Chapter 46 Section 5 Glass that can be touched

In 2004, on a sunny afternoon in the office, Mr. Joe suddenly jumped up from his chair and said to an engineer, "I want a piece of glass, a piece of glass that can watch movies and play the piano." .” The poor engineer left silently, thinking, how can glass watch movies?How can glass play the piano?Where should I find this unheard-of glass for Chief Joe? All the smart people at Apple were called together.No one knew how to create such a magical piece of glass.The engineers sweated profusely and brought in all kinds of glass-burning stoves, refractory stones, tongs... Stove after furnace of glass was fired, and none of them could watch movies, and none of them could play the piano.

At this time, an old sweeping lady in ragged clothes walked slowly behind these smartest people and said in a hoarse voice: "The main glass of Qiao Gang is actually a high-resolution glass that supports multi-touch. rate display." Although the voice of the old lady sweeping the floor was low, she immediately silenced everyone.The engineers suddenly realized that it turned out that the leader Qiao wanted a revolutionary display screen! Six months later, the engineers brought the revolutionary glass to Mr. Joe.Because they couldn't figure out the intention of the gang leader, they specially prepared two pieces of glass, one large and one small.

Leader Qiao saw the two pieces of glass, without saying a word, he picked up the smaller one first, disassembled his mobile phone in front of everyone, threw away the screen and keyboard, and taped the remaining mobile phone parts and glass. Tied together, and then dialed the phone of Master Ivey and said to him: "I am calling you with a revolutionary mobile phone. This mobile phone will subvert people's definition of mobile phones. I call it the iPhone. .” Next, Joe picked up the big piece of glass, glued a CPU, a memory, and a battery to the back of the glass, then called Bill Gates, and said to him: "You know what? There is a piece of glass in your hand. In a few years, this piece of glass will become the most popular computer device that everyone owns. Yes, there is only glass, no keyboard, no case, and no Windows operating system. This piece of glass will subvert people's perception of The definition of a computer, I call it an iPad."

Well, well, I admit that the joke above is made up.The process of Jobs and Apple inventing the iPhone and iPad was actually quite long, with many iterations.Of all the great design elements of the iPhone and iPad, though, the multi-touch glass is arguably the brightest. When Apple released the iPad tablet computer in 2010, a reporter asked Jobs why Apple made the iPhone first and then the iPad.Jobs said: "Tell you, we actually started with a tablet. I wanted a piece of glass that could be a display device, but also support multi-touch. I took the idea to our hardware engineers. Six months later , they brought back a piece of magical glass. So, I gave a piece of glass to our excellent UI designer. Based on this piece of glass, the designer created a new user experience such as inertial smooth scrolling. I thought at the time: 'My God, we could throw away the idea of ​​a tablet and make a phone out of this glass. So, we started building a phone.'”

In Qiao's mouth, the whole process was an understatement.But in fact, Jobs began to pay attention to mobile phones and tablet computers a long time ago, and quietly waited for the opportunity.It wasn't until engineers created the magical multi-touch glass that Jobs threw out the world-shaking iPhone and iPad one after another. In the 1980s, when Apple was still selling the Apple II, it experimented with a telephone (not a mobile phone) with a touchpad and integrated with simple office functions. This can be said to be the earliest Apple phone. In 1983, Apple even hired industrial design firm FrogDesign to design a prototype tablet computer called the Bashful.

Later, Sculley devoted a lot of effort to the Newton PDA project, which can be said to be the forerunner of the iPhone and iPad.However, when Sculley launched the PDA, computers and mobile communication terminals were not yet well integrated, and the Newton PDA, which was born out of time, was even inferior to the PalmPDA and BlackBerry that appeared later. After returning to Apple, although Jobs terminated the research and development of the Newton PDA, the idea of ​​a creative pocket computer or smartphone always occupied a place in his brain. In 2001, Microsoft began to hype the concept of Tablet PC (Tablet PC).Almost all major PC manufacturers are involved. In 2003, in an interview, Jobs predicted: "Microsoft's tablet computer will end in failure." There are many children on the stage, but none of them has really gained a firm foothold in the market.

History is so amazing.More than ten years ago, when Apple first used the Macintosh to hype the graphical user interface, no one thought that it was Microsoft, not Apple, that finally gained a monopoly in the field of graphical user interface.This time, in the tablet race, the fortunes are completely reversed.Microsoft watched helplessly as the concept of the flat-panel it hyped was first gradually forgotten by people, but 10 years later it suddenly took advantage of Apple's iPad to shine. In 2001, Jobs certainly saw the future represented by tablet computers, but he just stood still, because Jobs believed that sometimes, timing is far more important than vision.

In 2002, shortly after the release of the iPod, Jobs had a premonition that the iPod would change the pattern of the world's music industry in a short period of time.Perhaps, relying on an iPod that can make calls, Apple can also use a similar method to change the pattern of the mobile communication industry.Inspired by this idea, Jobs did it himself, drew a few sketches of the iPod version of the mobile phone on paper, and gave the project a mysterious code name "Purple 1".However, even Jobs himself felt that this "Purple No. 1" was not too revolutionary compared with other mobile phones, and those few sketches only stayed on paper.

