Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 578 32-bit personal computer kicks off
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Seeing Woz with a big beard also ran to San Jose International Airport to pick him up, Tang Huan smiled and said, "Why are you so enthusiastic?"

"Donate for charity." Woz scratched his head with a silly smile.

"Just go to my office to get the check. You don't have to see me." Tang Huan shook his head with a smile, opened the door, and got into the car with Woz.

Although Tang Huan often flies around by plane, he has permanent offices in San Francisco, Xiangjiang, Paris and other places, and his secretary can handle such small matters directly.

"Just paying money doesn't show the sincerity of participating in this charity event. I want to collect some celebrity items and hold a charity auction. You are versatile, and you will never be stumped. Manuscripts, calligraphy and paintings are all welcome. Within the scope." Woz explained in detail.

Tang Huan nodded repeatedly while listening.Don't look at Woz, the founder of Apple, who is not doing his job right now, but it is a good thing for him. After all, with his bad and good character, he has become increasingly unable to adapt to the contradictory political ecology of Apple.

Woz tried to jump out of Apple and founded an IT start-up company alone, but it was not good at management, and Jobs angrily blocked it in every possible way when he knew about it, and finally ended hastily.

There is another point, although it is cruel, but we have to face it squarely.As the crash severely affected Woz's memory, he, the genius who designed the Apple I and Apple II, really lost his former glory.Silicon Valley has never been short of talented people, and they have been slapped to death by the waves of the Yangtze River on the IT sandy beach where technological development is changing with each passing day.

In fact, Apple hopes that Woz, the founder, will always become a legendary icon representing his own entrepreneurial myth, instead of starting a new one.

Therefore, this bad guy is regarded as a bear.

As a result, the San Francisco Music Festival sponsored by Woz and Tang Huan has become the best event for him to kill time.

At the third San Francisco Music Festival in September this year, Deng Lijun showed a few photos of her visit to Africa with the French first lady Danielle Mitterrand, and told about what she saw and heard with her own experience, which made This event, which has more public welfare and charity elements, has suddenly improved a lot of style, and many people, including Woz, have spontaneously and actively participated in it.

Tang Huan is a nostalgic person. In the process of quickly gaining the halo of a billionaire by taking advantage of Apple, Woz can be regarded as a nobleman, so he is very happy to see that the other party has a role to play.

In fact, as long as Woz is assigned a suitable financial assistant that can be negotiated, he, the mythical icon of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, can still play a lot of roles. The San Francisco Music Festival is an obvious example.

Now, Woz has started to contact celebrities in the IT and music circles to promote charity activities for the relief of hungry people in Africa. He naturally wants to give support, so he nodded and agreed, "No problem, I will definitely find some meaningful personal items and contribute to them." come out."

Woz nodded happily, and after getting the things from Tang Huan, he left happily and moved on to the next target without mentioning the current situation of Apple, which shows that the relationship between the two is drifting away. degree.

The current Apple company is almost at the point of its last stand. In terms of product sales, the Lisa computer is almost zero. As for the MAC that debuted at the beginning of this year, it can’t even sell 10000 units a month, and it has fallen back to the level of 1980. .

Because of neglect, Apple IIGS, the latest model of Apple II, which provided Apple with a long-term and stable source of income, also began to decline.

In order to get rid of the embarrassment of lack of interest in MAC due to insufficient performance, Jobs, who has merged the Lisa department into the MAC department, recently made a desperate move, that is, to modify the slow-moving Lisa computer, such as adding a MAC emulator, It was then packaged as an upgrade to the MAC, the MACXL, which sold for close to $4000.

The MAC with only 128KB of memory has a fatal bottleneck in performance; the MACXL, which is priced at less than $10000 from a Lisa computer that sells for nearly $4000, has a memory of 512KB and can be expanded to 2MB, which is overcome. this difficulty.

In this way, those users who don't know the truth and are obsessed with the functions of the graphical user interface really bought it, giving Apple a chance to improve MAC.

Strictly speaking, Apple's practice of refitting the backlog of Lisa computers and selling them to users with new models of MAC computers is a kind of commercial fraud. After all, no matter how close the interface given by the MAC simulator is to MAC, At its core, it was actually an unsalable Lisa computer.

On this point, there were also disagreements within Apple, but for the sake of the company's righteousness, the superficial calm was quickly restored.

But there is one thing, the Lisa computer is packaged as MACXL, and it is re-launched in the market. It seems to be a successful rescue, but one fact cannot be changed, that is, Apple is selling the Lisa computer at a loss. When the inventory is cleared, it cannot continue to do this. The more you sell, the more you will benefit. The fundamental solution to the problem is to develop a real MAC upgrade model with sufficient performance.

Otherwise, Apple, which has overdrawn its own credit and the expectations of the GUI, will be completely abandoned by users.After all, there are other great PCs to choose from besides the Mac.

Tang Huan has nothing to say about Apple's current confusion of new tricks. He thinks he has done his best.

Tang Huan's first pot of gold, the spreadsheet software CGrid, was realized with the help of the Apple II platform.Later word processing software WordEasy, database EBase, and hardware products such as display function enhancement card and printing function enhancement card were released one after another, and even the price of the whole set together surpassed the AppleII platform itself.

It is not difficult to see how Apple II played a role in Tang Huan's original capital accumulation.

With the deepening of the cooperation between the two parties, it reached the point of mutual shareholding, which allowed Tang Huan to catch a ride on the listing of Apple Inc., and won the title of billionaire in less than two years after entering the IT field. Ranked third, even surpassing Woz, one of the founders of Apple.

The aura of a billionaire brings convenience in terms of social status, bank loans, financial credit, etc. It is really difficult to calculate exactly.

