Android 1.0: Free for the Masses
At the screen for selecting the American Dream country, Yoo Jae-won chose the United States and clicked next. A prompt appeared requesting a registration number—a sixteen-character combination of letters and numbers. Having already memorized it, he entered the code without hesitation.
The next screen asked him to set an ID and password. “For perfect security, I recommend creating an ID paired with a twelve-character or longer password that mixes letters, numbers, and special characters,” Yoo Jae-won explained. “Of course, if you’re in an environment where privacy is already well protected, you could skip it. Still, I advise setting a password regardless. You never know what might happen. For those who dislike complexity, I suggest using a PIN instead. Just four digits will grant you access to Android 1.0’s powerful security features.”
When he clicked “Use PIN” beside the password field, a graphical dial pad appeared. The PIN did not replace the original password; it served as a shortcut that retrieved the actual password from a specially configured space called the Secure Area. Yoo Jae-won hoped many people would use the security system he and the Silicon Valley development team had worked so hard to build. Fewer users would lose data to hackers or viruses and then complain to the ID Group QA center. Of course, whether or not a password was set, the responsibility ultimately rested with the user—an agreement that appeared on screen at that moment.
The terms were not written in the tiny print typical of insurance contracts. The text was large and easy to read, though the length had increased accordingly. Yoo Jae-won was confident the terms were fair. He had instructed Alan Smith, head of the legal team, to clearly define the responsibilities of both the company and consumers, distributing them as evenly as possible. He had no desire to be called an evil empire like Microsoft, so he had insisted on the fairest possible agreement.
After checking the confirmation box and clicking Finish, the screen changed.
—Setup complete.
—Starting Android 1.0.
Grand music played alongside a short typographic sequence, and then the Android 1.0 desktop and ribbon interface appeared. While Android Alpha had been innovative, Android 1.0 was entirely different from the very first visual impression. It supported 24-bit color—16 million hues—producing visuals of breathtaking vibrancy. The high resolution made the blue meadow wallpaper look like a printed photograph. The icons on the desktop had also been redesigned: larger, more colorful, and far more intuitive.
“There’s far too much to show you, and far too little time,” Yoo Jae-won said. “So I’ll give you a taste of Android 1.0’s new capabilities through a few representative programs.”
He clicked the Start button and moved the cursor to the Games section. “You may remember that Android Alpha was conceived as the world’s first gaming operating system. No other application consumes a computer’s resources quite like a game. Graphics, sound, and complex calculations must all run simultaneously, so stable operating-system-level support is essential. If games run well, other applications will too. Android 1.0 carries on that spirit. Its gaming performance will exceed anything you imagined.”
As he spoke, dozens of game titles filled the screen. ID Software’s flagship titles were present, and major releases distributed by Electronic Arts already had patches supporting Android 1.0.
“And here we have Glide X2, which delivers a perfect 3D world.” After the game title screens flashed by, the Glide logo appeared—version X2. There had been extensive discussion among Yoo Jae-won, John Carmack, and James Augustine about whether to call it 3D or keep the 2.0 naming. In the end, more time had been spent choosing the name than debating the functions themselves. All three were experts in the field, so there had been no disagreement on the groundbreaking functions to include. Although Yoo Jae-won knew many graphics-processing functions optimized for the twenty-first century, some of the routines John and James had created were also excellent. His own contributions, however, often demanded hardware support that did not yet exist—beautiful results at the cost of terrible performance.
After much debate, they had settled on Glide X2. Building on the original Glide X, they added a 3D graphics library and high-fidelity sound support.
“Android 1.0 comes with five bundled games: Minesweeper, Solitaire, Mahjong Solitaire, Chess, and Virtual Boxer.” The first four were proven board-game classics. Minesweeper had been discovered in Microsoft’s plans for their next Windows operating system and was simply ported to Android 1.0. Solitaire was the traditional card game, while Mahjong Solitaire involved matching pairs of scattered tiles. All had already proven their appeal. Rendered in 24-bit color, they looked spectacular. Network play modes had also been added so Android 1.0 users could compete against one another.
