1991 Starting from the core

Speaking of Apple's PDA, many Apple fans in later generations will always associate it with the iPad, and use this to prove how glorious the history of the iPad is, how long and pure its pedigree is.

In fact, although the tablet computer idea was indeed born based on PDA, there is actually no relationship between ipd and Apple's PDA-Apple Newton (MessagePad).

Even at this moment, the Newton PDA is still a product that makes Mr. Qiao annoyed when he sees it.

This has to mention another famous name.

John Sculley—Apple’s previous CEO and a business genius who once led PepsiCo’s comprehensive challenge to Coca-Cola.

Perhaps geniuses value geniuses, or perhaps they think Apple lacks everything but a marketing genius who can sell products. So in 1983, Jobs found Sculley, who was already the president of Pepsi-Cola, and said that so cool quote that people can't stand it once they hear it.

——"Would you rather sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or change the world with me?"

So Sculley joined Apple.

During the wonderful running-in period, or honeymoon period, Apple blossomed with dazzling light-launching the first Mac (Macintosh) and Mac advertising. The former is hailed as the best product, while the latter is hailed as the greatest advertisement.

However, a good vision is just a vision after all. Soon, the two had differences over ideals and reality - when it came to pricing the Mac, their different philosophies collided and eventually became irreconcilable.

Mr. Qiao is still willing to sell it cheaper, because being expensive is not his original intention to change the world.

Sculley insisted on maintaining profits, and Sculley, who ultimately pursued profits, won the support of the board of directors.

When the conflict was irreconcilable, Mr. Qiao regretted recruiting this guy who was full of copper odor. Plans were made to oust Sculley from the company and replace him with the business executive in charge of Europe.

Unexpectedly, the executive leaked the information to Sculley, which eventually gave Sculley the opportunity to have a heated debate with Jobs in front of the board of directors, prompting the board to choose one of the two.

Then everyone knew that profit priority finally defeated idealism.

Since then, although Sculley copied his routine at Pepsi-Cola and successfully increased Apple's performance tenfold, these results came from squeezing the vitality of Apple's entire product line, which is akin to opening a devil's shop. Disintegrate Dafa.

Coupled with the rise of the Wintel alliance, the backlash finally became inevitable. Faced with the shrinking market and declining performance, Sculley barely managed to survive until 1993, but was still unable to turn around and left Apple sadly. And then, after experiencing a period of leaderlessness, the board of directors finally decided to invite Mr. Qiao back.

——After all, Joe is always the founder. After all, Mr. Joe once again proved his genius with Picas... For the sake of Apple, it is not shameful for Mr. Joe to admit his mistake.

The Newton PDA was Sculley's life-extending work when the PowerPC camp was about to collapse.

Obviously, this thing failed to save Scully's life.

——How do you think Qiao always feels when faced with the products created by the “enemies” who drove him out? In fact, historically, as soon as Mr. Qiao came back, he stopped this expensive, fully functional device that seemed to be able to do everything, but had no idea what it could do.

According to the information obtained by Su Yuanshan, compared with the historical trajectory, due to the early return to Apple and the many variables caused by the emergence of Yuanxin, Mr. Qiao at this time seemed to be hesitant about whether to directly cut off the Newton PDA.

Su Yuanshan's purpose is very simple, to persuade Mr. Qiao to start a PDA again, and at the same time give up Newton OS and Sharp OEM, and instead embrace YOS and Hongyuan.

…

Mr. Qiao still walked like the wind, and at the same time showed a good demeanor in front of the programmers. He smiled and nodded all the way into Su Yuanshan's office.

Perhaps it was the nature of a product manager that Jobs stopped at the Meijer laptop at first sight. He sat down in front of the sofa and asked about Su Yuanshan with his eyes.

"Why don't you give us a review of a new product that will be on display at CES (International Consumer Electronics Show, held every January in Las Vegas)?" Su Yuanshan said carelessly.

"..." Jobs was speechless for a while, but he felt very grateful for Su Yuanshan's trust in him. He took the notebook and looked at it carefully.

The more he looked, the more serious his expression became.

This notebook uses the latest YX04 architecture processor, with a 66MHZ bus frequency and a main frequency of 260MHZ.

