My Lord, you need to stand up!

Chapter 764 Only by achieving unprecedented success can one earn enough.

Liang Jiahui was right; everything depends on Weidong's investment returns.

According to Rang Weidong's logic, twenty million US dollars would definitely be used to build a container ship, not to make a movie.

The $40 million earned from selling 200,000 sound cards and speakers, after taxes and costs, is only enough to make one Hollywood movie.

If it weren't for Qin Yuye's explanation of how investment could be used for money laundering and tax evasion, and how to pay a toll, Wei Dong wouldn't have even given it a second glance.

Having worked in the tax office for decades, one must have heard the saying, "It's better to offend the Ministry of National Defense or even gangsters and drug dealers than to mess with the Citibank IRS."

Especially right now, the Citibank market is really valuable.

Earning US dollars, returning to the mainland, and spending them in Hong Kong are all examples of overwhelming power.

Let's see how many of these brand-new 87 Mac computers can sell.

Wei Dong and his team were seated in the front row alongside a group of Apple's main suppliers, executives, and distributors.

Steve walked onto the stage wearing a black long-sleeved T-shirt. A row of studio-quality cameras were pointed at him, broadcasting live simultaneously to hundreds of television stations across North America belonging to several major networks.

Because of Demimore's sudden arrival, he even sat down between Rang Weidong and Liang Jiahui without hesitation.

Lin Wangfu quietly stepped back and whispered to Wei Dong: "Their original expectation was definitely to exceed one million units, and the stock of 400,000 units was already their limit. Now, their internal expectation is two million units!"

This made Wei Dong's eyebrows twitch.

Qin Yuye linked arms with his right arm, while Demimore placed his hand on his left arm.

The three men who helped Steve turn his life around two years ago are sitting here.

The launch event and subsequent sales totaled 570,000 units, relieving Steve's immediate crisis on the board.

Last year's launch event saw 1.5 million orders, which was already an astonishing peak for this ordering model.

With only a few million units sold globally each year, they wanted to sell two million units at a single launch event, and those were high-priced computers costing five thousand dollars.

We can only place orders, and we have to wait one or two months or even longer to pick up the goods.

It's really a bit unbelievable.

Established computer companies like IBM typically employ a standard sales-driven model.

They diligently promote their products everywhere, with branch offices in various regions showcasing the products in stores, maintaining local reputation, and serving customers. If they can secure a large client who buys hundreds of units from a single company, they treat them like royalty.

Only large clients like this might be on an order-based system, with delivery to their door a certain number of days later.

Other individual users buy the goods directly from the store.

There's no such thing as having to wait when you place an order.

There are a bunch of Japanese computer brands on the market, as well as a constant stream of other computer brands from Citibank, all waiting to be devoured like hungry wolves.

Consumers couldn't wait and went to buy from other stores.

Steve seized upon the fact that televisions had become commonplace in North American households a few years ago, and launched his product with something similar to a TV direct sales event.

They inflate their brand value and personal charisma, while local distributors are at most just pick-up points.

Five or six years ago, selling two or three hundred thousand units at a single product launch was quite an impressive feat.

Can we really expect two million units now?
Wei Dong secretly stroked his chin. In his opinion, Steve's press conference format was similar to online live streaming for selling mobile phones and new energy vehicles thirty or forty years from now.

This guy might really be the originator of this kind of selling method.

Speaking Chinese, she naturally joined Qin Yuye's group, and she exclaimed in surprise, "Every computer is equipped with this sound card and speakers, and even our Kung Fu software package?"

Wei Dong laughed: "It seems a bit like a bloodsucking leech?"

The three of them chuckled and laughed, full of anticipation.

Demimore over there couldn't understand what they were whispering about, and didn't make any extra movements, just watching the stands with a faint smile.

Because various cameras are constantly filming these seats.

She remained beautiful.

He Yuzhu also quietly leaned closer to report: "The entire press conference footage has been redone."

That's right, as Steve stood in the center of the stage and raised his hand, the exquisite image projected behind him like a movie screen was the side view of the new computer.

The light brown color is quite elegant.

The elegant flat-screen monitor and keyboard/mouse perfectly showcase the fully transparent rear panel of the vertical chassis.

It reminded Wei Dong of the various fancy lights and fans that were later found in the computer cases of those ocean-view rooms.

It's not that light-polluted yet, but you can already see a small box on the side of the monitor, which looks a bit like the slightly tilted back of the Easter Island statue.

The audience and media, who hadn't seen any new product improvements, were already buzzing with whispers.

What kind of new equipment is this?

Steve remained silent, standing there raising his hand and making a rotating gesture.

It was as if he was remotely controlling the computer on the screen. The computer, which was clearly filmed against a clean background in a studio and had no surrounding objects in sight, slowly "turned around," and then the whole audience couldn't help but gasp in surprise.

Because a brightly colored "Apple Computer" logo was displayed on the screen.

