When Andy Rubin heard that Larry Page was going to introduce himself to meet Li Mu, Andy Rubin was stunned for a while, instinctively thinking that Larry Page was joking with him, and repeatedly asked Larry Page for confirmation, and then believed it.

Subsequently, Andy Rubin hurriedly set a time with Larry Page, and in an hour, he would come to Makino Technology on time to meet with Li Mu.

Hanging up the phone, Andy Rubin was at a loss for excitement.

In Andy Rubin's perception of Silicon Valley bigwigs, Larry Page is already a very top celebrity, as for Bill Gates, he is basically a god-level figure who can only be admired, and Li Mu, a young man from China, is a non-human existence in Andy Rubin's eyes.

Looking at the entire Internet industry, there is no second person other than Li Mu who can start from scratch and create such a great cause in a short period of time like Li Mu.

There are many self-made billionaires in Silicon Valley, but there is not a single one who can be worth tens of billions of dollars from scratch, Bill Gates? He is not self-made, and there are really few people who can compare to Bill Gates from Silicon Valley.

Because of this, Andy Rubin feels unbelievable, according to normal circumstances, even if he goes to a company like Makino Technology to apply for a job, he will not have the opportunity to meet Li Mu, unless it is a very high management position, otherwise he will not even see the vice president of Makino Technology.

The larger the company, the clearer the internal hierarchy, which is not to highlight the privileges of the management, but the time-saving way that the management has to follow, whether it is a recruitment interview, or a cooperation meeting, the enterprise must follow a clear grading logic, otherwise if all the interviews and talks are sent directly to the CEO, the CEO is afraid that he will be tired and half dead.

In a company like Makino Technology, unless it is an interview for a vice president-level talent, or an important position such as the head of a large business department, Li Mu will need to personally confirm it, and Li Mu doesn't even have time to understand other levels of positions, because the person in charge of that position will be responsible for this person and this position, and he only needs to see the results of the feedback from the person in charge.

The same is true for investment and financing.

Makino Technology has its own investment department, this investment department is not for Li Mu's will to serve, but for the entire Makino Science and Technology service, foreign investment from millions to tens of millions or even hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, the span is very large, more than 100 million yuan, Li Mu will personally check, less than 100 million yuan, the head of the investment department and the head of the business department as long as the agreement can be determined. For investments below 10 million yuan, an investment manager and the committee of the investment department can make full decisions.

For Andy Rubin, his new project financing target is not even 10 million US dollars, such a project, in Li Mu's eyes, I am afraid that it is a waste of time to listen to it, just arrange an investment manager corresponding to this amount of authority to talk to him.

However, Li Mu wanted to meet him in person, which made Andy Rubin excited and nervous.

……

Larry Page resigned from Makino Technology, and before he left, he had sent a message to Google's board of directors, asking them to prepare for an emergency meeting, anyway, Li Mu wanted some of the interests in Google's pocket, not to be an enemy of Google, which was enough to make the entire board of directors of Google breathe a sigh of relief, and the rest was to quickly communicate and see how much benefit Li Mu, a Venetian merchant, would be given as a ticket to cross the sea, so that he could get on his ship.

Li Mu studied Apple's stock price today in the office, Apple's stock price fluctuated slightly for a day today, and the overall decline was 2%, which was basically stable.

Within Apple, the stop-loss faction and the counter-offensive faction are still working on their own goals.

The stop-loss faction is still communicating with Microsoft about the acquisition, but the progress is minimal, Microsoft's attitude is relatively tough, they only want Apple's operating system and the whole machine production business, as for the rest, they are not ready to take over.

However, Apple's internal stop-loss faction wants to get rid of it completely, which means that the takeover party has to pay for Apple's current worse iPod business, although the iPod business line can still squeeze out almost $100 million of funds for temporary turnover, but this is just a drink to quench thirst, and the follow-up things of the iPod business are the most terrible, production line shutdown, foundry settlement, return and refund of users and dealers, A large amount of inventory needs to be sold at a reduced price to recover losses, but even so, all iPods in stock are difficult to recover the fate of selling one at a loss.

If Microsoft didn't want to hold on to the iPod, the stop-loss faction itself wouldn't be able to afford such a big loss, so the whole situation became a stalemate.

However, the counter-attackers are actively looking for countermeasures.

This geek team of programmers, product managers and various technicians all formed a group at a critical juncture, desperately looking for a way to break the game, which is also an unprecedented unity in Apple's internal business line.

