Returning wealthy individuals develop their hometowns and become rich in the 1980s

"cell phone?!"

Jobs held the square plastic machine in his palm, turning it over and over to examine it. On the front was a gray-green LCD screen about two fingers wide, and below the screen were a dense array of backlit buttons, each printed with numbers and letters.

A short, thick antenna protruded from the top of the fuselage, resembling a severed chopstick. On the back was a handwritten label with Chinese characters written in ballpoint pen that Jobs couldn't understand.

『Engineering Prototype』.

"This is so ugly," Jobs frowned, his tone carrying an undisguised disgust, like a gourmet seeing someone fry a steak into the shape of a shoe sole. "There's absolutely no aesthetic sense involved in designing this."

Chen Dong curled his lip. He thought Steve Jobs would first ask about the phone's functions, but he didn't expect that his first complaint would be about the phone's "appearance". Indeed, not to mention that Steve Jobs was a minimalist perfectionist, even Chen Dong thought that the engineering prototype designed by Huaxing Communications was a bit ugly.

Steve Jobs ignored Chen Dong's changing expression. He lowered his head and fiddled with the phone in his hand, pressing the buttons a few times with his thumb. The screen lit up, emitting a faint backlight, displaying a simple Chinese interface, followed by signal strength and battery level indicators.

"There are too many buttons," Jobs said, pursing his lips. "Too many unnecessary function keys can be completely removed, which would make it much easier for users to operate."

"That's a good suggestion," Chen Dong nodded. "I'll suggest to them that the new prototype should have half of the buttons removed, keeping only the number keys, confirmation, and back buttons, and the screen should be doubled in size."

"What can this phone do?" Jobs asked, then, seemingly realizing he hadn't been clear enough, added, "I mean, besides communication, what else can it do?"

"Send a text message, save the number, and check the time," Chen Dong replied succinctly.

Jobs flipped the machine over, then flipped it back over. "Can't it do anything else?"

"Not right now, but I'm thinking maybe it can do something else," Chen Dong leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. "Steve, I'd like to ask you to help this engineering phone with an operating system."

Scully, standing nearby, asked Chen Dong with some surprise, "Mr. Chen, do you mean you want to install an operating system on this phone?"

"Yes, this is a mobile phone with the SJ001 chip, the latest technology developed by Aiwa Technology Co., Ltd., built in." Chen Dong took out a transparent plastic card from his briefcase, in which the SJ001 chip was embedded. "This is a mobile phone that can connect to digital networks."

"Mr. Chen, you mean it can connect to digital networks?" Sculley leaned in, his face filled with disbelief, "Just with such a small chip?"

"Yes," Chen Dong replied with a smile. Scully was quite shocked, but Jobs calmly continued to fiddle with the engineering prototype in his hands. He asked Chen Dong, "What kind of operating system do you plan to develop?"

"I want to transform its operating system from a simple one-dimensional system that can only move left and right to a two-dimensional system that can move up, down, left, and right," Chen Dong said.

Jobs frowned. Don't underestimate the seemingly simple transition from left to right or up and down to being able to move freely up, down, left, and right. One dimension is a line, while two dimensions are a plane. The huge gap between a line and a plane is not simple.

"Tony, do you know what going from one-dimensional to two-dimensional means?"

"I know!"

"No, you don't understand," Jobs stood up somewhat excitedly, "This isn't about adding a few buttons or changing a few lines of code. What you're asking for isn't 'improvement,' it's a refactoring."

Jobs turned and walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, drew a horizontal line, and placed a dot at each end of the line. "One-dimensional means a line between these two points. Users can only move back and forth along this line, entering from one menu and exiting from another. The path is fixed."

He paused for a moment, then drew a box below the horizontal bar to enclose it. Inside the box, he drew a few small icons and pointed at them with his finger. "Two dimensions are a surface. Users don't have to follow the route you designed. They can go here or there, skip around, or go back. They look at a screen and decide where to click. This screen is the whole world you give them."

Jobs turned around and looked at Chen Dong, his eyes filled with that kind of focus on technical details and stubbornness about the product direction. Then he suddenly grinned and said, "Tony, you have big ambitions. You want to make this phone something that can be operated with a graphical interface."

"Yes," Chen Dong nodded in agreement. "So, Steve, could you help me complete the operating system for this phone?"

Steve Jobs didn't answer Chen Dong's question. Instead, he turned around and walked back to the whiteboard, muttering to himself, "Your team can't make this operating system. If you could, you would have done it long ago. You wouldn't be here today looking for me."

"In other words, if I'm the first to develop this mobile operating system, then I'll be the first in the world!"

"No, no, no, I can't allow the operating system I designed to be maintained by someone else. It's my life's work," Jobs muttered, then suddenly turned to Chen Dong. "Tony, give this mobile phone project to Apple. I can help you design the graphical interface system you want."

Chen Dong smiled and spread his hands. "Steve, I've already invested no less than ten million US dollars in this project, and investment banks in Southeast Asia and the Chinese government are also involved. I can't hand the project over to Apple. I can only say, I'm sorry!"

"Oh no!"

Jobs rubbed his face vigorously and paced back and forth in the office, while Sculley took a different approach and said, "Mr. Chen, could you ask Aiwa Technology to also provide a batch of SJ001 chips to Apple? We can also design a 2G phone ourselves."

"I'll design the operating system for you," Jobs said, suddenly hearing Sculley's suggestion. He walked over to Chen Dong and said, "but you have to license the SJ001 chip to Apple as well. I also want to design Apple's own 2G phone!"

"Can!"

Jobs stared intently at Chen Dong. "I need the chip's detailed specifications and development kit, including the instruction set, memory mapping, peripheral interfaces, and power management. I need to know what this chip can and cannot do."

Jobs seemed almost mesmerized as he spoke, pacing frantically around the office again while muttering to himself, "I'm going to design the operating system to its limits, according to my own ideas."

Chen Dong and Scully exchanged a glance and gave a helpless wry smile. They knew that Steve Jobs, this tech "madman," had already begun to conceive of how to design the system.