giants of the era

Chapter 67 CPM Operating System (Fourth Change)

The next day was Monday, Ivan Adolf, CEO of the American retail giant Sears, visited.

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 sides reached a cooperation agreement. Apple-ll personal computers can be sold in Sears retail stores, but Sears must pay $200 for each machine sold.If 10 machines were sold, that would be $2000 million, which was a lot of money in 1975!
But there is no way, Apple does not have its own sales channels.

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

The Apple flagship store in Los Angeles is the first step for Apple to establish its own channel!Li Zetian found that the cost of building a flagship store is not small, so he did not let Apple expand blindly. Instead, he took this flagship store as a pilot first. If it is successful, he will quickly promote it. Cities are the first targets.

With your own flagship store, you not only have access to channels, but also guarantee after-sales service!
Only by doing well after-sales can customers be retained!

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 was listed in New York, and its value doubled 25 times in the next 1999 years (until 4900). The return on investment is worth the investment.

At noon, Tian Shuai and Li Zetian talked about Wal-Mart when they had lunch together in the company cafeteria.

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

Li Zetian nodded when he heard the words, and immediately asked, "Do you agree to Apple's shareholding?"

"I did not agree to this point. Wal-Mart went public in 1972 for financing, and there was no shortage of funds, and their company itself had a huge cash flow, so there was no need for financing at all, so it did not accept Apple's request for a share. If we want to get shares of Wal-Mart , can only buy tradable shares from the stock market!"

Li Zetian pondered for a while, since Wal-Mart did not accept the shareholding, then forget it, the cooperation has already achieved the goal.At present, Apple's capital is not much, so the so-called "greedy can't chew", it is 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 shares of Wal-Mart.

……

……

Li Zetian lived an ordinary life as usual. At the end of March, AT&T sent an investigation team. Undoubtedly, after seeing Apple-ll and Excel, they were shocked and said on the spot that they would persuade the company to buy.

On April 4st, a strange man came to Apple, adding a touch of color to Li Zetian's peaceful life.

He claimed to be Gary Kildare, in his 30s, and received a doctorate in computer science from HSD University in 1972. In 1974, he helped create the most prestigious "Homebrew Club" in Silicon Valley, which became a paradise for computer amateurs to communicate. , Jobs, Wozniak are members of the club, after Li Zetian came to California, he also went here and communicated with these computer enthusiasts.

Gary Kildare is completely a technical god who can stand shoulder to shoulder with Wozniak. In 1973, he first created the disk operating system (DOS), named the CP/M operating system. However, the CP/M operation at this time The system is not mature enough, it can be regarded as an "embryo" at best, so it is quite neglected, and the computer industry turns a deaf ear to it!
In his previous life, Gary Kildall completed a full set of CP/M application systems in 1975. Since then, the system has been adopted by microcomputer manufacturers in various countries, and the software around him has also been developed explosively.Afterwards, CP/M became red and purple, mythical and popular, occupying a dominant position in 8-bit microcomputers, and was praised as the "standard [-]-bit computer software bus". Dr. Gary Kildare's reputation has spread far and wide since then!

In fact, Gary Kildare had the opportunity to become the richest man in the world, but he missed the biggest deal in his life.

Because the CP/M operating system was extremely popular, IBM was the first to find him, but he didn't pay attention to it, so he asked his wife to negotiate with the IBM representative, but the negotiation collapsed.Subsequently, Bill Gates took over the business.The MS-DOS operating system 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. Copy the BIOS of CP/M in the past.

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

This time, the purpose of Gary Kildare coming to Apple is 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 was very clear, and he 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, CP/M will not be used in the future, but Microsoft does not have an operating system. The BASIC interpreter is just a program, not an operating system.If Microsoft buys it together with the CP/M operating system, then both Apple and Microsoft will 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 of the Unix operating system from AT&T. Look, this is the authorization certificate agreement!" Li Zetian took out the agreement and showed it to Gary Kildare.

After Gary Kildare read it, his face was not very good. He thought that Apple-ll will 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, I wonder if you would consider joining Microsoft Corporation? Actually, I founded both Apple Corporation and Microsoft Corporation. If you can join Microsoft Corporation, I can consider changing Apple-ll to CP/M operation System! Of course, the CP/M system will also be sold to Microsoft, but I will give you $10 and 1% of Microsoft shares! By the way, I will show you the latest Microsoft Excel spreadsheet... "

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

"Yes, Mr. Gary Kildare, so, you need to know what it means for me to give you 1% of Microsoft Corporation!"

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

"no problem!"

As soon as Gary Kildare left, Shuai Tian 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 laughed and said, "I was planning to ask him for the license to use the CP/M operating system, but I didn't expect him to come first!"

Li Zetian chuckled, revealing a meaningful smile...

PS: The network card is dead, I just posted it now, please vote and reward!
　PS: The network card is dead, I just posted it now, please vote and reward!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)