Yoo Jae-won’s cursor passed Minesweeper and Mahjong Solitaire before stopping at Virtual Boxer. Naturally, that was his choice. As the title suggested, it was a boxing game. The full-screen graphic showed a boxer beginning his shadow-boxing routine. Yet the boxer’s form was completely unlike anything seen before. Instead of flat 2D images created in a program like Painter, this boxer was built from polygons—the smallest units of 3D graphics. Because of the polygon structure, the boxer had a distinctly angular appearance. Still, the visual was unlike anything most viewers had ever seen, and it immediately captured their attention. The advantages of 3D were on full display as the camera moved freely around the boxer. Every punch was accompanied by a satisfying whoosh.
The audience reacted instantly. A character composed entirely of polygons was something they had never encountered. Even though the model was crude, the boxer’s movements were fundamentally different from any computer graphics they had seen before.
Virtual Boxer had come about almost by accident. Yoo Jae-won, John Carmack, and James Augustine had wanted to demonstrate Glide X2’s capabilities to game developers. The best computers of the era could only handle around fifteen thousand polygons per second, making detailed modeling difficult. Creating an entire cityscape of square buildings with polygons was already challenging, let alone rendering nature. In the end, they settled on boxing. A single boxer could be constructed with roughly three hundred polygons. The result was the fighter now shadow-boxing on screen. The model was inspired by the legendary Muhammad Ali, though without motion capture it was difficult to recognize him at a glance.
Once they had one boxer, someone suggested adding a second and turning the whole thing into an actual boxing match. Testing showed it was surprisingly fun. The arrow keys and Q, W, A, and S controlled high, middle, and low guards along with jabs, straights, hooks, and uppercuts. The player simply watched the timing and pressed the guard key or one of the four punch keys. Visually it looked like a fighting game, but mechanically it was closer to rock-paper-scissors.
Yoo Jae-won selected VS COM and began a match against the computer. There was no character selection screen, no bombastic announcer—only the sound of a bell and the start of the fight. The difficulty was set high; a single round would end the match, so an easy game would quickly become boring. The computer character unleashed a flurry of punches, each accompanied by a sharp whoosh of air. A stamina gauge meant that even constant guarding would eventually fail if too many hits landed. Naturally, stamina also drained faster when throwing punches, so Yoo Jae-won waited for the computer’s stamina to drop before counterattacking.
After several exchanges of offense and defense, the screen flashed:
—KO!
Yoo Jae-won had depleted the computer character’s health bar first. He had paused his commentary while controlling the fighter, but the audience reaction had grown even louder. After all, this was the first time anyone had seen two polygon-based boxers facing off in a game.
Yoo Jae-won finally looked satisfied. The language input system, one of his secret weapons, had received only a lukewarm response, but 3D had delivered the explosive reaction he expected. Riding that momentum, he demonstrated Android’s various multimedia features: audio CD playback, MIDI production, graphic work, and even office tasks using ID Office—all performed flawlessly. The highlight was multitasking. The limited multitasking glimpsed in Android Alpha had reached its completed form in Android 1.0. A new system-monitoring program called Task Manager allowed real-time observation of the computer’s status and removal of unnecessary processes. The venue erupted into pure excitement.
“Android 1.0 will also be provided free of charge to individual users in the form of adware.”
The final flourish was the announcement of free distribution. Some computer magazines had predicted that while Android Alpha was free, version 1.0 would be paid. Especially after Yoo Jae-won’s acquisition of Microsoft, certain columnists had speculated he might finally reveal his greed. Those comments had failed to resonate with readers. ID Group’s public image exceeded what the media had imagined. Releasing Android Alpha for free had already been remarkable, and even the paid software was dramatically cheaper than competitors while maintaining higher quality. People naturally loved it. What had truly elevated ID Group’s reputation was Doom—free network play over the internet had been extraordinary. Offering Android 1.0 to individuals as free adware was, to Yoo Jae-won, simply the natural next step. Revenue from individual sales was never a major portion of the business anyway. Once market share reached complete monopoly, things might change, but for now the bulk of revenue came from large computer manufacturers, corporate licenses, and advertising. Free distribution to individual users therefore posed no problem.
There was one small hurdle to the free distribution method: file size. Android Alpha had fit on two 2HD floppy disks. Android 1.0 required more than ten. The disks alone would cost fifteen thousand Korean won. Yoo Jae-won’s solution was to limit the number of free copies. He planned to press only one million free packages. Recipients would need to fill out a personal information card. Even so, those one million copies would sell out almost immediately. Preparations for that eventuality were already in place.