Chapter 2173 Anxious Apple

Silicon Valley, Apple headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop Street, Cupertino.

Looking at the furious Jobs and the quiet colleagues, Joshua wanted to slap himself twice, saying you are so stupid and naive.

He clearly remembered that he was very happy and honored when he was selected as a member of the rehearsal team.

But look at it now, what is there to be happy about?

Most of the other members of the rehearsal team felt the same as Joshua at this time. After experiencing such a difficult few years before, how could they still be so naive?

How stupid is this!

Fortunately, Jobs' roar finally stopped.

Even if it stopped temporarily, it was a great comfort to those present.

However, when everyone looked at Jobs' hand and reached out to the fourth of the prototypes on the stage, everyone's heart was hanging again, and more than one person began to pray, Almighty God, merciful Virgin Mary, let this mobile phone successfully demonstrate the functions that Steve wanted to demonstrate!

The same models above, which are different from all the mobile phones on the market at this time, are the result of Joshua and more than 2,000 excellent colleagues working hard for nearly three years.

In fact, if we count the time when Jobs first had the idea of ​​making mobile phones, this time is as long as 5 years.

In the IT industry, 5 years is actually no different from 5 centuries.

For those Apple employees who are lucky enough to participate in this project, those years are indeed no different from centuries.

In these two days, Joshua has heard many colleagues talk about a topic more than once: resignation.

At the beginning of next month, that is, at the beginning of 2007, to be precise, on January 9, 2007, after the official release of this epoch-making product they developed, many colleagues who originally fought side by side with Joshua will choose to leave Apple.

There is only one reason. In the past three years, the pressure has been so great that many of them are close to the brink of collapse.

Joshua believes that their work in the past three years must be very uncomfortable even for Chinese workers who are known for their hard work.

In the past three years, they have worked more than 80 hours a week, which is no longer news.

But what makes them most uncomfortable is that even if you work more than 80 hours a week and are exhausted like a dead dog, you can go to the bar to have a drink to refresh yourself or relax, you can't talk to anyone about the work you are doing.

Whether that person is your friend, your partner, or the girl you are about to flirt with.

Otherwise, you will be fired immediately.

Before joining the project, everyone will sign a confidentiality agreement with the company, and then they will be told what project you will participate in.

At this time, you have to sign another document to confirm that you have signed a confidentiality agreement and cannot tell others.

In front of the building that Feng Yiping had looked for but didn't find, they put a label, "Fight Club".

This is a famous movie in 1999. The most well-known line in that movie is, "The first rule of Fight Club is never to talk about Fight Club."

Even these employees who have signed two confidentiality agreements have to swipe their cards at least twice a day when entering this "Fight Club" - the most strict one requires swiping the card six times.

Jobs seemed to like setting such boundaries.

Of course, Joshua and his friends at that time still felt a little proud.

Because the place they entered was not open to most of the company's employees.

And after they were selected to sign the agreement, they were told that the founder and soul of the company, Jobs, told them, "You are now the stars of the company."

But such pride can only maintain a good mood for a short period of time.

After entering, they had to stay in the laboratory as if they were in solitary confinement. All communication tools were handed over, and even communication between colleagues was restricted.

Even if they were in the same project, they could not discuss with each other.

For example, engineers responsible for electronic design could not talk to those who developed software.

Joshua speculated that there must be no more than 10 people in Apple, including Jobs himself, who understood the entire mobile phone architecture.

Even now, when the outside world, especially the technology industry, can basically confirm the fact that Apple is developing smartphones, and know that they will definitely release a mobile phone product at their next press conference, the company still implements a strict confidentiality system.

For example, right now, the Moscone Center, which they have contracted and is under intense construction, Jobs initially required all workers involved in the construction, from the exhibition hall builders to the lighting and sound engineers..., not to leave the building until the eve of the press conference.

Later, he was persuaded by many people, including the company's legal counsel, and finally gave up this idea.

If it was just confidentiality, it would be fine, and if it was just overtime, it would be fine.

However, they often work more than 80 hours a week in a highly confidential studio, and most of the time, they have been facing unprecedented challenges. Many colleagues described the challenges they encountered as "like the first moon landing."

An iPod, a mobile phone, and a network device. Combining these three is easy to say. At first, everyone thought that this was just developing a small Macintosh, but after doing it, they discovered that it was really It's not that difficult.

For example, touch screen.

This is not an ordinary touch screen, because Jobs hopes that even when he is in the bathroom, he can easily browse news and send and receive emails through his mobile phone, so the touch screen must also support multi-touch.

Although some employees of the company had developed embedded multi-touch technology in early 2003, the problem was how to reduce the size of the Mac's large screen and mass-produce it.

