AWB Chapter 485 The Final Dialogue with Jobs
Chapter 485 The Final Dialogue with Jobs
The Macworld conference was being held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Ling Yun sat in the third row near the aisle, with Zhao Hu sitting next to him. On stage, Steve Jobs, wearing his signature black turtleneck sweater and blue jeans, slowly walked to the center of the stage, holding the first-generation iPhone in his hand.
"Today, Apple will reinvent the phone." He swiped the screen, and the audience erupted in applause and screams. Ling Yun clapped along, clapping vigorously.
After demonstrating multi-touch, Steve Jobs opened Safari. He loaded the entire New York Times webpage, then pinched the screen with two fingers, shrinking the page; he opened it again, enlarging it. He repeated this three times, each time drawing gasps from the audience. When he demonstrated CoverFlow, he turned his phone horizontally, and album art scrolled across the screen like dominoes. The decibels of screams from the audience reached their peak.
Looking at the slender figure on the stage, Ling Yun recalled 1997 in that 300-square-meter office in Silicon Valley, when he first explained the core architecture of the StarCraft system to Nelson and Alex, filling an entire whiteboard with marker ink, his hands smeared with it. Back then, they had nothing but a few assembled computers and a bunch of borrowed testing equipment. Now, the person on stage had followed almost the exact same path—capacitive touchscreens, multi-touch, and application ecosystems. Two parallel lines, each extending in the same era, finally converged in the same venue.
After the event, Steve Jobs invited Ling Yun to Apple headquarters. The two walked along a path in the park, with neatly trimmed lawns on either side and an apple tree in the distance, its bare branches casting long, thin shadows in the California winter sun.
"Ling, look. Your StarPhone was released two years earlier than my iPhone." Steve Jobs stopped, hands in his jeans pockets. "But you and I both know the real show is just beginning. Our technology paths are almost identical—capacitive screens, multi-touch, App Stores. You're ahead, but Apple has the world's most powerful brand and distribution channels."
"Steve, the market is big enough to accommodate two companies. Our competition isn't about who can eat whom up, but about who can push the industry further."
Jobs was silent for a moment, then continued walking. "You know what? Sometimes I envy you."
"What do you envy about me?"
"You can make chips, operating systems, and phones all at the same time. I can only make phones." After saying this, Steve Jobs had a very faint smile on his lips, as if he were mocking himself, or as if he were confirming a question that he already knew the answer to.
"Because you are Steve Jobs, and I am Ling Yun. We each have our own path."
Jobs didn't reply. The two continued walking, their shoes making a soft crunching sound on the gravel. When they reached the apple tree at the far end of the orchard, Jobs stopped and turned around.
"Ling, if one day I'm gone, please continue doing this. Not for money, but to change the world."
Ling Yun looked at him. The words were spoken too softly, so softly they didn't seem like they came from Steve Jobs' mouth. He had lost a lot of weight; the collar of his turtleneck sweater loosely covered his neck, his collarbones were prominent, and his jeans were noticeably too tight at the waist.
"You'll be alright."
Steve Jobs didn't answer. He smiled and extended his fist. Ling Yun also extended his fist, and the two lightly bumped fists. The California winter sun was bright, and the bare branches of the apple trees swayed gently in the wind. Ling Yun didn't know at the time that Jobs had been diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor. He only learned this later from Fiona—Jobs had been diagnosed in 2003 but had been delaying surgery, trying various alternative therapies to control the disease. By 2004, the tumor had spread.
Lingyun later wrote a line in his notebook: "Macworld 2006, Steve Jobs demonstrated the iPhone, and the whole audience cheered. I was in the audience. He was terribly thin. Afterwards, I took a walk with him, and he said, 'If I'm no longer here, please continue.'"
On the plane back home, Ling Yun kept looking out the window. The clouds were thick, like a vast expanse of cotton wool. Zhao Hu, sitting next to him, was flipping through a magazine when he came across a page reporting on the Apple launch event. He handed the magazine to Ling Yun. A huge photo of Steve Jobs holding an iPhone filled the entire page, his eyes shining like two flames. Ling Yun took the magazine, looked at it for a while, then closed it and placed it on his lap.
"Zhao Hu".
"exist."
"Once we get back, inform Elder Ni and Li Mo—push the chip and baseband progress forward by another quarter." Ling Yun pushed up the sunshade of the porthole, revealing an endless sea of white clouds outside. "Jobs won't wait for us. And we can't wait for him either."