Tang Huan started his business from a poor student to his rapid rise to become the richest man in the United States. The whole process was aboveboard and clean. Biographies are still flying.

In all the descriptions, it is unanimously believed that among Tang Huan's success factors, the trick of borrowing the chicken to lay the egg is perfect, and Apple is the chicken in Tang Huan's process of accumulating wealth.

With little value left and conflicts from the board of directors, Tang Huan quickly left Apple.But through Markkula, Jobs, Woz's shares in Zheru, and long-term support for the development of the Apple II platform, he still paid back to Apple.

This is also a major basis for the outside world to comment on Tang Huan's kindness.You know, in the cycle of raising pigs and killing pigs, Wall Street also ironically favors those who are of good character.When Apple drove away the entrepreneurial hero-the first CEO Michael Scott, he was criticized by him for sharing adversity but not wealth.

But in the eyes of some key members of Apple’s board of directors, especially Jobs, who is obsessed with owning the products he created like Woz, Tang Huan’s support for the Apple II platform is to change its lineage step by step, and finally make it the standard of Fangyuan computers. A member of the alliance will harm Apple's long-term interests, so they put the company's focus on the MAC and Lisa computer projects.

Since Apple insisted on this idea, it was impossible for Tang Huan to put on a hot face and stick a cold ass, after all, the value of the other party's use had really reached the point where there was not much left.

After listening to John Chambers and others finish chatting about Apple's current situation caused by Woz's visit, Tang Huan nodded and asked: "The 32-bit architecture technology of the fourth generation of Fangyuan PCs is implemented by partners. How's it going?"

"There are no accidents beyond control." John Chambers handed over a document, "The most recent highlight is the Fall Developers Conference, and later COMDEX will release several 32-bit personal computer specifications, but can be found in The function expansion card used in the current 16-bit third-generation Fangyuan personal computer. These two activities can be regarded as the beginning of the official debut of the 32-bit personal computer. Therefore, everyone hopes that you can attend, so as to point out a clearer direction for the future. "

In the original time and space, in the personal computer industry structure dominated by IBM-PC, the leader IBM was not interested in developing personal computers with a 32-bit system.When Intel, which was desperate to turn to the CPU business, released the 32-bit architecture microprocessor Intel80386, it was Compaq who first launched the first 32-bit personal computer - CompaqDeskPro386, which began to have the opportunity to occupy a dominant position in the market.

However, after all, Compaq started with a copycat IBM-PC. Its primary goal is to be compatible with IBM-PC technically, and its original products are limited.For example, the system bus used by CompaqDeskPro386 is still the old-fashioned IBM-PC/AT bus. Compaq does not have the overall layout ability of Big Blue.

As the personal computer cake grew bigger and bigger, with more and more participants, and IBM lost its monopoly position, various new technologies were gradually added by various manufacturers or industry alliances.

After entering the Pentium computer era, the technical standards of personal computers began to be determined by organizations such as IEEE, rather than by a certain manufacturer.

At this stage, Tang Huan naturally has the absolute right to speak out in the Fangyuan computer standard kingdom that he has built by himself, and the new generation of 32-bit personal computers is also many times more technically perfect than the CompaqDeskPro386, although it is impossible to achieve it in one step. , but it will leave the best space for gradual improvement, including system bus, expansion board, operating system... and even the top-level application that is responsible for driving consumer demand will have an overall layout.

Although this is far from a one-time job, it is also a process of integrating several years of technological development into one product development process, and the complexity can be imagined.

In the early media briefing made by Fangyuan Computer Company for the fourth generation of Fangyuan personal computers, the overall design goals were disclosed to attract the capital market, users and partners.

IBM, which has valuable R&D experience in mainframe System/360, is not optimistic about the ambitious 32-bit personal computer plan of Yuan Computer Company, and believes that the company under Tang Huan is too young and does not have the matching ability to successfully manage such a large-scale computer. project.

The actual situation seems to be just as IBM expected. From time to time, the media reported the stumbles in the implementation of the 32-bit personal computer plan, which made Big Blue's prediction more targeted.

In fact, the media has always been good at exaggerating. How could the research and development plan led by Tang Huan really become a headless fly? It's just that this kind of attention is also a kind of momentum, and it can also make the old rival IBM fall into confusion and underestimate the enemy. He didn't Rushing to argue, but to clarify with a rational academic attitude.

Tang Huan first published a paper titled "No Silver Bullet" to show that he had studied the complexity of large-scale project management after studying the classic anthology "The Mythical Man-Month" written by Fred Brooks, the father of the IBM System/360 system. He has a clear understanding and sufficient preparation; then he introduced a set of management systems called Capability Maturity Model—Capability Maturity Model, or CMM—that his company has long implemented to prove its ability to control large-scale projects.

The reason why Tang Huan discusses project management patiently and rigorously with academic attitude is not only to cheer for the fourth generation of Fangyuan personal computer, but also to show the maturity and stability of his technical research and development capabilities to military customers such as the US Department of Defense.

Judging from the results of the current feedback from various aspects, this coping strategy is very successful, at least it can silence the opponent and lead the partner out of confusion.

After reading the document, Tang Huan said with a smile: "The driving effect of video games on personal computers is becoming more and more obvious, and it seems to have become the hot spot of this autumn developer conference. I participate in this session, which can be regarded as a contribution to "Three Kingdoms" The release is warming up."

Seeing what Tang Huan said, Charles Simeone complained: "Tang, you are too partial to EA."

In the midst of everyone's laughter, Tang Huan recommended: "If you have free time, you might as well play this game. I believe the experience will be very fresh."

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(End of this chapter)