Chapter 311 Ripples
At the Maple Leaf Computer launch conference, Fang Hexuan was not very busy, but he still met many people.

Moreover, they were all rushed for meetings and conversations, which not only had a fast pace, but also tested his ability to quickly remember these people's names, hobbies and biographical information with the reminder of his assistant.

After completing the talks with five Wall Street giants, he spent nearly two hours seeing off the last important guest. It was already past three in the afternoon.

But he still couldn't rest and had to rush to the flagship store in Cupertino to take a look.

In fact, he didn't hold out much hope, because this was not the era of advanced information and mature computer industry as it is in later generations.

Even though he held a grand press conference and invited many media to interview him on site, he still did not have high expectations for the number of customers visiting the flagship store on the first day of opening.

The cultivation of the personal computer market is a marathon, which requires Maple Leaf Computer to work together with Apple, IBM, and later Dell, HP and other companies to develop it.

When I entered the store, I was slightly shocked by the almost packed crowd, as I had prepared myself mentally in advance.

Although many people came in just to have a look and there were also some reporters doing on-site interviews, the 400-square-meter front hall, according to the store manager, has been almost always crowded from the opening time in the morning until now, almost four o'clock.

In order to give the boss an intuitive feeling, the female manager gave a rough number - so far, about 3500 people have been received.

In Fang Hexuan's opinion, this was already exaggerated, after all, the area was only 400 square meters.

This is the result of taking public safety into consideration and implementing flow control measures in accordance with prior arrangements.

Then he asked about the sales data, and the answer he got was that within 7 hours, 487 units of the whole machine were sold on the spot and 1052 units were pre-ordered.

I calculated in my mind that the purchase rate is nearly 44%, which is not bad, very good!
Although he knew that he would not have such high enthusiasm for purchasing, Fang Hexuan still felt satisfied.

With the subsequent help of mainstream media in promoting the product, he believes that even if there is not a 44% purchase rate on the first day, 20%-40% should be expected.

Maple Leaf cannot obtain real-time sales data from other channels, but it can get some idea through the market conditions of the flagship store.

In order to cope with the launch, Maple Leaf has prepared 2 units of inventory in North America, and another 5 units have been packaged in the factory in Neon.

According to the current sales situation, I am afraid that these 2 units will be sold out within a month.

Fang Hexuan has repeatedly emphasized within Maple Leaf that it is important to attach importance to user experience. This experience process not only includes after-sales but also pre-sales.

Therefore, the company also made designs and arrangements in many details.

For example, in order to obtain real feedback from customers, the store provides a small gift to all customers entering the store, hoping that they will assist in completing a small survey before leaving the store.

The content of this survey is not fixed and may be different in each issue, but the number of questions is 12, neither more nor less.

For customers who purchase on-site, we will also provide additional gifts such as mouse pads, computer dust cloths, etc., and the questions they need help answering may be more in-depth and specific.

In this day and age, customers are quite cooperative in completing questionnaire surveys, not to mention that there are gifts involved.

Fang Hexuan just reminded the marketing manager who was accompanying them to update the questionnaire format every once in a while to reduce customer resentment.

He also read hundreds of questionnaires and roughly understood the main reasons why customers were willing to buy Maple I.

First, the appearance is very beautiful, especially the integrated design, including the mouse and keyboard, as well as the acrylic shell in different colors. As many as 85 people (100 copies) chose this reason.

Second, the GUI interface is very friendly.

Third, the desktop comes with office software which is very practical. Fourth, the equipment performance parameters are excellent.

······
What made Fang Hexuan laugh and cry was that there were actually customers who wrote a few more reasons besides the 12 questions, one of which was saying that the internal environment of the flagship store was very cool and the computer performance must be not bad.

Apple's headquarters is not far from the Maple Leaf Computer flagship store.

Jobs, Wozniak and several engineers gathered in a laboratory.

As the entire Maple Leaf computer was dismantled to pieces and all its components were displayed one by one, almost everyone in the room had a solemn expression on their faces.

"Woz, what do you think of this Maple I?"

Wozniak, who was already a little fat, scratched his head, thought for a while, and said:
"Obviously, we have a new formidable competitor."

Jobs was somewhat dissatisfied with Wozniak's laziness and spoke in a more serious tone.

"anything else?"

"It's already clear that they are coming for us."

Jobs nodded and said to himself:

"I feel like I'm being stared at by a lion. The industrial design concept of this computer coincides with my ideas, and the GUI interface is even more abominable. It directly copied our answers."

Wozniak added:

"Need I say that? We are the pioneers, and any follower will definitely learn from us."

Hearing this, Jobs was a little angry. He stared at his old friend and said unhappily:
"I said it was plagiarism, not just borrowing, what a despicable company!"

Wozniak, on the other hand, was very open-minded. He reminded:
"We can't say they copied the design because we can't register a patent for a design idea. Besides, the appearance of our Apple II and the Apple Lisa that will be released next year are also different from theirs."

"As for the GUI design, Maple Leaf can easily put the blame on Microsoft."

In his heart, Wozniak actually did not quite agree with what Jobs said. The GUI solution was not originally thought of by Apple. Jobs obviously borrowed it from the Xerox Alto.

But Jobs insisted on applying the concept of "GUI is Apple's original creation" to the company's marketing, and he couldn't stop him.

Moreover, Wozniak also understood that there were some things that Jobs deliberately did not say, that is, even if the industrial design and GUI interface were not counted, Maple I was better than Apple II in many aspects.

Although he was reluctant to admit this result as the chief engineer of Apple II, he hated to lie to himself even more.

Wozniak was as proud as Jobs, but he believed that if he was really not as skilled as others, he should learn from them and then defeat them.

He believed that Old Joe thought the same, but he was just too stubborn.

"Woz, which side are you on? I don't care whether they admit it or not, I'm going to make a big fuss about this. This is America, and plagiarism is a shameful thing!"

Wozniak shook his head helplessly, and couldn't help but complain in his heart:
"Why bother, Steve? Instead of getting entangled with others, you should quickly launch Lisa. It would be better to quickly start the project of developing the next generation of personal computers."

(End of this chapter)