My Lord, you need to stand up!

Chapter 360 Nothing is more joyful than being a garbage collector

Wei Dong looked at it with a slight sneer.

These days, the things that Xiao Rizi makes are truly exquisite. They are very good at breaking down and studying every detail, using their proud process to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

Citibank's domestically manufactured products are visibly rough.

The key is that Steve is quite a busybody and a fussman.

For example, you could make Wei Dong think that you could simply turn the current solution into a black shell, which would also be considered an updated version.

Steve thought black was unattractive, too authoritarian and dark, and didn't fit the noble and free spirit of his brand.

They insisted on using his preferred materials, which involved various tests and was very inefficient.

Wei Dong was invited to visit, which was quite surprising: "This thing is so simple, it's just an injection mold, my factory can make it in two days, and it only costs... nineteen dollars."

This is already considered casual boasting.

The Macintosh computer had a nine-inch screen and a floppy drive underneath. Its size was not large, similar to later air fryers and vacuum cleaners.

The size is not as exaggerated as the large tape recorder made by Rongdu Postal and Telecommunications Equipment Factory. That thing, according to Rang Weidong's idea, had two large speakers the size of footballs, and the whole machine was the size of a standard pillow. The outer shell was made of bakelite, and it only cost nineteen yuan to deliver!
The bakelite factory manager quietly reported that there was still a profit of four yuan.

He was just casually mocking the US dollar for RMB; something worth a few dollars couldn't possibly be that mysterious.

The Qin siblings, however, took the initiative to help him increase the stakes.

Qin Yuye added a point first, which cost twenty-nine US dollars from Mandarin to Cantonese, seemingly testing her brother's intentions.

Qin Zhiming is familiar with the cost of US dollars. Twenty-nine US dollars? Are you looking down on the labor costs in the United States of America?

“Pete said his factory could make this part for thirty-nine dollars.”

The entire plastic casing of this $2500 computer is designed in a very clever way; it is essentially just a front panel and a plastic back cover.

However, because of Steve's nitpicking, the cost of this case, which was produced locally in California, was actually over ninety dollars!

In reality, sixty US dollars could buy a Famicom in Japan.

Wei Dong is preparing to develop a keyboard-based learning machine, with an estimated price of only ninety-nine US dollars.

Standing in the factory's R&D workshop and seeing a completely disassembled Macintosh computer, Wei Dong instinctively thought, "Dude, how do you control costs?"

Aside from the casing, an Apple computer contains only a power board, a motherboard, a floppy drive, and a nine-inch CRT.

There are only these few components!

If you remove the picture tube and the floppy drive, it's actually exactly the same as the internal structure of the Famicom!
Even though components like memory, display, and main controller are much more complex, the main chip is similar.

The Japanese might get the 6502 chip for around ten dollars, while the other components, including the casing, controller, and packaging, would only cost thirty or forty dollars, and they would have to include their profit in that sixty dollars.

You sell it for $2500. Last year, you sold 200,000 units. In the first quarter of 1985, Apple lost more than $10 million!
How high are your costs? How thin are your gross profits? How outrageous are your R&D expenditures outside of production?
Wei Dong was shown pictures of those internet car-making bosses who were often ridiculed online, who owed hundreds of billions or even billions of yuan, yet quietly amassed fortunes while their companies were on the verge of collapse.

Steve, do you use this tactic too?
It seems not; Steve is a pure perfectionist.

Looking down on products manufactured elsewhere: "Cheap products can't be high-quality!"

He pointed to the corner of the huge factory building: "Those are all the rejected products we made in our efforts..."

He was just relieved of his position as general manager of the computer department and reassigned as "global architect," which is essentially a nominal position.

They directly lost control over product development and team management.

But in Tokyo, it suddenly sold several thousand units like it had come back from the dead, and in the past 24 hours, it has already sold tens of thousands of units.

This gave Steve a little bit of say in the production system.

Both capital and professional management are truly suffering because of his reckless and unrealistic approach.

Anyone would feel devastated in that situation.

If it can be sold now, I wouldn't mind letting him try again.

Therefore, adjustments can now be made locally on the production line.

Wei Dong only saw a pile of messy molds and semi-finished products, as well as a few obviously useless old machines.

He immediately became envious: "Here's what we'll do. Pack up all your used, scrapped molds and injection equipment and give them to me, you junkyard scumbag. I'll take them back and have my factory test-produce them for you to see if the final cost and quality can meet your requirements. You need to be thrifty, brother. It's an old Chinese saying that's been around for thousands of years."

Qin Zhiming quickly conveyed the proverb, which was quite profound.

Steve's main problem was that he didn't believe the Third World could produce good products.

Currently, only Japan can rival the United States in terms of productivity in this area, yet they are locked in a fierce and bloody battle.

Citibank was indeed the source of all semiconductor and mechanical electronics industries after World War II. After winning the war, it brought back all the good things and talents to integrate.

However, production was still outsourced to Hans and Japan, two countries with a strong industrial workforce. As a result, by the 1970s and 80s, Japanese cars and electronics were already selling worldwide, far surpassing products from the US domestic market. At that time, the US domestic industries were suffering greatly due to poor quality and high costs.