In 2005, Apple tried to cooperate with Motorola to embed iTunes music function in Motorola mobile phones.This cooperation has caused rumors in the market, people speculate that Apple, which has achieved great success in the music field, will soon enter the mobile phone market. In fact, the cooperation with Motorola is just a test of Apple's mobile field.Motorola's iTunes phone wasn't a success.But through similar partnerships, Apple has begun stealthily reaching out to phone makers and mobile carriers.At the same time, Jobs also clarified his definition of future mobile phones and tablet computers—using multi-touch glass to bring a super-class user experience, and at the same time, integrating rich Internet functions to make mobile phones and tablet computers become truly intelligent communication devices. terminal.

As Jobs said, Apple first focused its research and development on mobile phones.One of the important reasons why the tablet computer plan was put behind was that the battery technology at that time had not yet met the power consumption requirements of the tablet computer. In February 2005, Apple secretly started a project code-named "Purple 2" (Purple 2), independently developing Apple's own mobile phone. In September 2005, the project had concentrated more than 200 engineers and operated in a highly confidential manner.Negotiations between Apple and mobile operators also started at the same time.

In January 2007, at the Macworld conference, after Jobs introduced several new models of Apple computers and iPods, he paused for a while, and then said in his characteristic, magnetic voice: "I've been looking forward to this day for two and a half years. Every once in a while, there will be a revolutionary product that changes the world. In 1984, Apple's Macintosh changed the entire computer industry. In 2001, Apple's iPod changed The entire music industry. Today, we're releasing three revolutionary products in the same category." Heavyweight products that can change the world like Macintosh and iPod!Still 3 pieces!The audience was shocked.Is Gang Leader Qiao fooling everyone?There was no sound at the scene. "The first product," Jobs continued, "was a wide-screen iPod with touch controls; the second product was a revolutionary cell phone; the third product was an unprecedented Internet communication tool." .Those three products are not separate devices, they are one device. We call it the iPhone. Today, Apple is reinventing the mobile phone." Reinventing the mobile phone—yes, that's Jobs' vision for the iPhone.If people who saw the iPhone for the first time in 2007 still can’t believe Jobs’ assertion, today, just go to the Apple stores in Beijing and Shanghai to see the long queues of people snapping up iPhones, and see the scalpers gathering in front of the stores. The party knows how accurate Jobs' thesis was. The release of the iPhone 4 in 2010 pushed iPhone sales to a climax.From its launch in China in September to before the Spring Festival in 2011, iPhone 4 was hard to find no matter whether it was on the Apple China website or in stores in Beijing and Shanghai.A large number of scalpers crowded at the door of the specialty store, organizing hundreds of people to line up, snapping up all available mobile phones at the first time every day, and then reselling them at high prices. Apple has never encountered such a serious scalper problem before, and the executives in charge of the retail store business at the headquarters made a special trip to Beijing to deal with it.The Sanlitun store invited a large number of security guards to maintain order, but there were still many fights at the scene due to panic buying.The horror of the scalpers and the enthusiasm of fans for the iPhone can be seen. While the iPhone became popular, Apple also solved technical problems such as high-performance batteries required by tablet computers. In January 2010, the iPad, which uses the same multi-touch glass screen and the same iOS operating system as the iPhone, was officially released. When it went on the market in April, it once again set off a buying craze around the world. In April 2010, during a music performance in San Francisco, the Chinese pianist Lang Lang unexpectedly took out the iPad, which had just been launched, and played it on the touch screen with the help of a software called "Magic Piano". One of the fastest piano pieces - Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee".The entire concert site was full of laughter and exclamations.At this moment, the multi-touch glass envisioned by Gang Leader Qiao has really become a glass that can play the piano. If the iPhone is reinventing the mobile phone, the iPad is almost reinventing the computer.Not to mention anything else, just look at how children use the iPad to surf the Internet and play games. It is not difficult for us to know how this piece of glass, which is larger than the iPhone, is a subversive change in the way people operate computers. . At the end of April 2011, the domestic shortage of black iPhone 4 finally eased, and the launch of iPad2 and white iPhone 4 made people crazy again. In early May, there was another bloody incident outside the Sanlitun Apple store. Whether it is an iPhone or an iPad, if people from all over the world line up to pursue them, and even provoke a flood of scalpers, it is already difficult for us to call them mobile phones or computers. They have undoubtedly become a symbol of consumption and become A must-have fashion item for modern people. From the release of the iPhone in 2007 to the release of the iPad 2 in 2011, in just five years, the iPhone and iPad quickly occupied the core position of Apple’s revenue. More than half of Apple’s revenue comes from products that did not exist five years ago. In the second fiscal quarter of 2011, Apple set an astonishing record of selling more than 18 million iPhones, and the sales of iPads in each fiscal quarter remained stable at around 5 million.As of June 2011, in the 14 months after the release of the iPad, a total of 25 million units were sold, and the cumulative sales of the three major devices using the iOS operating system, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, reached an impressive A shocking 200 million units!Relying on the strength of the iPhone and iPad, Apple's market value in 2011 also exceeded 300 billion US dollars, firmly occupying the throne of the world's largest technology company.