Giant of the times

Steve Jobs once famously said: “It takes one great person to do 50 mediocre people.”

Li Zetian recognized this sentence very much.

He calculated an account and found that the salary he offered to Wozniak was US$20 per hour, the salary of an ordinary engineer was US$10 per hour, two engineers would cost US$20, and three engineers would cost US$30... …

A technical problem that would take ordinary engineers several days or even ten days to solve could be solved by Wozniak in a matter of minutes.

This is the value of top engineers! ! !

The next night, Wozniak came to Apple's headquarters, the garage.

Wozniak was not surprised. His garage was also used as a laboratory.

"Just the two of us?!" he asked in surprise.

"What? You don't have confidence in yourself?" Li Zetian smiled and asked.

"Nothing, just two people!" Wozniak said nonchalantly, "What kind of personal computer do you want to design?"

Li Zetian opened a locked drawer with a key and took out a design drawing. "This is my design drawing. There are some text descriptions next to it. You can take it and take a look first, and then we will discuss the design plan." No, where do I need to modify it?" Li Zetian handed the design drawing to Wozniak.

"OK, all right!"

Li Zetian sat aside and waited quietly, looking at the design drawings. It should take some time.

When Wozniak was looking at the design drawings, Li Zetian looked at him secretly, and saw a look of shock on Wozniak's face!

Li Zetian secretly said happily: "I tried my best not to include advanced design concepts from the future, but I still shocked the great people of this era, haha..."

"What an exquisite design, especially the design of this PC expansion bus, which is absolutely epoch-making! With a total of 100 plugs, only 86 plugs are used, and 14 are reserved for expansion. The computer produced can pass the expansion bus Compatible with a variety of 8-bit microprocessors, and can even quickly adapt to 16-bit technology!!!"

Wozniak's eyes were bright and he was full of praise for this! ! !

As for what a bus is? In short, the bus is a public communication trunk through which various data and commands can be transmitted between various components of the computer!

Each component of a computer is actually a module, and the connection between the modules is through a bus. If the bus is standardized, then the modules will be universal—compatible! ! !

The purpose of Li Zetian's design of the PC expansion bus is to establish a bus standard, which belongs to Apple's bus standard. In the future, when the Apple-ll model PC is developed, it will be compatible with many products on the market and promote the sales of Apple-ll! ! !

By then, the Apple-ll expansion slot will be a killer!

"Wozniak, what do you think of my design?"

“Excellent, perfect!”

“In that case, let’s start making it happen!!!”

"Okay!!!" Wozniak responded excitedly, he couldn't wait at this moment!

That night, Wozniak stayed up all night, but in the morning, he was still energetic. Seeing that it was almost time to go to work at HP, I reluctantly left the garage!

Li Zetian stayed up all night with him.

"Wozniak, are you coming again tonight?" Li Zetian shouted towards his back.

"Come!!!"

The owner of the house, Tian Shuai, happened to go out at this time. He asked with a smile: "Chronos, the light in the garage was on all night. Is it possible that you worked all night long last night?"

"Yes, Wozniak was very excited after seeing my design drawings! Oh, by the way, that person just now was Wozniak, an HP engineer. He works for me after work!"

Tian Shuai couldn't help but laugh, "I see, 'after work' is his real working time, right? He's been up all night. Does he still have the energy to work at HP during the day?"

Li Zetian smiled and asked, "Are you going out to find a job now?"

"Yes, go to Exxon for an interview!" Tian Shuai replied.

"I wish you good luck, I'm going back to catch up on my sleep!" Li Zetian waved his hand.

"Well, go to sleep!"

Li Zetian actually wanted to say, stay, let's create a big situation together! However, Apple cannot even afford to rent a decent headquarters, so it can only rent a garage temporarily, and its future is uncertain. Someone is now going to interview with Exxon, one of the top ten Fortune 500 companies in the world. What can you do to retain him?

Li Zetian shook his head in his heart, this matter can only be discussed later.

In the following days, everything became very dull and monotonous.

Tian Shuai got his wish and entered Exxon. He changed jobs and took a higher position. And Lee and Wozniak worked on the Apple-l model personal computer in a small garage every day!

The Altair-8080 computer developed by MITS has only a host computer, no monitor, keyboard, or mouse. This is a computer without a monitoring program. Users can only program this computer in binary machine language. However, once such a computer was launched, it shocked the industry, and orders continued to come in. The Global Catalog described it this way: "This is an absolute, undisputed, and incredible success that occurred overnight."

Such a rubbish product deserves such praise, which shows that users at that time really did not have high requirements!

Li Zetian can't make such a rubbish product, at least it must have a monitor and keyboard. Forget about the mouse, with a monitor and keyboard, the Apple-l model computer is enough to crush the Altair-8080. The mouse is reserved for Apple-ll model computers, which is another killer feature!

However, Li Zetian is now more worried that if he develops so many things, his progress will definitely be slower than that of MITS, and Wozniak is working part-time, which will lead to even slower development of the project.

"Three cobblers are equal to Zhuge Liang!"

After a month, Li Zetian decided to recruit one or two more people. So he placed a recruitment ad in a local newspaper. Li Zetian did not deceive others, stating that this was a garage company and the company had just been established. As a result, it was not good to be too honest. After a week, no one came to apply.

At 7:30 in the morning, Tian Shuai went out to work and happened to bump into Li Zetian again. The two chatted for a while. When Li Zetian complained that he could not recruit people, Tian Shuai smiled and said: "I know a very skilled engineer, and he is also Chinese. , do you want to introduce it to you? However, his fees are no worse than Wozniak!"

"It doesn't matter, as long as his skills are great, I can give him the same salary as Wozniak!!!"

Tian Shuai added: "In addition, he has a job now and can only work part-time!"

"also!!!"

"Okay then, I'll make a call and ask him to come over and talk to you after get off work in the evening."

"Thank you so much!"

“Easy to do, no big deal!”

…

evening.

A Chinese came to Apple's headquarters.

"Hello?! Are you Mr. Li Zetian?" he shouted inside.

"It's me. You are the engineer Tian Shuai mentioned!" Li Zetian looked at him carefully. He was about thirty years old and very calm.

"Yes, my name is Zhang Han!"

The two were still talking when a voice suddenly came from outside the garage, "Kevin Zhang, why are you here?"

The speaker was none other than Wozniak.

"Uh, do you know each other?" Li Zetian was startled and asked.

"We are colleagues from HP!" Zhang Hao laughed.