Rebirth of the Tech Madman

Although there were thousands of attendees, most of them looked up and stared at the stage earnestly. ∷4∷5∷zhong∷text◎, Tang Huan was condescending, searching step by step, and he found the target.

Don Estelich is a laughter, but at this time, he is very serious.

For a long time, ibm has been grasping hardware and software, providing users with a package of solutions. The pinnacle of it is naturally the mainframe system system/360. No matter what model, the software interface can achieve consistency. Therefore, it is the most important to the software.

Don Estelich has a faint feeling that now Tang Huan is applying the ibm model. After establishing his own hardware platform, he continues to develop new areas of software applications to drive hardware sales.

Moreover, this speed is very alarming. In sharp contrast, ibm’s new products have to go through various procedures from project establishment to market launch. It takes two to three years for the lesser ones. If it takes three to five years, there is nothing strange. .

However, Tang Huan has developed electronic spreadsheet software and has risen rapidly. It has been just two full years now. It is just a mere ibm product cycle, but it has been active in the fields of electronic spreadsheets, word processing, databases, and the so-called desktop publishing. Continuously.

The reason why the huge ibm has been able to stand tall in the industry for decades is largely due to the conservative business strategy. Naturally, it cannot be compared with Tang Huan, who is running barefoot, but this market reaction speed still makes People are worrying.

It is normal for the product life cycle of the mainframe era to be maintained at about ten years, but the replacement of microcomputers is chasing after me. From the first personal computer-Altair came out in 1975. It's only six years now. But the industry has already begun to enter the stage of the third generation of personal computers claimed by Tang Huan. Obviously, if you move slowly, you can't get food.

How to break this situation of falling behind one step at a time? Don Estelitch can't help but frown.

Calling ibm's internal resources, of course, it is possible to catch up, but even if you sit as the president of ibm, you may not be able to truly cooperate with each department. A personal computer with a few thousand dollars cannot mobilize their enthusiasm.

It seems. Then you can only find thugs from outside.

At the thought of this, Don Estelitch started to have a headache.

In order to make the operating system come out smoothly, ibm has spent much effort to teach Microsoft. These mobs have no complete software engineering and quality control concepts at all. They are hard to teach and painful to learn. In the end, they still do wedding dresses for others. People are unwilling.

Don Estelitch shook his head again and again, which aroused the surprise in the eyes of others.

Such an epoch-making product. Could it be that you can see what is wrong so quickly?

Don Estelitch's eyes were of course not sharp enough to guard against the sky, he was a little bit murmured. The various functions mentioned on the stage, a personal computer with small arms and legs, can really run with them?

If this is the case, not only ibm's mainframe business has been challenged, but the minicomputer business will also feel pressure.

Jobs and the key engineers of the project team unceremoniously occupied the best position in the audience, because they have always maintained the graphical user interface elements such as menus, fonts, and text boxes introduced in Zheru's large-scale office software. With a high degree of attention, it naturally refuses any opportunity to understand the technical details.

Jobs, who has become a billionaire, is now absolutely young and rich. Therefore, he is pursuing the ultimate taste in all aspects. The specific expression is in his shopping hobbies, from small razors, medium to stereos, and large sports cars. They have to carefully compare the craft design, and start to be enthusiastic about Japanese art, and even participate in related international exchange conferences.

When Tang Huan introduced opentype, Jobs was refreshed and scribbled in his notebook.

As for, he hasn't realized its true meaning, but just casually said to Bill Atkinson beside him, "Guess how fast and powerful this laser printer that Tang boasts is, how heavy is it? "

"At least 60 pounds, right." Bill Atkinson replied nonchalantly. He also didn't catch a cold, but he was attracted by pagemaker's graphical operation. Philosopher seemed to have made new progress in this technical field. .

"It looks so stupid, I estimate it weighs 70 pounds." Jobs, who has a lot of experience in process design, ruthlessly mocked the laser printer of Philosopher with his own aesthetic standards.

I have to say that although Jobs has not completely guessed it, he is not far away. The real weight is 75 pounds, which is about 34 kilograms. He occupies a table alone on the stage, which is an obvious manifestation of the limitations of the current technical level.