For a moment, everyone was astonished. Was this really a color computer screen? Ninety-nine percent of computers on the market are still monochrome, and most of them are the old-fashioned fluorescent green displays. Only a few newer ones are black and white.

The very few that are colorful are all 256 colors, and are rather rigid array-style color block patterns.

So even when making computer games, the screen is made up of densely packed dots, without the smooth, photorealistic transitions.

Because the display accuracy and processing speed are insufficient.

Even the Three Kingdoms Heroes game that Lin Wangfu's team made was a 2D cartoon block game, which couldn't achieve the fine and smooth texture of a color picture.

However, a Mac computer with a fully upgraded 386 main chip can drive a leap forward in the display chip, video memory, RAM, and hard drive.

Let's go back to how Weidong described the "barrel effect" to Steve last year. The CPU was originally the weakest link in Apple computers, but by improving the CPU, the overall performance of all computers was instantly boosted.

As a result, the images on the movie screen appeared dazzling and colorful.

The technology was readily available; IBM could have done it too. It's just that they were considering what the point would be of launching such an expensive color computer.

Aside from a very few workstations used for color printing, what are the uses of color for personal computers?

In the black-and-white instruction code-based DOS system, color was unnecessary.

Just to show off?
Steve is the one who's good at showing off, waving at the screen.

The colorful Apple logo rippled and then faded, becoming transparent and disappearing, revealing the standard MAC system graphical interface.

He actually made this the boot screen for the new system!
But during this process, the small speakers on either side of the monitor, the computer speakers that had been completely ignored, emitted a pleasant sound: "Hello, Aipo..."

This caused a sensation throughout the venue.

Everyone has seen color screens; at least color TVs are now widespread in North America. The main surprise is that Apple dared to use them on personal computers.

A computer making a sound—this is truly unprecedented.

The next thought that follows is, what's the point?!

Everyone feels that this change seems to have countless possibilities, yet they can't quite pinpoint the right moment.

Lin Wangfu blushed, as if accepting the noisy reaction from his surroundings.

Only then did Steve speak: "We have finally ushered in a new era... the era of multimedia!"

From the very first collaboration launch event, Wei Dong suggested that Steve cancel the standing podium, so that he wouldn't stand behind the stage like he was having a meeting.

You have to adopt the air of a tech guru, walking in the middle of the stage and talking eloquently.

This was originally a trick Steve invented later, and it felt surprisingly good after trying it!
Now, just walk to the center of the table with the remote-controlled page turner, press a button, and the large screen behind you will display a computer image next to it, with three lines pointing out to correspond to "image," "sound," and "animation," respectively...

Are you giving a PowerPoint presentation?

Sure enough, everyone realized that the most direct consequence of color display was that images could be added to the PowerPoint presentation.

In the past, monochrome computers not only couldn't display images, but their loading capabilities were also inadequate.

Without a hard drive, the software's storage space is limited. Even a few tens of kilobytes of JPG image files will become unusable if there are too many.

It's very easy now.

The entire audience burst into genuine applause.

The PowerPoint functionality of the Kungfu software package has sold over four million copies, along with computers, in North America.

PowerPoint presentations are already highly refined "simplified reports," and they are now very popular within various companies. Nobody likes reading from a script during meetings.

The ability to add monochrome or single-line 2D pie charts and bar charts has already made things convenient for all white-collar professionals.

You can now add images directly...

Qin Yuye understood everything and excitedly turned his head: "Our kung fu software is going to sell like hotcakes again!"

Lin Wangfu chimed in, "Their original selling point was mainly on this. They released an improved version 2.3 that allows you to add pictures. Users in various regions can upgrade at the place of purchase with a genuine after-sales service certificate... However, Mac computers before 87 obviously can't run the picture version of Kungfu PPT?"

He couldn't help but laugh as he talked about this.

This made Wei Dong want to burst out laughing. Oh no!

so bad!
Steve's move was really underhanded.

No wonder they previously estimated that they would sell at least one million units.

Last year, it was revealed that there were a large number of pirated Kungfu software packages on the North American market.

Steve was very upset about this; how could they take advantage of the capitalists?
Clearly, this year's major hardware upgrade is like raising a huge threshold.

I can't use it without buying a new computer.

Then Steve clicked the page turner again, and the entire room filled with long, melodious jazz music. Amidst the soft background music, he said, "So, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to explain to you the main reasons for Apple's stock price increase this year. Doesn't it sound pleasant?"

From dry, reading-from-script presentations to concise, clear, and easy-to-understand PowerPoint presentations, now there's even a sense of atmosphere.

The entire audience was laughing and applauding, which truly confirmed that Apple's stock price was about to soar!
From that point on, consumers across the country stopped watching the press conference on TV and went directly to electronics stores to buy the new Apple computers.

Even before the price was announced at the press conference, it was already on display in stores across the country.

The price of over five thousand dollars is a bit astonishing, but the leap in improvement in the work alone makes the cost of the production tools worthwhile.

(End of this chapter)