game trailblazer

Chapter 17

On August 1981, 8, an ordinary Wednesday became extraordinary because of an action by IBM. At ten o'clock in the morning on this day, IBM held a meeting in the conference hall on the ground floor of the Wolf Hotel in central Manhattan. A press conference, the protagonist of the conference is the newly released IBM-PC.

Estrich saw that the demonstration machine on the stage had been installed, and hurried onto the stage to introduce the company's new products.The conference hall seemed a little empty. Estridge estimated that there were less than 100 people coming today, but he was still very nervous. The results of his 400-day struggle were about to be tested. He was very worried about the PC on the stage. Chance malfunctions unexpectedly, screwing up her debut.

Estridge adjusted his breathing to calm his mind as much as possible, then picked up the microphone and began to introduce the main functions of the IBM-PC.

"The machine on the stage is the first product of our IBM company to enter the microcomputer market - IBM-PC..."

"The PC uses a 4.77-bit processor 16 with a main frequency of 8088MHz, which is several times faster than the Apple II..."

"It can perform all the functions of those microcomputers before..."

Estridge is actually not very satisfied with this demonstration machine. According to his idea, the machine with the Kylin system pre-installed should be used, but who made President Ombre so interested in this matter, even the one at the press conference? Instructions were given on what operating system the demo machine uses.Although Estridge is unwilling, he is not the boss, so he has no choice but to use DOS aggrievedly. Fortunately, his team is still working hard. Of course, he feels that he is lucky today. The demonstration machine running DOS has been stable for more than 20 minutes without any problems.

However, Estridge didn't dare to continue to challenge the limits of the DOS system, lest a serious press conference would turn into a farce. Not only would he be ridiculed by Apple's Jobs, but he might also become a scapegoat to pack up and leave.After a brief introduction to the main functions of the PC, and a quick demonstration, the press conference soon entered the time for questions, and Estrich was finally able to relax a little bit.

Tomorrow is the day when the PCs will officially go on sale. Estrich is a little smug in his heart. The first batch of machines on the market is only [-] units, which is not a large number, but it is the fruit of the joint efforts of him and his partners after all. It was the five hundred units specially processed by Estridge that entrusted him with even greater expectations. There was a voice in his heart shouting: "The spring of IBM is coming, and the spring of Estridge is not far away. gone."

……

In a simple office in Bellevue, Washington, a bearded bespectacled man is holding a bottle of champagne and pouring wine into three glasses, a young man with glasses on his face and a man on his head The young man who started to bald was chatting happily.

"It should be time for IBM to officially release the PC, and our company will follow suit in the future." Freckles was very excited.

"I think I came at the right time, and I believe our company's future is limitless!" Xie Dingnan was also very excited.

The man with the beard and glasses handed over two glasses of wine, then took his own and said with a smile, "For our future, let's have a drink."

……

An hour later, in San Jose, about 160 miles south of Bellevue, Zhang Lexing, Yang Xinxin and others were also celebrating with champagne in their offices. However, the theme of the celebration was not for IBM's newly released machines, but for the company In the past two months or so, it has achieved good sales performance, and it has earned $[-] million in revenue just by relying on two games, which is a good start.Everyone was very happy and excited, and had a good time in the office, as if it was a festival.

Zhang Lexing came to the window with a glass of champagne, looked out through the glass, but couldn't help thinking about the launch of the PC.

"Are you worried about IBM?" Dr. Yu also came over with a glass of champagne.

"It would be a lie to say that you don't worry. The pre-installation ratio is one to four. Compared with Microsoft, we are at a disadvantage." Zhang Lexing said worriedly. Maybe it was the shadow of the Microsoft empire that made him lack enough confidence.

"It's okay. Estridge thinks that our operating system is better and fully capable of occupying a part of the market. We are actually pretty good. Except for Microsoft, the rest of them don't even have a pre-installed copy. .” Dr. Yu persuaded.

Zhang Lexing took a sip of champagne and didn't speak any more. He just turned his gaze to the far east, leaving only endless expectations in his heart...

After the IBM-PC went on the market, it aroused the interest of a lot of media, and people have invested in follow-up reports. Of course, the figure of the IBM shooter is also indispensable.Some started from a technical point of view and hired authoritative engineers to make a detailed analysis of the composition, functions and performance indicators of the PC, and even compared it with the Apple II to show how fast the PC with the 16-bit processor was. Fast, high performance.Some media interviewed Honey Well, the president of Tangdy Company, one of the pioneers in the microcomputer market, in order to dig out news from the perspective of competitors, but unfortunately the results were not great. Honey Well just said calmly: "I Don’t think it’s a big deal.”