Bill Atkinson watched John Warnock operating the pagemaker, importing documents, inputting images through the scanner, using text boxes to adjust the position, size, font and other attributes, and "what you see is what you get" outputting pictures and texts through a laser printer After his copy, like most people, he couldn't help but be dumbfounded.

Obviously, this is the simplest desktop publishing process, and people in various fields see different meanings from this.

Among them, the media related people were the first to wake up and immediately applauded. They have a hunch that the way they work in the industry may be completely changed by this desktop publishing system.

Bill Atkinson turned his head and said to Jobs: "Zheru obviously has the ability to develop a graphical user interface operating system, they should have done something."

"It shouldn't be. Tang insisted that the current level of personal computer hardware is not strong enough to support such a system." Jobs shrugged, "Don't forget, although the company exchanged Zheru's shares, I am Zheru. Confucian individual shareholders can see some internal documents."

Seeing Jobs swearing, Bill Atkinson basically dispelled his doubts. I belonged to the kind of "genius" that Jobs recognized. Naturally, a reliable answer will be obtained.

But at the same time. Bill Atkinson also began to think that recently it has been circulating within Apple that the three founders and Tang You have exchanged interests. In the process of cooperation between Apple and philosophers, they have been compromising with each other. This statement seems to be true. .

After John Warnock finished his mission and left the field, Tang Huan introduced another co-founder from the original time and space, Charles Geschke, to the stage. And demonstrate the second new software.

In the original time and space, it was released in 1987. Like the pagemaker of aldus, it was originally run on Apple's platform.

But now, both have come out ahead of schedule, and in the high-end second-generation Fangyuan computer that also uses a microprocessor, Sahuan is running.

It is a vector-based graphics production program that can be used to develop fonts and edit.

Its biggest feature is the use of Bezier curves, with the help of this tool, users can draw all kinds of lines as they like. And intuitive and reliable.

Of course, the Bezier curve belongs to the category of professional mathematics. Like all mathematics topics, it is boring and obscure.

Therefore, Charles Geschke just briefly mentioned this concept, and then moved to the function that ordinary users are more concerned about.

Bill Atkinson, who was in the audience, had his eyes straight at the time. While developing the graphical user interface operating system, he was also compiling a graphical package called the graphic user interface.

Compared with it now, it is simply the word that Jobs always talks about-trash.

Jobs noticed the anomaly of his generals, so he pushed him a bit, "What's the point of being in a daze? Although Tang's software looks amazing now, he can only make his products have this level, and we develop Yes, all programs running on this platform can achieve this effect."

Bill Atkinson was fooled by Steve Jobs casually, and finally slowed down, and then whispered: "Perhaps, we can get the authorization of this type of technology from the philosopher to speed up the development of the project."

Seeing Steve Jobs's disapproval expression, Bill Atkinson quickly added, "In this way, it may be launched before the Lisa project."

At the beginning, Jobs left the project midway, seeing the situation unfavorably, and took the initiative to retreat, but the Lisa project was swept out.

This is the young and energetic, a thorn in his heart. Now he was stimulated by Bill Atkinson, he immediately changed his original intention and nodded in agreement with the other party's doctrine.

Seeing this scene, Bill Atkinson finally breathed a sigh of relief. It was not that he was stubborn, but it was because the development stage from 0 to 1 was too painful. Now that he has encountered a technology that can be used for reference, he naturally wants it without hesitation. Pounced forward and hugged his thigh.

The support is relatively abstract. Everyone in the audience knows that it is very powerful, but there is no specific feeling, but the vector graphics function is more vivid, especially after seeing how the font with the characteristic of living alone was generated by Charles Geschke step by step , Everyone whispered to this magical wonder.

When Tang Huan came to the stage again, he was holding Celine Dion’s first album cover in his hand, and sighed repeatedly, "The little singing girl is leaving so soon, and I plan to go with her. Take a photo."

After pretending to think about it, Tang Huan snapped his fingers, "Yes, I can use the second-generation Fangyuan computer to make up for my regret."

Tang Huan found a photo of himself, showed it to the public, and input it into the second-generation Fangyuan computer through the scanner along with the album cover.

