such profound and even absurd questions, and turned to Lin Fengjiao and said, "I can't stay with you any longer. Something happened in the United States, and I have to go and have a look."

Lin Fengjiao nodded thoughtfully, "I'll go and pack your belongings."

……

USA, Silicon Valley, Cupertino, Apple Computer headquarters.

The hustle and bustle in the conference room had just dissipated, and Markkula, the chairman and CEO of the board of directors, sighed in distress, and became more and more disgusted with the position of CEO he held.

Needless to say, the lifestyle Markkula aspires to is a leisurely rich life, designing his own new house, driving his own private jet...

Moreover, Markkula now has the capital to live such a luxurious life. As a major shareholder of Apple and also owns Zheru's shares, he is simply living on a golden mountain.

The truth is, Markkula doesn't lead a quality of life, leading Apple's hordes of hard-charging egoists, not least of all in adjudicating the ever-present disputes.

The products currently being sold by Apple are Apple IIe and Apple III. The former is the latest upgraded model of Apple II launched using the Apple II function expansion card technology exchanged from Tang Huan, which contributes most of the company's revenue. The latter is an out-and-out failure. Due to the large number of initial shipments, it can only be maintained at a loss. Although it has almost been corrected now, its reputation has long been bad, and the market response has been lukewarm, so it can only survive.

As for the follow-up products under development, they are Lisa and MAC with graphical user interface functions.It is these two projects that make Markkula both big and powerful.

Although Jobs, who was expelled by the Lisa project team, got the MAC project team as compensation and expelled Scott, who had led the matter, he let out a sigh of relief, but he still felt resentful towards the Lisa project team because The members of the Lisa project team were all on the opposite side of him.

This kind of psychological hostility is manifested in reality that the MAC project team and the Lisa project team are enemies everywhere.

Jobs and John Couch, the head of the Lisa project team, made a bet of $5000 that the Mac would be listed before the Lisa.

Jobs also often portrayed his group of engineers as the cool kids, in stark contrast to the HP engineers on Lisa's team who were uninteresting.

If these actions are just words, there are also actual actions.

When Jobs snatched the MAC project team from Jeff Raskin, he immediately abandoned the design goal of a cheap and low-performance portable computer and redefined the MAC as a desktop computer with a graphical user interface.

As a result, MAC has actually become a low-end version of Lisa, which is likely to weaken Lisa's market influence.

When Jobs urged Burrell Smith to design the MAC around Motorola's MC68000 microprocessor and make the MAC run faster than the Lisa, vicious competition was already established.

In addition to making the Mac a low-cost competitor to the Lisa, Jobs also made sure that it was not compatible with the Lisa at the software level.

Worse still, both the Mac and the Lisa are incompatible with the Apple IIe, which is currently on sale.

To put it bluntly, no one fully manages Apple, let alone Jobs.

Zhiru, who has provided office software for Apple Computer for a long time, hopes that Apple's product line can maintain continuity, that is, the Mac and Lisa under development, and the software is compatible with the Apple II on the market.

For this reason, Charles Simeone, vice president of Zheru, who is in charge of software research and development, paid a special visit to Markkula to formally discuss this issue.

Larry Tesler, who was responsible for managing the Lisa computer application software, also realized the necessity of this matter, so he took the initiative to release a friendly signal and invited Smith and Herzfeld, the core figures of the MAC project team, to the Lisa project team workspace. , showing MAC’s research and development results.

However, this kind of action that considered the overall situation was blocked by Jobs in every possible way on the grounds of project secrecy.

Markkula tried to mediate, but including the meeting just now, several times failed.

Markkula was now very fed up, wondering why he was suffering, especially when he remembered the recent complaints from his wife who was also keen on enjoying a luxurious life.

"No, I have to find a new CEO for Apple. I am determined not to continue to think so hard." Markkula, who had had enough, finally made a decision.

So, Markkula once again found Jobs and showed his face face to face, "Steve, I think it's time to find a new candidate for CEO."

