Chapter 417 Mac's Crisis
Because of Steve Jobs's obsessive aesthetic, not only the Mac body, but also the keyboard and mouse are off-white.
In addition, the Mac has no cooling fan, which is another proof of Jobs's arbitrary and stubbornness.
He thinks fans make the computer noisier and are unsightly.
But Macs don't have fans for cooling, which caused many component failures.
The media dubbed it the "beige toaster," a nickname that clearly did little to increase the product's popularity.
This shortcoming cannot be remedied even by 512K of memory. After all, if the memory is not enough, consumers can just choose a version with larger memory. However, the lack of a fan is a design flaw.
Mac sold very well in the first half of the year because of its attractive appearance and the advantages of its graphical system.
But as people gradually realized its limitations, sales slowly dwindled.
Since August, monthly Mac sales have fallen below 20,000 units.
From the initial monthly sales of 50,000 units to the current sales of less than 20,000 units, this is almost a cliff-like drop.
“Beautiful appearance, but utterly useless!”
“$2,945! The most expensive Apple toaster in the U.S.!”
"128K memory was Jobs' worst choice, and 512K memory was his best choice.
Because it is the 512K version that saved the current Mac, otherwise the Mac would have repeated the mistakes of the Lisa series. "
Jobs threw the newspaper in his hand onto the sofa with a "bang" and was so angry that he trembled!
However, although he was angry, Jobs also knew that if he didn't do something, the Mac would be finished.
When it was first designed, he expected Mac sales to be 1 million units in the first year.
But now, let alone 1 million, even 40% of the expected target has not been reached.
According to the current sales trend, in the next two months, Mac may not even sell 10,000 units a month.
Think about Apple’s investment in the Mac project: the R&D cost was 50 million, and the publicity cost was also 50 million.
With a high cost of US$100 million and continuous investment, it is unclear whether the company can make a profit if sales cannot be maintained.
In addition, the consecutive failure of Lisa and Mac would be a fatal blow to Apple's reputation.
This is even more important than profitability. Imagine if people lose confidence in Apple...
Jobs suddenly felt a sense of fear. This was the situation he least wanted to see.
At this moment, a figure slowly emerged in his mind, and Jobs picked up the phone without hesitation.
"Shirakawa, it's me."
"Steve, can't you please stop making those midnight phone calls?"
"Sorry man, but I'm in a hurry. I've been having some problems with Macs lately, have you heard?"
"Yes, I heard a little."
"So listen here buddy, I need your advice now. How can Mac turn things around?"
Jobs is now very glad that he listened to Shirakawa Kaede's advice and released an additional 512K version of the Mac.
Otherwise, it would be even more difficult to use Mac now.
Baichuan Feng was a little hesitant. Actually, he didn't want to get involved in this matter.
He still remembered Jobs' arrogant attitude last time.
"Man, Mac can't fail. Once Mac fails, not only will Apple suffer heavy losses, but SIC will also not benefit from it."
As if guessing his hesitation, Jobs began to try hard to convince Shirakawa Feng to realize the connection between them.
“Also, I’m sorry about what happened last time.
And as long as you provide a reasonable method, Apple will continue to purchase chips from SIC and the price will remain the same. "
Well, the last sentence convinced Baichuan Feng. This is the attitude of asking for help.
“Steve, put yourself in their shoes. What are the things that consumers are complaining about? What can we improve?
It turns out that 512K of memory is not the optimal solution. If you want to run Mac's graphical system smoothly, you need at least 1MB of memory.
The same goes for the heat dissipation issue. Macs need to be equipped with fans and this design should be implemented as soon as possible.
No matter how long it takes, at least consumers need to understand our attitude.”
"manner?"
"Yes, there have been announcements, such as the development of a fan-equipped version of the Mac, and larger memory configurations.
In short, we need to take action instead of just sitting back and waiting for death or letting consumers misunderstand Apple’s attitude.”
"Okay, I'll think about it, thank you for your advice."
After hanging up the phone, Jobs hesitated.
He has always been conceited, so when has he ever bowed his head to consumers?
He also believed that the advice given by Shirakawa Kaede was most likely given from the perspective of Neon Enterprise.
Japan and North America are obviously two completely different markets.
Jobs was somewhat hesitant and decided to start from the marketing perspective.
In the following month, Apple increased its public relations efforts in terms of publicity and publicity, and launched both advertising and product promotion.
But it was too late; the nickname “Beige Toaster” spread, becoming even more popular than the Mac.
In the latest month of sales, Mac sales have fallen below 10,000 units.
In despair, he only then remembered Baichuan Feng's original advice.
But it is too late to improve at this time, and the cycle cannot be caught up anyway.
Under multiple pressures, he did something cheap and against the rules.
Jobs decided to install a Mac emulation program on last year's inventory of Lisa computers and sell them as a new product, naming it the "Mac XL."