——Currently, YX architecture processors have been divided into three directions. One direction is the SOC direction, which focuses on low power consumption, multi-system, and multi-module integration, and is mainly suitable for handheld mobile electronic devices.

One direction is towards performance, taking the route of high bus frequency and high main frequency, which is mainly used in professional PCs and mobile PCs.

The last direction is to take the customized route and provide authorization and customized technical support for various special scenarios.

In addition to using a high-frequency processor, it also has a 12.1-inch 256-color TFT LCD display that supports 800*600 resolution. The display core integrated on the motherboard comes with 2MB of video memory.

It should be noted that although this is the first notebook officially launched by Meijie for the market, during the design process, its main target group was Yuanxin employees, or people similar to Yuanxin employees.

——Let’s put it this way, from the beginning of the project, no one had any hope that it would succeed in the market—including Su Yuanshan.

After all, the notebook market is still dominated by notebooks from IBM, Compaq, etc. that use X86 architecture and Windows operating system.

This notebook, from the beginning to the end, is not designed to cater to users who are accustomed to Windows, but to accurately target programmers and designers who use Linux every day.

However, under Su Yuanshan's strong request, this notebook has no compromise in appearance design, taking thinness, lightness, or flatness to the extreme.

The thickness at its highest point is only two centimeters.

If there's anything attractive about it, architectural and systems aspects aside, it's that it does look good.

Jobs closed the top cover, turned the back over, looked at the back carefully, and then moved away a little further to take a closer look.

Su Yuanshan kept looking at him with a smile, as if he was showing off a toy to a neighbor's child.

"The design is very good." Jobs reopened the screen, looked at Su Yuanshan, and said seriously: "It's very beautiful."

"Thank you for the compliment." Su Yuanshan said in his heart. This is a design that is unswervingly evolving towards the appearance of macbook. With Apple's genetic modification...how could it be ugly?

"The system uses Linux?"

"Well, currently Linux can adapt to a variety of development environments and supports more and more applications. From a work perspective, it can fully meet the needs."

Jobs nodded, and there was a flash of emotion in his eyes that was unclear whether it was regret or anger - the ten years since he left Apple were also the ten years when Windows rose. Not to mention that Microsoft is now in full swing, even the rising star of open source Linux has caught up with its former pride in terms of universality.

"Mr. Qiao, why don't you take a look at the running program?" Su Yuanshan asked curiously when he saw that Jobs just glanced at the simulator.

"Is this your newly developed tool software?"

"It's the system." Su Yuanshan chuckled, stood up and sat next to Jobs - only then did he realize that he was actually a head shorter than Mr. Qiao.

Damn it!

Controlling the touchpad, Su Yuanshan loaded YOS. After a short wait, the YOS LOG lights up and then enters the system.

This time, the interface Su Yuanshan loaded was a PDA.

Jobs took a deep look at Su Yuanshan and then turned his attention to the screen again.

"This is an operating system we specially built for handheld mobile devices. In terms of current functions...Jobs, it is much more powerful than NewtonOS."

"Whether it is system response speed, memory control mechanism, hardware requirements, development and maintenance costs, or I/O support. It is far better than NewtonOS and Palm OS."

"I don't know if Apple still has hope for MessagePad (the official name of Newton PDA), but if MessagePad doesn't make changes... it will definitely have no future."

Su Yuanshan spoke very frankly and was not afraid of offending others.

Judging from Jobs's reaction, he didn't seem to be angry because of Su Yuanshan's truth, but instead felt a little relieved.

After a few seconds of silence, Jobs smiled and said, "Yes, that was a complete failure."

Su Yuanshan couldn't help but rolled his eyes in his heart, thinking that this was done by your enemy, of course.

But he still smiled and said: "But there is a lot of experience, right? At the very least, it and a series of successors have proved that the PDA market is still a market worth developing in the next few years."

Jobs didn't know if it was possible, so he asked: "Yuanxin wants to enter?"

"No, we just provide the chip and the system." Su Yuanshan answered honestly again.

Jobs also took a deep look at Su Yuanshan again.

Since returning to Apple, he conducted a detailed investigation on Su Yuanshan, and then he had to admit that this guy is indeed very powerful.

But Su Yuanshan's power is different from him.

