Giant of the times

Chapter 67 CPM Operating System (Fourth Update)

The next day was Monday, and Ivan Adolf, CEO of the American retail giant Sears, came to visit.

In this era of "channel is king", Apple has to rely on Sears!

Tian Shuai talked with him for more than an hour, and the two parties reached a cooperation agreement. Apple-ll personal computers could be sold in Sears retail stores, but Sears had to pay Sears $200 for each machine sold. If 100,000 machines were sold, that would be 20 million US dollars, which was a huge amount of money in 1975!

But there is no way, Apple does not have its own sales channels.

Before you become stronger, you have to endure some things.

The Apple flagship store in Los Angeles is the first step for Apple to establish its own channels! Li Zetian found that it was expensive to build a flagship store, so he did not let Apple expand blindly. Instead, he first used this flagship store as a pilot. If it succeeded, he would quickly promote it to major American cities such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Houston. Cities are the first targets.

With your own flagship store, you not only have channels, but also after-sales service is guaranteed!

Only by doing a good job after sales can we retain customers!

At present, Apple's main users are a group of computer enthusiasts and enterprises. They all have certain technical capabilities, so the demand for after-sales is relatively small, and they are usually contacted by phone.

Tian Shuai followed Li Zetian's suggestion and immediately contacted Wal-Mart after negotiating a cooperation with Sears.

In 1972, Wal-Mart's stock was listed in New York, and its value increased 4,900 times in the next 25 years (to 1999). If Apple had invested in Wal-Mart in 1975, not to mention forming an alliance with Wal-Mart, it would have been a huge The return on investment is worth the investment.

At noon, Tian Shuai and Li Zetian talked about Wal-Mart while having lunch together in the company canteen.

"Mr.li, I expressed my intention to cooperate with Wal-Mart, and the other party agreed. I hope to attract people with Apple-ll high-tech products."

Li Zetian nodded when he heard this, and immediately asked: "Do you agree to Apple's investment?"

"I didn't agree to this. Walmart went public for financing in 1972 and had no shortage of funds. Moreover, their company's cash flow was huge and there was no need for financing at all, so they did not accept Apple's request for shares. If we want to get shares of Walmart , you can only buy tradable shares from the stock market!”

Li Zetian pondered for a while. Since Wal-Mart did not accept shares, forget it. Being able to cooperate has achieved its goal. At the moment, Apple doesn’t have a lot of funds. As the saying goes, “it’s better to bite off more than you can chew”, so it’s better to develop Apple with peace of mind and quickly build a flagship store! Of course, if you have spare money, you might as well go to the stock market to buy Wal-Mart stocks.

…

…

Li Zetian lived an ordinary life as always. At the end of March, AT\u0026amp;T sent an inspection team. There was no doubt that they were shocked after seeing Apple-ll and Excel. They said on the spot that they would persuade the company to buy .

On April 1st, a strange man came to Apple, adding a touch of color to Li Zetian's peaceful life.

He calls himself Gary Kildare, who is in his thirties. He received a PhD in computer science from HSD University in 1972. In 1974, he helped create the most prestigious "Homebrew Club" in Silicon Valley and became a place for computer amateurs to communicate. Paradise, Steve Jobs and Wozniak are all members of this club. After Li Zetian came to California, he also went here and communicated with these computer enthusiasts.

Gary Kildare is a technical guru who can rival Wozniak. He first created the Disk Operating System (DOS) in 1973 and named it the CP/M operating system. However, the CP/M operation at this time The system is not yet mature enough and is at best an "embryo", so it is quite neglected and the computer industry turns a deaf ear to it!

In his previous life, Gary Kildare completed a complete CP/M application system in 1975. Since then, the system has been successively adopted by microcomputer manufacturers from various countries, and the software around him has also been developed explosively. Subsequently, CP/M became popular and became mythologically popular. It occupied a dominant position in 8-bit microcomputers and was praised as the "standard eight-bit computer software bus". Dr. Gary Kildare became famous from then on!

In fact, Gary Kildare had a chance to become the richest man in the world, but he missed out on the biggest business deal in his life.

Because the CP/M operating system was extremely popular, IBM found him first, but he didn't pay attention to it and asked his wife to negotiate with IBM representatives, but the negotiation collapsed. Later, Bill Gates took over the business. The MS-DOS operating system later launched by Microsoft almost completely copied the CP/M operating system. The system functions are exactly the same, and even the instructions are exactly the same as CP/M. The BIOS program is almost unchanged from Gary Kildare's Copy the BIOS of CP/M.

It can be said that Bill Gates made his fortune by copying Kildare!

This time, Gary Kildare came to Apple naturally to promote his CP/M operating system.

Li Zetian had a lot of thoughts in his mind. Gary Kildare didn't realize the importance of the CP/M operating system at all, but Li Zetian knew very well and understood that Microsoft's future dominance of the operating system market lies in CP/M!

Apple has obtained the authorization of the Unix operating system to develop the MacOS graphical interface operating system. Naturally, it will not use CP/M in the future. However, Microsoft does not yet have an operating system. The BASIC interpreter is just a program, not an operating system. If Microsoft acquired the CP/M operating system together, then both Apple and Microsoft would have operating systems!

"Mr.li, what do you think of the CP/M operating system? Can Apple-ll personal computers be used with this system?" Gary Kildare asked.

Li Zetian smiled and said: "Mr. Gary Kildare, to be honest, we have just obtained the authorization for the Unix operating system from AT\u0026T. Look, this is an authorization certification agreement!" said Li Zetian took out the agreement and handed it to Gary Kildare to read.

Gary Kildare looked unhappy after reading it. He thought Apple-ll would use the Unix operating system.

Just when he was disappointed, Li Zetian changed the topic and said: "To be honest, the CP/M system still has many flaws, but it just happens to complement Microsoft's BASIC program!"

"Mr. Gary Kildare, would you consider joining Microsoft? In fact, I founded both Apple and Microsoft. If you can join Microsoft, I can consider switching Apple-ll to CP/M operation. System! Of course, the CP/M system will also be sold to Microsoft, but I will give you $100,000 and 1% of Microsoft’s shares! By the way, I will let you take a look at Microsoft’s latest software Excel spreadsheet... "

After reading it, Gary Kildare was very surprised by Excel, "Mr.li, this is a great office software that will definitely be liked by many people!"

"Yes, Mr. Gary Kildare, so you have to know what it means when I give you 1% of Microsoft's shares!"

"Mr.li, I'll go back and think about it!"

"no problem!"

As soon as Gary Kildare left, Tian Shuai met him at the door.

"Mr.li, who was that person just now?" Tian Shuai came to Li Zetian's office and asked casually.

"Gary Kildare, inventor of the CP/M operating system!"

Tian Shuai smiled and said: "I was planning to ask him for the license to use the CP/M operating system, but I didn't expect that he came first!"

Li Zetian chuckled, revealing a meaningful smile...

PS: The network is stuck, I’m just posting it now, please vote and reward!

PS: The network is stuck, I’m just posting it now, please vote and reward!