Hearing this, Jobs was taken aback for a moment, and then a look of eagerness appeared on his face.

Seeing this situation, Markkula said bluntly: "Steve, you are still a little edgy and immature, so you are not qualified for this position."

Although Jobs was arrogant, he still had self-knowledge, especially when these words came from Markkula, who had always been his life mentor, he had to be convinced.

"There is no suitable candidate in the company." Even if he agrees with Markkula's judgment, Jobs still subconsciously ensures that he has an unchallenged position in Apple.

"Probably." Markkula frowned, "EA's CEO Hawkins left from Apple, and he is doing a great job now. Maybe we are not good at finding talents."

"It's just selling game consoles, what's so great about it." Jobs snorted sourly, "I don't believe that this kind of product can continue to be popular."

Markkula smiled noncommittally. After five or six years of cooperation, he understood Jobs' psychology too well.

"Perhaps Tang Huan is the most suitable position as CEO." Markula said leisurely.

"That's not necessarily the case." Jobs' voice suddenly rose an octave, "Actually, Tang Huan assigned all the specific tasks to his subordinates, and his specific ability to do things may not be very strong."

"But one thing is for sure, Tang's eye for selecting people is very accurate, what do you think?" Markkula asked back, and when Jobs finally nodded and admitted, he continued: "Actually, with Tang's current status, It’s impossible to come to Apple to hold a permanent position, but you can invite him here and ask for advice to see if he has any good suggestions.”

"It's not necessary." Jobs showed displeasure on his face, "Tang Huan has already sold his Apple shares. He has nothing to do with us anymore. Why should he keep his influence in Apple?"

"It doesn't matter." Markkula waved his hand disapprovingly, "We just need to understand that Don is our most trustworthy friend,"

Jobs moved his lips, finally nodded and said, "Okay then, I'll just wait to see if he has any brilliant suggestions."

……

As soon as Tang Huan arrived in San Francisco, he got a piece of news about EA that caused a sensation in the industry. The Xiaobawang game console, which had been closed to the outside world for a long time and had its own ecosystem, was declared completely cracked.

In other words, third-party game developers like Activision can develop games on the Xiaobawang game console unimpeded like they did for the Atari 2600.

In this regard, people inside and outside the circle are celebrating. According to reliable statistics, at least 1200 million units of the Xiaobawang game console have been sold in the North American market.Such an astonishing number of game platforms naturally means huge amounts of money.

Take EA's best-selling game "Tetris" as an example. Including a series of variant games including drop type and reverse drop type, more than 1500 million copies have been sold on the Xiaobawang game console platform alone.

If you calculate the wholesale price of each cassette dealer at $20, that means $3 million.

EA's "Pac-Man" is very popular with female players, and the sales volume is also amazing, exceeding 1000 million copies.

As for "Donkey Kong", "Mario", "007" and other games, they are all blockbusters in the order of millions.

EA could hide this information in the past, but it is not a listed company now, so naturally it has to be disclosed one by one.

Others have long been extremely envious, and now they have the opportunity to share the profits, can they not be excited;
In response, EA CEO Hawkins became furious and issued the sternest warning to pursue those responsible for infringement. At the same time, he bombarded the industry for its increasingly unscrupulous poaching behavior.

Tang Huan's first reaction was to be surprised. He was only returning to the mainland to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Why was there so much trouble in the United States?

It seems that 1982 was an extraordinary year for home video game consoles and personal computers.

But then he thought about it, this kind of cracking was inevitable.

First of all, the hardware and software architecture of the Xiaobawang game console is not complicated enough, and in such a crazy poaching situation, some technical information will inevitably leak out.

Secondly, the interests involved are too great, which naturally attracts other people to crack it one after another, just like in the original time and space, there was a team dedicated to researching how to jailbreak Apple's iPhone.

Seeing that his subordinate Hawkins was out of temper and tended to go berserk, Tang Huan decided to let him calm down first.

(End of this chapter)