However, computers, as the "most high-end" products, are still basically produced domestically.

Those Japanese brands could only make improvements to the appearance and accessories based on Citibank's rules. Even with the resources of the whole country, they could only seize the research and development and production scale of the memory storage branch. They could not be said to have developed it in its entirety.

Even the Japanese, who are best at it, are only at this level. How can your third-world country make computers?

Even Qin Zhiming didn't believe it, repeatedly emphasizing that they were just helping to make the casing: "Hong Kong has a well-established shipping system. Aren't you selling very well in Japan? We can provide assembly in Hong Kong or Shanghai, sending the parts to Hong Kong or Shanghai for assembly, and then selling to the Southeast Asian and Japanese markets. The cost can be much lower!"

He's good at this job; the whole of Hong Kong started out doing assembly work in the 1960s and 70s.

Steve, purely on a trial-and-error basis, signaled to the production supervisor to do as he was told, and Qin Zhiming hurriedly and diligently went to hand over the work, as he was very skilled in this shipping route.

Hong Kong people don't mind using second-hand equipment from Europe and America for work.

However, Wei Dong's mindset upon arriving in the mainland after thirty or forty years was far more than that.

The material for the chassis is still under consideration and adjustments, and the keyboard and mouse are even more complicated.

In just a few days of playing cards, the streamlined two-button mouse had already taken shape, but the hand-made sample was still very rough.

The keyboard was designed to echo the streamlined design, which required considerable thought.

This thing is naturally square, and products from the 1980s were extremely bulky. How could it be streamlined or made fashionable?
In fact, we had made many attempts at the previous design, and they were all piled up on the shelves in the prototype workshop.

Wei Dong immediately noticed a metal keyboard among them, reached out and picked it up to examine it, asking, "What material is this?"

The translator quickly followed, but she couldn't understand the explanations given by the R&D staff and Steve.

Qin Zhiming had to step in again: "Space aluminum, a very high-end material! They said it's used in spaceships, but the cost was too high, so they gave up on it."

Wei Dong chuckled and said, "Have you ever used titanium alloy? I have some... I can help you reduce the cost."

It was obvious that Qi Zhiming wasn't very familiar with this word, so he had to handwrite the "Ti" label from the periodic table.

The key point is that he understands very well that whether or not it's made of titanium is actually good or not is not important; what matters is that it has this gimmick.

Keyboards these days are very heavy; they definitely have a thick, solid steel plate supporting them inside.

Moreover, they all have the complex structure of mechanical keyboards, and the keyboard and mouse must account for a significant portion of the cost of the high price of $2,500.

Wouldn't it be awesome if we could make the plastic shell into a titanium alloy panel while keeping the same style on the bottom?
He had at least been in the business of reselling titanium ingots and titanium alloys for over a year.

This titanium alloy, if you add half of it, it's still an alloy; if you add one-thousandth, it's still an alloy.

Since it can be detected that there is indeed titanium in it, it's not fraud.

Indeed, the hardness can be significantly improved.

Wei Dong still found the later research and development conferences, where even stainless steel could be touted as austenitic 304, quite fascinating.

Actually, Steve was the originator of this style...

Sure enough, the guy perked up immediately, asked questions carefully, and then exchanged a few words with his designers and R&D staff.

I agree to ask Weidong to help me make a brand new titanium alloy keyboard and mouse!
Wei Dong didn't need any R&D funding; he just wanted some equipment and technical support.

People in this era probably think computers are amazing and incredible, which is why they are brainwashed by Steve's grand narrative of reminiscing about the past and how awesome he was.

It's just a few chips, a motherboard, and a graphics card put together.

Moreover, Wei Dong had seen countless fancy mouse and keyboard designs, and based on his experience with security booth monitoring computers, the more fancy the design, the cheaper it was.

He felt that if he were given a complete circuit design and could slowly figure out how to implement it thoroughly, he could definitely handle it.

When it comes to making money from foreign trade, everyone has heard the news about manufacturing iPhones for foreigners.

Now that I've been able to manufacture for Apple since 1985, haven't I already gotten started early?

But distant water can't quench immediate thirst; the titanium alloy keyboard and mouse are nowhere to be seen yet.

What to do now?
Seeing their dilemma, Wei Dong helplessly pointed out, "If you don't want to make it black, can't you make it in color? At the very least, you can make it silver-gray or matte paint. Wouldn't that look awesome?"

It's true that computers were only given a different meaning beyond just electronic computers after Steve Jobs.

With the personal computer market not officially launched until 81, everyone still thought that computers were serious things and that technology should feel cold and impersonal.

Throughout the 1980s, all computers used off-white or light gray as their primary colors.

Steve Jobs always touted Apple's ambition to break the mold, but in reality, he failed to do so. After this coup, Jobs resigned in disgrace and left Apple, only to make a triumphant return at least ten years later, using colorful, jelly-like new computers to change market perceptions.

I'm completely stunned!
Is it that simple for a genius?

(End of this chapter)