Su Yuanshan is a technical genius and even a genius business leader, but there is no sign that he is a genius product manager.

This is also the biggest reason why Jobs is willing to maintain friendship with Su Yuanshan - even facing a genius like Su Yuanshan, he is still the best product manager in the world, bar none.

Soon, Jobs asked: "You mean, you provide chips, provide systems, provide production...and then let Apple provide design and re-enter the PDA market, right?"

"Yes." Su Yuanshan was also unambiguous: "I have always believed that Apple is one of the most technologically aesthetic companies in the world. If you were missing from the PDA market, then... the world would be too boring. a little."

"What's more, as far as I'm concerned..."

Su Yuanshan simply spread his hands and said, "Jobs, are we friends?"

Jobs was startled, not expecting Su Yuanshan to ask such a question, but he only hesitated for a moment and nodded with a smile: "Of course."

"I was unhappy with Scully too. Even before you went back, I never visited."

"Some people say that your return is to stage Hamlet's Revenge of the Prince, but I am different. I think you are to stage the return of the king. But no matter who it is, just from the perspective of market and topic, people are still willing to see that you can prove that Not Cali.”

Su Yuanshan's words were straightforward enough, so straightforward that he almost grabbed Mr. Qiao's ear and said - Stop the MessagePad immediately and throw away everything from the system to the processor. Then redesign an ApplePDA, tell Sculley, tell the world, and tell the blind dogs on the board of directors that you are the most awesome product manager.

Who doesn’t love watching Prince’s Revenge?

Jobs was such a person, so he took a deep look at Su Yuanshan again and fell into deep thought.

After a long time, he looked at Su Yuanshan: "Will your new mobile phone also be equipped with Ymicor OS?"

"yes."

"Is there any real machine adaptation?"

"Not yet, but in a month..." Su Yuanshan almost let it slip, leaking the news that Sony was going to release a PDA: "In a month, we will show the prototype."

"Well, I'll think about it."

Su Yuanshan's eyes were blazing: "I really don't think you need to develop a system specifically for PDA - unless you want to continue tinkering with NewtonOS."

"No, Su. This goes back to our previous differences." Jobs looked at Su Yuanshan and said seriously: "Your concept of operating systems is different from mine."

"..." Su Yuanshan was speechless for a while.

Why is this person so arrogant?

Perhaps he was unwilling to provoke another dispute on this issue - after all, Mr. Qiao was now older and much more mature. He smiled and said, "But I admit that your description of PDA just now gave me ideas. I’ll think about it again.”

Receiving this sentence finally made Su Yuanshan feel a little more at ease.

Take it slow, step by step - he comforted himself.

Start with PDA, then move to mobile phones and tablets, and finally fully occupy the mobile platform - in this way, the future mobile system will almost be dominated by YOS.

What? You mean Android? Saipan?

Su Yuanshan is staring! Regardless of Android, Quanzhuo or Symbian, as long as they dare to show up, they will be eliminated.

…

After seeing off Mr. Qiao, Su Yuanshan stayed in the special zone for another two days. He paid a visit to the leaders of the special zone and inspected the expanding wafer factory before heading to Shanghai.

Now that I have come here, I naturally have to go to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Of course, CPU, flash memory, copper wire process, Lin Benjian's team, these are all technologies related to the future, and Su Yuanshan must always keep an eye on them to show that he attaches great importance to these fields.

It's just that Rome wasn't built in a day, nor can technology be broken through in a day. Apart from cheering, Su Yuanshan can't help much.

Finally, the day before leaving, Su Yuanshan paid a visit to the leaders of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Su Yuanshan always has a relaxed and comfortable attitude among the leaders - in his words, it's okay, just come over and have a chat.

"You'd better prepare something practical next time!" The leader crossed his legs and "complained" to Su Yuanshan: "Otherwise, if people know that I took two hours to chat with you, I'm afraid I will be reported?"

"No, no, Secretary Chen is not that kind of person." Su Yuanshan said happily to the secretary holding a notebook beside him: "Secretary Chen, isn't it?"

"cough……"

"But leader...this time, I'm really here to ask you for information."

As Su Yuanshan said, he sat upright with bright eyes.

"Do you think this National People's Congress can pass the resolution of the Ministry of Information Industry?"