First, you have to find an LCD manufacturer who knows how to embed this technology into the glass; second, you have to match their production line times; and then you have to come up with compensation and calibration algorithms to prevent the pixel electronics that touch the screen from generating all kinds of noise. ….

There are many other questions.

For example, Apple is a company that focuses on design, so many times, including Steve Jobs, they focus on pursuing design, that is, more on art, while ignoring other issues, including some very critical technical issues.

At the beginning of this year, the second prototype they manufactured continued some of the successful experience of Mac computers and was entirely made of brushed aluminum.

Jobs was happy with it.

But Joshua and the others were a little dumbfounded.

Then, a scientist and an antenna expert had to say to the designers who held the power, "There will be many problems in realizing many functions using such materials, because radio waves cannot penetrate metal."

The excellent designers on the team are also artists. The last time they were exposed to science courses was probably in junior high school, so they asked seriously, "Why can't we open a small opening to let radio waves pass through?"

There is also the size of the mobile phone. Some people think it should be as big as an iPod, and some people think it should be larger than the final size now...

Then, when about 100 prototypes were finally produced, Jobs suddenly became angry again, "The screens of our products are not allowed to be scratched so easily. I want to replace them with anti-scratch glass screens. I have to solve this problem within six weeks. "

Fortunately, this problem was quickly solved. Mr. Feng, a good friend of Jobs's in China, and his company relied on a patented technology purchased from Corning to produce glass that perfectly met Jobs' requirements.

These are hardware related.

On the software side, there are also many obstacles.

Jobs wanted this phone to run a modified version of OS\X. How to put such a huge system into a mobile phone chip?

Due to the limitations of mobile phone hardware, the mobile phone system must be modified to one-tenth the size of OS\X, which means that millions of codes need to be removed...

No part of the job is easy.

Including now, so many problems encountered at the beginning have been solved at a cost-saving pace, but in this press conference, we have to solve many new problems.

Other companies hold press conferences and put the equipment on a big screen for the audience to see, and they always use a camera to shoot the equipment, but Jobs did not agree with this plan.

Because according to that plan, when he demonstrates, when he clicks on the application on the phone, his finger will also be displayed on the big screen, blocking the phone.

So he requested that during the demonstration, only the screen of him operating the phone could be seen simultaneously on the big screen, but his fingers could not be seen.

To this end, the team of engineers had to work overtime to find a solution. Finally, they installed some circuit boards and video cables on the back of the phone and then connected it to the projector, which met Jobs' requirements.

But do you think this is a happy ending and that everyone will reach the pinnacle of success immediately? of course not.

Because all prototypes currently produced have only 128M of memory, and all currently running applications are very bloated. The result of these two superpositions is that those precious prototypes will crash at every turn.

In addition, there are no radio experts in Apple's core team, so there are no radio experts in the smartphone team, so the signal of the prototype is not very good - so it is true that the signal of Apple's mobile phone is not good.

There are also some phenomena that they cannot find a reasonable explanation for. For example, sending an email first and then browsing the web is fine. But conversely, if you browse the web first and then send an email, it will start to work immediately.

As a last resort, Joshua and the others, after repeated trials and errors, finally developed a plan they called the "Golden Passage", which is the sequence of a series of tasks.

Only by operating in a specific way and sequence can this mobile phone, which has cost them countless people's efforts, look normal.

But even so, these prototypes that look tall and beautiful now have various problems that everyone cannot grasp, in addition to the different sizes of seams on both sides of the screen.

For example, among the mobile phones used in today's rehearsal, the first one crashed and restarted not long after it started due to poor reception of the operator's wireless signal.

On the second station, halfway through a song, it collapsed.

On the third channel, while enlarging a photo, the phone went on strike again. No matter how you clicked, it didn't move. Finally, the screen went black.

Everyone could see that Jobs really wanted to throw it out.

Now, this is the fourth channel. Joshua and the others watched Jobs' operation nervously.

It was not bad. It could play music smoothly. The signal was also good, so it could receive calls. It was also smooth to plug in another call. It was also smooth to select a photo from the photo library and send it via email. Joshua and the others were immediately excited. This performance was unexpectedly good.

The next moment, Jobs decided to return to the music playback. The classic Beatles song Yesterday sounded, and then it got stuck. Shit!

Joshua and the others immediately lowered their heads.

Sure enough, Jobs slammed the table heavily, glared at the people in front of him, and shouted again, "You've ruined my company,"

"If we fail, you'll be held fully responsible,"

Joshua looked at his protruding belly, which had gained at least 50 pounds due to excessive stress, and was filled with regret. Why did I try so hard to become a member of the rehearsal group?

Haven't I had enough in the past two years?