When it comes to personal computers, the first person who comes to mind for most people who understand this history is naturally Steve Jobs, who founded Apple, which ushered in a new era of personal computers and set off a new market of trillions of dollars.

However, as the founder of Apple, Jobs, is not a big man who is proficient in computer technology, on the contrary, he is a college student who dropped out of school, and his computer technology is only a relatively good level, compared to an engineer randomly selected from Silicon Valley, Jobs's strength is his dedication to products, he wants to provide the public with the goods he thinks they need, the concept of personal computers, music players in later generations, smartphones, tablets, etc.

The real big guy behind Apple, or the initial technical foundation, is another Apple co-founder---- Steve Gary Wozniak.

A few days before the opening of Costco, Chen Zhiwen took advantage of the free time in the middle to drive a few people to Silicon Valley, which is also in Los Angeles, and found Steve who was drinking beer and watching a football game in a messy bar. Woz.

"Hello, Mr. Watts, my name is Eric. Chen, it's a pleasure to find you. Chen Zhiwen ordered the most expensive wine and handed it to Steve Watts.

"I don't know you." Steve Watts looked at the Asian in front of him with some vigilance, and he wasn't a girl, so why did he come over and talk? Please drink to yourself, is it gay? Could it be that his round body is a good object in Gay's eyes?

"I have a friend who knows Steve Jobs, and he heard by chance from Steve Jobs that you are very good at electronics, so I came to you." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.

If you directly say that you know Jobs, then it will be easy to go through the future, and if you add another person in the middle, it will be difficult to judge, and ordinary people will not really ask who this friend's friend is?

"Steve's kid is okay, he knows that if he talks about me, I've helped him solve a lot of problems." When Woz heard his friend's name, he let his guard down.

"I've heard that Mr. Jobs received $5,900 at Atari before, and it was all done with your skills, which made my friends envy me for a long time." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.

"$5,900?" Wads almost spat out a sip of wine and said, "Isn't it $900?" ”

"Isn't it? $900 is just the cost of the project that the company gave him, and $5,000 is an additional reward for Jobs to reduce the number of chips to less than 50, which many people at Atari know. Chen Zhiwen said with some surprise.

"Damn bunny." Woz scolded a little, and then sighed for a while and said, "Then again, Steve did only say half of the project bonus, not about the extra bonus, but he should have told me." ”

"Maybe there's some misunderstanding?" Chen Zhiwen said "kindly" persuasion.

The story of Jobs and Woz is not a secret on the Internet in later generations, in 1972, Jobs, who had just entered his freshman year, couldn't look at what he studied in college, so he dropped out of school and went around and found a job working in a game company, which is the most famous Atari in later generations, Wads met by chance, Steve Jobs was proficient in product concepts, Woz was proficient in technology, and the two got along.

Atari Inc., at the beginning of its establishment, released a game called table tennis, which is a video game that simulates table tennis, the page is very simple, and it is the kind that no one will look at in the 21st century, but in 1972 it became popular in bars throughout the United States, and it made a lot of money that year, but the founder of Atari was also the first time to start a business, and made the most common mistake --- did not register a patent.

By the time he reacted, all kinds of shoddy table tennis games had begun to appear on the market in large quantities, but at this point, there was no way to save table tennis, and Atari decided to develop a single-player playing game, that is, Arkanoid, which was a little famous in later generations.

It's just that unlike Ping Pong, there are a lot of bricks on the Arkanoid game interface, and the trajectory of the ball is more complex, and the algorithm is also more demanding, which has high requirements for computing and storage.

In the 70s, chips were just developing, and the computing power was very low, whether it was an industrial computer or a commercial computer or other industries, it was by stacking chips to improve computing power, and the Arkanoid arcade machine developed by Atari's in-house engineers required more than 150 chips, and a chip was thirty or forty dollars, and the cost was so high that any bar would not be willing to buy it.

As a result, Atari launched an internal reward, and whoever can successfully develop a arkanoid arcade machine with less than 100 chips will receive a reward of $900, and on this basis, for every 10 chips reduced, the reward will be increased by another $1,000.

This reward was placed in the early 70s, it was a huge bonus, and the engineers of Atari worked very hard, but after a few months, the most successful group of people reduced 30 chips, but the cost of an arcade machine with 120 chips was still too high.

Jobs was also interested in the bonus, but he was just an ordinary technician who didn't know about chips, so he found his friend Woz, who was working at Hewlett-Packard at the time.

Jobs told Watts that the design had to be completed in four days and with as few chips as possible. After completing the work the bonus, they are half a cent.

Over the next four days, the two barely slept up, with Jobs in charge of creating prototypes and testing, and Wads in charge of the technical aspects.

What I didn't expect was that these two really made this "Arkanoid" that can go down in the history of the game forever in 4 days, and the whole game only used 44 chips!

You know, although Atari was not a big company back then, the success of Ping Pong before had allowed it to have dozens of technicians, but so many people spent months not to get a project that was completed by Wads in 4 days, and only 44 chips were used.

In fact, Jobs' first Apple computer two years later was also designed by Woz, otherwise, the cost would not have been reduced at all.

Under the leadership of Atari, the arcade era has begun to make American bars begin to accept, Chen Zhiwen is naturally ready to enter this lucrative industry, but he only has creativity, like Jobs, he does not have the ability to develop games, and naturally needs talents in this area, and Hong Kong itself, although there are also some electronic talents, but they are biased towards production, rather than design. In this way, the big name who was once in Apple's history is naturally the object he needs to invite.

"Forget it, I'll go back to Jobs." Watts said, "What is the matter with Mr. Chen looking for me? ”

"It's only $5,000, Mr. Wolds doesn't have to worry too much." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile: "I am going to set up a company in the United States, and I hope to hire Mr. Watts to be the technical director of this company. ”