"Ladies and gentlemen, next I will use the third new software-different from the one that provides vector drawing functions, it is used to process bitmaps."

Although the performance of the current scanner can't be complimented, but fortunately, Tang Huan and Celine Dion's face value passed the test, after a ps pass. It's not so terrible.

Tang Huan printed out the processed image. And distributed to everyone in the audience to witness the power of this software.

In the original time and space. The advent time of is in 1990, later than pagemaker and both, but the initial version also only supports Apple's platform.

It has been upgraded from the initial update. As for the specific hardware specification changes, the operating frequency of the microprocessor has been increased from 7.8mhz to 8mhz, the memory capacity has been increased from 128kb to the standard 1mb, and the support for expansion is 4mb.

In 1987, Thomas Knoll, a PhD student at the University of Michigan. In my spare time, I wrote a program called "" on Apple, whose function is to display grayscale images on a black and white bitmap display.

Thomas Knoll's brother, John Knoll, who works for George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic Special Effects Company, saw "" and suggested that his brother turn it into a program for processing digital images.

So in 1988, the two brothers spent six months working together to complete this project.

Initially, Thomas Knoll wanted to change the name of the software to "", but never thought that the name was already used.

Later in the same year, Thomas Knoll was based on the suggestion of an audience member when he was participating in the exhibition. ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Rename the software to "".

At this point, it has the functions of adjusting color gradation, color balance, saturation, etc.

In terms of business operations. The Knoll brothers started a short-term cooperation with a scanner company to process the images scanned by the scanner.

During this period, John Knoll went to Silicon Valley to show it to Apple’s engineers and art director-Russell Brown, and they all achieved success.

Finally, in September 1988, it was decided to abandon the similar software of letraset, another company under consideration, and buy it.

Since then, it has also caught up with the upsurge of desktop publishing, and has gradually emerged as the industry standard.

The second-generation Fangyuan computer of the high-end model is also sufficient to support smooth operation, so at this annual developer conference in San Francisco, there was a spectacular phenomenon of three consecutive software releases.

Appreciating the admiration expressions of the attendees, Tang Huan smiled with satisfaction and raised his hand to swing back, "Ladies and gentlemen, just as everyone has seen, the second-generation Fangyuan computer with a graphical operation interface, what you see is what you see The obtained software—pagemaker,,, output device—supported laser printer, font technology—opentype, and all links of desktop publishing are already available, and a new industrial revolution is about to begin."

After thunderous applause, Tang Huan solemnly announced, "and the opentype standard will be disclosed to the public immediately, so as to lay a good foundation for the development of the entire desktop publishing industry."

This kind of industry leader's tone of ignoring others did not arouse dissatisfaction, but ushered in more enthusiastic applause.

...

After leaving the venue, Tang Huan met with acquaintances in the industry and outside of the industry one by one in the temporary reception room at the back.

Robert Bartley joked: "Our "Wall Street Journal" has just been captured by your wolf-like sales staff and began to use the second-generation Fangyuan computer for office work. According to today's situation, the boss's money bag has to be again. opened."

"Not so exaggerated~www.readwn.com~ It takes time to distribute products." Tang Huan was modest.

"By the way, how much does that laser printer cost?" Robert Bartley asked curiously.

"$8,999." Seeing Robert Bartley's mouth widened in surprise, Tang Huan shook his head helplessly. "Man, you can't take everything that is connected to a personal computer and take it for granted that it is cheap. Xerox's products cost $17,000. Yes. This laser printer is equivalent to a computer. There are a lot of cpu and memory. It specializes in processing command files, and then controls the physical parts of the printer to print according to the above instructions. Now the price is as cheap as possible. "

"I said why is it so expensive." Robert Bartley nodded clearly.

Tang Huan held back a smile, flicked away from the economic think tank of Reagan, and then returned and waited aside John Warnock and Charles Gerschke, saying: “It’s time to set up an independent operation for the desktop publishing system. Company."

Upon hearing this, the two of them couldn't help but lifted their spirits. They only listened to Tang Huan continuing to say, "The company's name is called, and it comes from a river named Los Altos in Santa Clara County, Silicon Valley. You two Respectively serve as president and." (To be continued.)