The year 2000 had just begun, and the joy of the New Year was still lingering, but the crazy decline of the Nasdaq index had shrouded the digital, computer, and Internet in a gloomy cloud.

In this situation, many media outlets and experts have begun to say things that may be stupid five years from now.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, reported that personal computers have become dispensable.

Some computer companies, such as Jiewei, have even publicly announced that they will no longer position computers as their core products in the future.

But in this case, Jobs still used his excellent vision and industry sense to decisively invest in "digital equipment", so in addition to the Mac series of computer products, he quickly gathered all kinds of professionals to form a new team, for which he did not hesitate to cut some internal research and development projects that did not meet this goal.

It can be seen that Jobs is now determined.

And when he came back again, he learned to listen to other people's opinions, just like the way things were going, Old Joe was not stubborn, Apple did not isolate himself, they began to seek outside forces to save time and costs.

E-song's investment in digital music players has always been public, and only the specific content of the product is absolutely confidential.

And everyone is in Silicon Valley, and the circle is the same, and how many people can do it, so it didn't take a lot of effort for Jonathan Rubinstein to find this place.

This person is a talent brought by Jobs from NEXT, and he is a relatively shrewd and capable person, so he has achieved the position of the top director of Apple's hardware department.

Of course, Chen Zier didn't know that much about this person, after all, he was not important enough to make him spend countless brain cells to recall and record.

However, since it is here, let's talk.

All the employees of the company returned to their rooms, and Rubinstein's eyes were shining, presumably trying to see something.

Just kidding, how could Chen Zier be so shallow, this player is a highly confidential product, even if you outsiders enter the company's door, you can't say that you know it at a glance, this is too straightforward.

Like Allen's design department, they are all in separate rooms, and everyone's access is strictly restricted. You can't see it from the outside.

So he didn't panic, just said a few words, and then led the two into his office.

After sitting down, he asked knowingly, "You two should be here on behalf of Apple, don't you know what to do with me?"

"Yes, you're right, we're here on behalf of the company, it's nice to meet you, Mr. Chen, in fact I heard about you last year, and most of the people in the media, on TV, are praising your legendary experience. ”

Chen Zier didn't understand what he was going to say, okay, he thought I'd just watch you quietly and pretend.

Sure enough, he couldn't go any further, rubbed his nose, and pretended to ask casually: "Mr. Chen, when we first came in, it seemed that we were celebrating, and we didn't disturb us, right?"

Chen Zier was speechless, "What do you want to know?"

"No, nothing, just I guess you shouldn't mind sharing your happiness if there's anything good going on. Has your company made significant progress in product development?"

Chen Zier suddenly said, it turns out that you are thinking about this aspect, and you are still making such a big bend, which is also what you can do, and you can talk so much.

But I look like I'm mentally retarded, what's going on all over the streets?

With a slight contempt in his heart, he didn't answer him, but just asked, "What are you looking for me, tell me quickly." ”

Seeing that Chen Zier was unmoved, Rubinstein didn't want to ask too many questions.

"Well, Mr. Chen, I'm here at the behest of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, to do some cooperation with your company related to this, yes, cooperation. ”

As Chen Zier expected, cooperation, yes. Although the E-song is small now, the apple is big, and Steve Jobs is a very domineering and strong leader, there is some danger of dancing with wolves, but sometimes there is nothing to cooperate with the weak sheep.

Apple must have wanted something from him, more than one thing, he knew. Of course, after familiarizing himself with "The Biography of Jobs", he did not cause trouble to this old guy, Chen Zier does not have any idolatry, yes, you are a genius, I admire you in my heart, but from a personal point of view, he has no good impression of this person.

Well, it's not right to talk about personal feelings, just talk about business, Apple has a technology in its hands,

Chen Zier was a little interested.

It's not that it has to be, if not, of course there are alternatives, just kidding, except for a few technologies, in an extremely competitive place like Silicon Valley, there is no such thing as you, the company, that can make this thing.

Of course, if E-song has it, it is the icing on the cake.

That's right, what Chen Zier had in mind was something called the Fireire interface.

This technology as early as more than ten years ago Apple led a development alliance in research and development, we can understand it as a USB interface, FireWire and USB are competing with each other, just like ios and Android, Apple holds FireWire, Intel pedals on USB, the two have fought for many years, of course, FireWire finally lost this competition, Apple slowly gave up on it, but that was seven or eight years later,

In the year 2000, FireWire had been pulling on the heads of USB 1.0 and 1.1 for years.

FireWire is a high-speed network connection to the serial port, and its main function is to quickly transfer digital files such as videos, pictures, and music from one device to another.

In 2000, not to mention the speed at which a song was downloaded from the Internet. Even if it is downloaded, the transfer speed to the mobile device is also very slow, imagine how long we have been waiting for some large files from the computer to be transferred to the USB flash drive?

In antiquity, 1000 songs was definitely a large file.

At this time, with other companies' player products, it takes 5 minutes to transfer a song from a CD to the player, compared to 10 seconds using FireWire technology.

It's just a CD and a dozen songs.

That's the difference.

In fact, limited by the fact that the music player must be connected to an external PC in order to transmit digital information and files, the interface has always been a more important technology and component, if there is no live wire, E-song must only choose the USB1.1 interface of Intel.

This is a place that makes Chen Zier feel disgusting, but it has not reached the feeling of perfection.

You must know that FireWire was one of the important factors that made the first generation of iPod so outstanding.

At the end of 99 and the beginning of the 00s, all Fadel can think of is USB1.1, its fastest transfer speed is only 12MB/s, and what about FireWire?400MB-1GB/s, just from the numbers can see the huge gap between the two.

Although Intel, Microsoft, Philips and other company alliances have been promoting USB2.0, everyone is waiting, and the news from all parties is saying that it is coming soon, but no one who is not an insider knows, and Chen Zier does not know, he, a reborn person, can't remember everything, right?

It wasn't even that he mentioned Firewire, and then Fadel told him about FireWire and USB, and he didn't understand the connection himself, so he didn't have any information about what year and month USB 2.0 was launched in his head.

He only remembers that the iPod was launched at the end of 2001 and the transmission rate of FireWire was a big selling point.

Of course, if you use this technology, E-song still needs to think about how to be compatible with computers equipped with indos system, this is the biggest problem, the earliest iPod Fireline can not be used on computers other than Apple, because of the tradition of competition between macOS and Indos, so that Old Joe refused to make iPod compatible with Indos at first, fortunately, he was not as stubborn as when he was young.

Jobs's 'stupidity' on this choice didn't last long, and Apple soon made it possible for the iPod to make peace with computers with Indos installed.

Considering that the market share of Indos is absolutely advantageous at this time, and Chen Zier does not have 'Apple genes', he does not need to insist on the inexplicable ecological unity that only Mac computers can connect to iPod, and he takes the Indos system as the main consideration.

It seems that there are not so many things that can be achieved at once with E-song, and the technical strength cannot be reached, and new products cannot be postponed for too long.

But that's not what he just said...... Cooperation?

You should have heard it right, it's cooperation, then cooperation has to be win-win, right?