Apparently the IBM-PC didn't arouse anyone's vigilance at this time, and even Apple saw a full-page advertisement in the "Wall Street Journal", entitled "OvationIBM (Warmly Welcome IBM)", ostensibly to welcome IBM to enter the country. In the microcomputer market, in fact, Apple didn't take IBM's big elephant into its eyes at all.

The performance of the IBM-PC in the first two months seemed to confirm Apple’s idea. IBM, which was full of expectations, only sold 3000 PCs. , An internal meeting was called urgently.

Armonk, New York, IBM Headquarters...

It turned out that those high-level executives who supported the PC were all scolded for being worthless. As a result, everyone fell silent, and everyone lowered their heads in silence. The only thing left in the conference room was the growl of President Ombre, "What the hell is going on?" What went wrong, I don't want to hear any excuses, I just want answers."

A technician stammered and said: "Ken... It's definitely not us. Intel engineers have checked their processors and chips many times and found no problems. We guess it should be software, to be more precise, it is the operating system. bug."

"Then that bastard agreed to buy this bullshit operating system?" Ombre said angrily, and then began to try to find the bastard in the files in his hand, but soon he calmed down because he found that the bastard actually Just himself.O'Berr feels that he is actually quite helpless, who made Bill's mother and himself both be members of the National Council of the Way of Great Harmony Friends Association, the network of human relations killed people, O'Berr lamented, and now there is no other way I can only find a way to solve this trouble as soon as possible, otherwise he will not be able to get rid of the responsibility.

"Is there no way to solve this problem now?" Ombre glanced at the crowd, wanting to see if any heroes could appear.

Fortunately, a technical director raised his hand, which made Ombre feel much better, and he nodded hurriedly to signal him to speak.

The director cleared his throat and said: "At present, the crux of the problem is that we do not have a good operating system. Now our main DOS still has some bugs that have not been dealt with in time. More importantly, the functions are too simple. Many The users who bought our machines have great opinions. So our top priority is to change the main operating system, and change to an operating system that can better play the performance of our PC.”

"So do we have a target now?" O'Brien pressed.

The director said unhurriedly: "We plan to adopt the product of the second supplier of the operating system. The operating system they designed is much better than that DOS. But..."

"But what!" Ombre shouted anxiously.

The director said helplessly: "We have an agreement that the share of other suppliers cannot exceed half of that of the first supplier. Of the 3000 computers on the market, 2000 use DOS, and most of the remaining 1000 use DOS. Kylin system, if we use the Kylin system for the machines we launch again, it will violate the agreement."

"Then who made this damn agreement?" Ombre roared angrily.

The director looked at O'Berr with an innocent face, and O'Berr realized that this might be a good thing he did sometimes, so he could only say helplessly: "Forget it, don't worry about this kind of agreement, even if we lose some money, we will exchange it for you." A system that allows our PCs to be sold. You are responsible for this matter, and you must settle it."

Estrich was very proud of receiving the new request from the headquarters. The arrangement he made before the new product was released did not expect to have results so soon. Of course, the competitive performance of the Kylin operating system is indispensable here. The shackles have been unlocked, and it's time to perform well.

Estridge made full preparations this time. First, he comprehensively changed the advertising plan for PCs before the end of the year, focusing all on what PCs can do. With the support of the Kylin operating system, Estelle Leach decided to open up a new market from business users, and the advertising budget was greatly increased, reaching as much as twice that of the previous PC launch day.

All of a sudden, there are eye-catching advertisements for PCs in newspapers and magazines on the streets and alleys, almost everywhere people can reach their eyes: a must-have choice for business people!New PC! Produced by IBM!With the help of IBM's previous reputation, the PC became famous and attracted the attention of many business users.

From then on, PCs began to slowly get rid of the fate of slow sales. After a short period of preparation, in the last two months of the end of the year, the sales of PCs began to grow rapidly. After Christmas in 1981, the sales of PCs reached 5000. Thousands of units, sales exceeded 5000 million US dollars.For a small company, [-] million US dollars is a lot, but for a behemoth like IBM, it is just soup and water. What makes President Ombre more comfortable is the change in the media. The once laughing stock PC has become an IT The upstart in the world.

VisualSystem, which overwhelmed Microsoft to become IBM's preferred operating system supplier, also began to emerge through this shareholder style. Of course, some people were happy and some were worried. Microsoft, which was robbed of its starting position, naturally became that worry.

(End of this chapter)