Chapter 19 Section 3 Create another glories

Apple's board of directors was initially unsure of Jobs' ability, so he was given the position of interim CEO.Jobs didn't care about this either, he even promised to get a salary of only one dollar a year.After all, Apple is his own son, as long as he is allowed to return to Apple, he can say anything.I have talked with many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and found that they are as close to their own companies, no matter how small they are, as they are to their own children.After Jobs came to power, he launched some cool-looking PCs. At that time, Apple computers were much more expensive than IBM compatible computers, and became high-end products. The users were mainly artistic people-they liked Apple better than other personal computers. Graphics capabilities -- and some hipsters for students and professionals.Jobs himself was more of a talented artist than a serious engineer.Now that it is impossible for Apple to replace the position of compatible computers and Microsoft in the field of microcomputers, he simply develops towards the high end, paying attention to performance, taste and fashion.Slowly, Apple's products became fashionable things.

Jobs was very lucky. As soon as he came to power, he caught up with the Internet bubble era. At that time, the performance of all companies rose, and Apple also rose.Because Apple has positioned itself in a narrow high-end market, it has avoided competition with Microsoft, Dell and HP.In addition, Microsoft was being battered by antitrust lawsuits at the time, and it had no time to take care of Apple, the little brother.Apple recovered well in the two years after Jobs took over, and the board of directors also righted Jobs a year later and appointed him as the official CEO. The good times didn't last long, and with the bursting of the Internet bubble, Apple's development faced the possibility of being hindered again.Of course, as long as it sticks to its high-end market honestly, with the economic recovery, Apple will gradually get better and become a manufacturer of high-end PCs.If this is the case, Apple is not worthy of our close-up here; and Jobs is not Jobs.The superman of Jobs is that he is good at learning and can grasp the pulse of the times.Jobs, who has been tempered for more than ten years, is no longer the young man he used to be.He has realized that Apple's closed software and hardware cannot compete with Microsoft plus compatibles in terms of cost, nor can it provide users with rich application software.Jobs did two things. He gradually adopted Intel's general-purpose processors in Apple's microcomputers, and at the same time adopted FreeBSD as the core of the new Apple operating system.Such a relatively open system makes it easy for a large number of interested open source engineers in the whole society to develop software for Apple.However, what is crucial is how to find growth points for Apple other than PCs. In fact, he has accepted Scully's point of view back then.

Scully understood the importance of new growth points, but he failed to find them. All the previous CEOs of Apple wanted to do this but failed to do so.Scully's personal assistant idea was a good idea, but the timing was premature, because before neither mobile phones, telephones nor the Internet, few people were willing to pay hundreds of dollars for an advanced notepad that could not connect to the Internet.Therefore, even if the market for this product exists, it is only a very narrow market, and such a product cannot set off a trend.Scully's luck was not very good, because in the era when he was in charge of Apple, mobile communications and the Internet had not yet developed the latest handheld computers. Except for the development of microcomputers, there was no other trend.Although Apple could have become the leader in the field of microcomputers, its closed approach made it almost impossible to beat Microsoft.Jobs was lucky. When he took over Apple again, he had already entered the era of the Internet bubble.Yahoo seems to represent a trend, and many companies are following Yahoo, but it turns out that they are all facing the dot-com bubble and will therefore face a serious crisis.In the era of the dot-com bubble, Jobs was able to build a strategic position, and instead of dipping into the muddy waters of the Internet, he saw the real golden sands under the Internet tide.

In the last decade of the last century, a technological revolution centered on the Internet and multimedia technology began.The Internet is a channel for information dissemination, and multimedia technology provides a digital source of information.The original audio and video tapes were quickly replaced by CDs and DVDs. With the advent of sound and image compression technology, these digitized music and videos can be easily distributed on the Internet.By the end of the nineties, the Internet was flooded with pirated copies of music and movies.In the past, music turntables belonged to a monopoly profiteering industry. A friend in this industry told me that the average music CD is about ten dollars, and the total production cost after deducting royalties is only ten cents to tens of cents, depending on the batch size. depends.Now there are free online services, and music downloads soon accounted for a quarter of the entire Internet traffic. The majority of Internet users suddenly learned to listen to downloaded music and watch downloaded videos.At the same time, some small music players have appeared on the market, but they are not very satisfactory.Although the record labels collectively sued Napster for helping to provide pirated music, the pirated music and videos quickly disappeared from the Internet.However, the habit of users listening to music and songs with a small player has been formed.

Jobs saw the two most important facts. First, although there are already many players, they are not doing well, especially when the number of music is large, it is difficult to find and manage it.You know, it may take a few minutes to find what you want to listen to sequentially from a thousand songs.In addition, it is even more troublesome to pour the songs of dozens of CDs that you bought on the player; second, the majority of users are used to listening to songs from the player with headphones instead of carrying a portable CD player and several CD players. Ten discs.Therefore, it does not need to spend money and time to cultivate a market.Based on these two considerations, Jobs decided to develop a music and video player called the iPod.

Apple has solved the two technical problems mentioned above very well.They designed a music search method on the player by swiping in circles by hand, so that users can find the songs they want to listen to very quickly.At the same time, they designed a software called iTune to be installed on the personal computer, which can automatically transfer the songs and music on the computer and the CD to the iPod.In addition, the iPod's battery can play for up to ten hours after a single charge, which is much longer than previous players.At the same time, the appearance design of the Apple iPod is very beautiful, so since it was launched in 2001, it has been very popular among young people who love to listen to music.In just one year, iPod sales topped $100 million.A little over a year later, iPod sales approached $1 billion, accounting for 15 percent of the company's turnover.Last year, iPod sales totaled nearly $8 billion, accounting for 40 percent of Apple's overall revenue.Apple's stock has risen 20 times since its lowest point in 2003.Today, iPod is not just a simple player, but a big industry.Different manufacturers, from speaker manufacturers to automobile companies, are actively designing and manufacturing various supporting products for iPod, such as speakers, earphones, car stereos, and even leather cases.It's a bit like there are countless software companies actively developing applications on Microsoft's operating system.The wonderful boy Jobs finally returned to glory.