Becoming a Russian Oligarch After Rebirth
Chapter 1338 - 1069: Heavyweight Product

Chapter 1338: Chapter 1069: Heavyweight Product

In 2006, Apple’s new headquarters building wasn’t even in the plans yet, because the company didn’t have that "spare cash."

Therefore, the headquarters were still in that relatively ordinary office building.

Wang Ye had visited once a few years ago when he invested in Apple, and this was his second visit.

When he arrived at the headquarters building, it was Cook who came downstairs to greet him.

After warmly shaking hands with Wang Ye, Cook apologized, "Qiao has gone to prepare for the launch event, so he couldn’t come to meet you. I’ll accompany you over there later. You know, he’s a perfectionist, and with it being our phone’s debut, he’s set very high standards for every detail of the event. He’s been there for several days now..."

Wang Ye nodded with a smile, understanding that Boss Qiao was indeed obsessive, a typical paranoid...

Also, a product manager striving for ultimate perfection, but it’s precisely because of his personality that Apple’s products stand out from other brands.

Electronic products now have an air of artistry; honestly, among so many brands worldwide, only Apple has achieved this.

Of course, a few years after his death, when Cook took over Apple, the company simply became a money-making machine, relying on Qiao’s legacy, it raked in enormous profits.

If he looked at it from a consumer’s perspective, Wang Ye didn’t like someone like Cook, too utilitarian and fond of "shearing the sheep"...

Apple users would later joke that its memory and storage were made of gold, and that’s because Apple’s computers, tablets, and phones come with a high base price but are extremely stingy with memory and storage upgrades.

Even by 2023, when memory and storage prices had become dirt cheap, Apple’s latest computers still started with 8GB of memory. If you wanted a memory upgrade, sorry, you couldn’t do it yourself; you had to buy the high-spec version right from the start.

And the price of Apple’s memory and storage was outrageous. For example, upgrading from 8GB to 16GB would cost an extra 1,500 dollars!

Upgrading a solid state hard disk from 256GB to 512GB also cost an additional 1,500 dollars!

This was easily more than five times the price of the top-tier memory and storage available on the market...

But you couldn’t just not buy it, because Apple had integrated the memory and SSD directly into the chip or motherboard, making it impossible for you to upgrade on your own; you were forced to buy their overpriced memory and storage!

Apple users could only pinch their noses and be harvested by Apple; no choice, it was a "productivity tool," after all.

However, from the perspective of a major shareholder, Wang Ye really liked a professional manager like Cook, not for anything else, but because the old man truly knew how to make money for the company!

It was under Cook that Apple became the first company in the world with a market value exceeding one trillion, two trillion, and three trillion dollars!

Oh, the unit is US dollars...

Thinking about his own sixteen percent stake, when the company’s market value exceeded three trillion US dollars, it would be worth nearly five hundred billion US dollars; even Wang Ye was a bit excited!

So, his attitude towards Cook was quite warm...

......

Actually, there wasn’t much to see at Apple headquarters. After a brief tour, Cook took him to his office, planning to show Wang Ye the first-generation Apple phone that was about to be launched.

Although Wang Ye had known about the project from the beginning, and even offered some suggestions on the phone’s exterior design, he had never personally seen the final product; the project was subject to strict confidentiality, and nobody outside knew about it.

Even the media reporters who came to the new product launch today had no idea that Apple was going to introduce a phone product!

They thought it was a new computer model or an IPOD that was to be released, never even considering the possibility of a phone.

Wang Ye examined the exquisitely small iPhone 1 in his hand, with its metal body and 3.5-inch LCD "large screen," the single round HOME button on the front making this phone exceptionally different.

Of course, in Wang Ye’s eyes, this was nothing special; after all, in his previous life, he had used too many phones with larger screens and stronger functions.

But Nalan Yaqi and Nova, the two girls who came with Wang Ye, were stunned by the phone.

It was their first time seeing such a beautiful phone; even their regular Vichu phones, worth tens of thousands of dollars, didn’t look as attractive as this one.

Wang Ye skillfully operated the phone, turning on the screen and casually browsing the system. After all, it was the first-generation Apple phone, still too rudimentary in many ways. Perhaps the only highlight was the 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen, which didn’t offer much more than the Nokias, Samsungs, and Motorolas of that time.

Moreover, the first-generation Apple phone didn’t even feature a proprietary chip yet; the system wasn’t even called iOS, but iPhone OS 1.0, and there was no App Store. It came pre-installed with only a few simple apps, such as a browser, email, music, weather, etc.

In conclusion, it wasn’t much stronger than other mobile phones available on the market at the time.

But in terms of user experience, it was already enough to outclass all competitors. After all, with a touchscreen, one could use their fingers to interact directly with the screen, which was more intuitive and user-friendly.

It’s important to know that with phones that had alphabetic keys, performing a relatively simple action involved quite a cumbersome process; even many functions were unattainable.