The counter-offensive faction now has a general idea, they feel that if the iPod business is stopped immediately and the iPod production line is shut down, the loss behind it will be difficult for Apple to bear the past, so they decided to find a new breakthrough in the iPod business, and the specific operation is divided into two parts, first, to reduce the production capacity of the iPod to a minimum while maintaining the continuous operation of the production line, and then solve the problem of iPod returns at this stage and subsequent low-price clearance; Second, hurry up and develop a new iPod!

The research and development of a new iPod is the most important, because Tim Cook believes that although Makino Technology's Mango-ME2 is very cost-effective, its current production capacity has not yet reached the stage of global distribution, which means that Mango-ME2 still has a long way to go, and it will continue to increase production capacity in the future. Expanding the sales and after-sales system, and then completing the market occupation, in this process, it is difficult for Makino Technology to have extra experience to invest in the new generation of Mango-ME, so when Makino Technology is running at full speed and unable to turn around, Apple hurriedly develops the next generation of iPods that can comprehensively surpass Mango-ME2, which has become the top priority of the counterattack.

Tim Cook has even begun to lead the team in the project and subsequent development, and they have selected a preliminary product plan, which is to realize the device networking in the next generation of iPod.

The device network means that the iPod will be separated from the computer to a certain extent and become a terminal device directly connected to the Internet, on this basis, it is necessary to support the connection between the iPod itself and iTunes through the Internet, at least the music can be downloaded directly from iTunes through the iPod.

The counter-attackers were divided on this issue, some believed that they could directly write the iPod version of iTunes software to the microcontroller system, and then add a LAN module to the iPod, so that users could download songs through the network and the iTunes software on the iPod, the advantage of this solution is that the development speed is relatively fast, and the cost is low;

Another part of the people believe that since they want to counterattack Makino Technology, To completely reverse the defeat of the iPod, it is necessary to catch up with Makino Technology at the core level, soldering a LAN module to the iPod and writing a simple iTunes microcontroller, although the iPod can be connected to the Internet and realize the use of the computer, but this way Makino Technology will, they can also write YYtunes to the microcontroller, and then bundle it with LAN to join the next generation of Mango-ME, when the new generation of Mango-ME catches up with the iPod in performance, and then fights a price war, what should Apple do at that time？

So, this group of people came up with a big solution: develop an operating system for the iPod! Not only to implement the use of iTunes on the iPod, but also to implement the use of other software, so that the iPod will be qualitatively changed.

For most IT companies around the world, the development of operating systems is really an extremely large project, and most companies do not have this basic strength at all, but Apple is different, Apple has this technical strength, and has a very strong technical reserve.

Apple was able to launch IOS in more than a year in its last life, largely relying on the foundation of the MacOS operating system, which shows that there is enough foundation, and it is not difficult to develop a mobile operating system on the basis of the desktop operating system.

If Makino Technology wants to develop a mobile operating system, even if it searches for top teams from all over the world, it will take at least three or five years to achieve results, and this time difference is enough for Apple to make a beautiful turnaround.

However, this solution also has its drawbacks, in order to be able to cope with a mobile operating system, Apple needs to subversively redesign and upgrade the iPod hardware, which will greatly increase the cost of the iPod on the one hand, and prolong the development cycle on the other hand.

If it is on a single-chip microcomputer, Apple can immediately start research and development, the hardware is mature, the software is also mature, but if it is on the operating system, the amount of engineering will immediately increase geometrically.

In addition to developing its own mobile operating system, Apple also has to conduct in-depth understanding and research on microprocessors and other hardware on the market, and then develop multiple sets of hardware matching schemes, and then repeatedly conduct various tests and demonstrations, and finally select a solution.

For Apple, the MCU solution is like assembling an unpowered glider toy, which is generally not difficult;

However, the operating system scheme is equivalent to upgrading the unpowered glider toy to assembling a stable, reliable and high-performance remote-controlled model airplane, which is much more troublesome.

The selection of materials, the selection and matching of motors and batteries, the selection and matching of remote control transceiver modules, ESCs, and servos are all huge, even for Apple, which is a big project.

The project is large, which naturally means that it takes a long time, such a plan, from project approval to software and hardware development to finished products, at least one and a half to two years of cycle to be able to land, Apple itself has been riddled with holes, how long can it survive such a crisis?