The extremely expensive Lisa sold last year had 1MB of memory and a fan.
Don’t you see that this completely solves all the shortcomings?
However, a scam is a scam, and Jobs' actions made all the employees within Apple feel disgusted.
His technical advisor Joanna Hoffman resigned after unsuccessful persuasion.
However, the paranoid Jobs not only continued with his plan, but also made a series of stupid moves in the subsequent advertising and marketing.
This also laid the groundwork for his career Waterloo next year, but that’s a story for later.
After Shirakawa Kaede gave Neon advice about Mac, he continued to devote himself to his career.
In August and September, a number of audio brands including Shirakawa Electric, Sony, Philips, and Panasonic finally officially launched the rewritable CD format, which they had been working on for more than a year.
CD-R is a one-time recordable disc. As the name suggests, after the CD factory produces a blank disc, it allows users to perform a single write operation.
The written disc contents can be read repeatedly, similar to a CD-ROM.
This format of disc has the lowest production cost because no mold is needed to press the content, and the cost of a single CD-R blank disc is less than 10 yen.
As for the other type of CD-RW that can be read and written multiple times, its performance is similar to that of a floppy disk.
Users can modify the contents on the CD as many times as they want until the CD is scrapped.
Of course, whether it is CD-R or CD-RW, they both require a matching CD burner to use.
However, CD burners are much more expensive, even more expensive than CD players.
For example, the prices of the burners launched by these companies at the same time basically remain at around 400,000 yen.
This is the price that everyone agreed upon after discussion.
A CD burner uses a laser to burn uneven holes on a blank disc to replace the "0" and "1" of digital information.
Therefore, the disk surface will be damaged every time it is used.
Compared to the steel mold pressing of CD-ROM, CD-RW can only be used for about 3 to 10 years at most.
But this service life is enough for ordinary users.
Moreover, today's CD burners are generally large in size and expensive, and are mostly used by shops or businesses.
As for ordinary people, they may have to wait another two years until the cost of burners drops before they can consider buying one.
However, even so, the emergence of recordable discs has greatly promoted the popularization of optical discs.
Because this means that 700MB of content can really be at everyone's disposal.
It doesn't matter if you can't afford a burner. Convenience stores have burning services, and it's very cheap at just a few hundred yen per time.
Now, when copying large files, there is no need to move a floppy disk back and forth dozens of times.
It can be done easily with just one CD, which is a qualitative leap compared to the past.
Because of their appearance, the popularity of CD-ROM has been greatly accelerated.
The data formats between CDs have a certain degree of commonality and can communicate with each other with the help of burners.
This is why CDs became popular, but of course their popularity today is still far less than in later generations.
If we really want CDs to become ubiquitous, we have to wait for the computer industry to make a difference.
In addition, the process of burning and transferring content between CDs may also involve copyright issues.
Of course, this has little to do with Shirakawa Electric for the time being, but Sony has been actively promoting various copyright protection measures.
After all, it has a pillar business like Sony Music, so it has to pay attention to it.
As for SAOND Records under Shirakawa Holdings, its scale is still small at that time and the impact is not significant.
With the successive launch of handheld ODS, recordable CDs, etc., Shirakawa Electric has .
If nothing goes wrong, the remaining electronic dictionaries will be launched around October.
However, when Shirakawa Electric launched a new CD format, Nintendo and Sega also launched their own handheld game consoles.
Without exception, their appearance is somewhat different from ODS.
But both the screen and the design concept are similar to ODS.
In addition to SIC, display manufacturers such as Sharp and Panasonic have also begun to launch similar products of STN screens.
The subtle parameters may be different, but the general performance is within a similar range.
Since ODS has proven the feasibility of this type of screen, there is no reason for Nintendo and Sega not to use it.
With the example of ODS, they just need to copy it.
However, perhaps due to the tight development cycle, the two handheld consoles are slightly inferior in terms of fluency.
Moreover, most of the platform games for their handheld consoles are ported versions of "Donkey Kong", "Mario" or "3-Person Mahjong".
As for platform exclusives, Nintendo has a brand new Mario game, but the others have none at all.
Tsk, this is just trying to ride on the popularity of ODS.
Nintendo is easier to deal with, after all, it has its own game development team, and not just one.
As long as the content is supplemented in the future, this so-called GW Pocket may be able to share some market share.
As for Sega's Game Gaer, if it still goes the SG-1000 porting route, its future fate will probably be uncertain.
Without adequate preparation, if you embark on an arms race-like competition, the final result will not be very good.
Of course, because the threat posed by these two families has been greatly reduced, Baichuan Feng no longer pays much attention to their information.
Time passed quickly and it was October. Shirakawa Kaede and his family were preparing to return to Akita.
Xiao Qingkong and Xiao Yasheng’s first birthday is coming soon, and it’s time to take this opportunity to hold a proper ceremony.
