The Calm Before the Storm
Time flew by, and June had already arrived. So much had happened in the meantime. After all, no matter how shocking a news story might be, it rarely stayed in the public eye for more than three days. Amid that flood of headlines, ID Group hadn't made many appearances. It was inevitable. The company had launched so many major initiatives from last year through the start of this one that its full resources had been mobilized just to handle them all.
ID Electronics, now a global electronics powerhouse, needed to reorganize its business units, eliminate redundant structures, and establish new growth engines. On top of that, they'd launched a major project like the Xbox, leaving ID Group with no bandwidth to start anything new. In the meantime, several significant international news stories broke.
First, Putin had been elected President of Russia. Yoo Jae-won had reached out to him years earlier and become an active supporter, but many people still saw his victory as coming out of nowhere. Countries with limited ties to former communist states, like South Korea, were especially lacking in information. Even though Yoo Jae-won had been focused on the Xbox project, he couldn't skip the congratulatory call. Naturally, since Yoo Jae-won ranked quite high on Putin's list of priorities, they were able to speak quickly and at length. As a bonus, he received a polite invitation to the Kremlin.
Yoo Jae-won gladly accepted and arranged to meet sometime in July. He and Tiffany had decided to hold their wedding once the Xbox project wrapped up, followed by a honeymoon that would last a full month. It had been a long time since Yoo Jae-won had taken any real rest, so he planned to take an entire month off to celebrate a once-in-a-lifetime event. They intended to visit every major resort destination around the world, and Europe was naturally on the list. While they were there, they would also stop by Russia.
In April, South Korea held its general election. This time, Yoo Jae-won stayed out of the spotlight. In the past, he had drawn up the big picture—from election strategy to advertising—but this time he didn't even appear in any campaign ads. Instead, he provided financial support within legal bounds and helped clean up the chaotic candidate selection process, where all sorts of scandals kept erupting. That alone was enough. The other parties, especially the opposition, had been mired in endless controversy during their own nominations.
Exposés were the bare minimum. Refusals to accept nominations, forced candidacies—it was a complete mess, laying bare the ugly face of Korean politics at its worst. Thanks to that, the election results were predictable. The Democratic Party swept 120 seats, the Tongil National Party barely reached 100, the Grand National Party took 70, and the remaining 10 went to the Democratic Korea Party.
The Democratic Party had failed to secure a majority on its own, but a coalition with the Tongil National Party would give them a commanding 220 seats. In theory, they could push through constitutional amendments again if they wanted. But that was just theory. In practice, it only allowed for stable parliamentary operations. It couldn't be helped—the political philosophies of the Democratic Party and the Tongil National Party differed significantly.
Simply put, the Tongil National Party favored big government while the Democratic Party leaned toward small government, so conflicts were inevitable. The three biggest points of contention were immediately clear. The first was education—specifically, a massive expansion of test-free university admissions. The second was the full implementation of a national pension system. Yoo Jae-won knew both policies carried serious side effects and naturally opposed them, but people on the Democratic Party side seemed to view them as the only solutions.
The last issue was the handling of the Korea Daily. The newspaper was backed into a corner. Key figures from the owner's family couldn't avoid arrest, and astronomical fines were all but confirmed. Both matters now awaited only the Supreme Court's ruling, and the atmosphere at the Korea Daily was one of pure despair. Once it became clear there was no chance of a reversal even in the Supreme Court, they began seeking a political solution. They started running a string of favorable articles about the Blue House and the Democratic Party, hoping to broker a political reconciliation.
President Kim Dae-jung and the Democratic Party, who found the ongoing war with the media burdensome, wanted to make peace at this point. Yoo Jae-won, however, remained determined to see things through to the end. The coalition hadn't fractured yet, but these disagreements could escalate in an instant.
Yoo Jae-won frowned as he read the political trends report from the Korean intelligence team. No matter how closely he studied it, the summit that should have taken place on June 13th was nowhere to be found. There were only vague mentions of behind-the-scenes contacts, with no signs of an imminent meeting.
The North Korea situation had changed dramatically because of him. Originally, the meeting between President Kim Dae-jung and National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong-il should have been the historic first North-South summit. But now the first summit had already taken place between former President Kim Young-sam and Kim Il-sung, and there had been others during Jeon Myeong-heon's time as Prime Minister and President. The impact of a North-South summit had greatly diminished.
Instead, it was time to discuss practical cooperation that could benefit both sides, such as economic projects. According to Vice Chairman Choi Kang-wook's report, a major joint North-South event was likely to take place by the end of the year. The light-water reactor being built in North Korea through KEDO was nearing completion. A grand festival was planned to celebrate the occasion, and President Kim Dae-jung's attendance was considered highly likely.
Yoo Jae-won closed the political trends report and opened a new file. This one contained an analysis of competitor movements. While ID Group had taken a brief breather, its rivals had been catching up quickly. Among them, the most threatening was undoubtedly Apple.
At the end of January, Apple had unveiled new products at Macworld. It was the third-generation iPod. New iPod models came out every year, but the third generation was different. Two years earlier, Yoo Jae-won had looked at the original iPod and thought it hadn't changed at all. This time, however, he actually gasped. The iPod, which had seemed completely stagnant, had undergone a total transformation in its third generation.
A large front LCD display now featured a pressure-sensitive touchscreen. The volume and power buttons had all been moved to the side. It could play not only audio files but high-definition video as well, and it even ran built-in mobile applications and games. The strategic planning office concluded that it looked like Apple had referenced the Livepod as much as possible. Yoo Jae-won agreed. The iPod 3 he remembered from his previous life had looked nothing like this. In the original timeline, something like this wouldn't have appeared until 2007. It bore a striking resemblance to the iPod Touch.
That said, its level of completion was significantly lower than the actual iPod Touch. Compared to the original, the display module was smaller and lower resolution, and the processor was less powerful. Still, when compared to ID Technology's Livepod, everything except the display components showed superior performance.
In Yoo Jae-won's judgment, the iPod 3 was acting as a vanguard. In the original timeline, the iPod Touch had only been released after the iPhone. The iPod Touch was essentially an iPhone with GPS and calling functions removed. This time, the order had been reversed. It seemed Apple was testing the waters for the iPhone through the iPod 3.
The new products Apple announced at Macworld weren't limited to the iPod 3. The real star of the show was the operating system called OS X. Apple had always maintained its own proprietary GUI-based operating system, which they simply called OS. This new version was number 10, and they replaced the number with the Roman numeral X, hence the name OS X.
However, OS X had very poor compatibility with Apple's previous operating systems. That was understandable. The older OS 9 and earlier had structural limitations that prevented them from supporting preemptive multitasking, and they lacked support for many new technologies. Their 3D processing capabilities were especially weak. To overcome these limitations, Steve Jobs decided to rebuild everything from the ground up.
What he brought in was NeXTSTEP, an operating system created by the company NeXT, which Jobs had founded after being ousted from Apple. It was armed with innovative technology that rivaled even the Android OS, but its closed nature—running only on NeXT's own hardware—prevented it from gaining widespread popularity. Its technical completeness, however, was exceptional. Apple had taken that system and adapted it as the operating system for Mac computers.
The mobile version of OS X had been installed on the iPod 3, allowing it to compete with Android's mobile operating system.
The reason Yoo Jae-won thought it was excessive was simple. The device and operating system were so similar that anyone who had used a Livepod or Android ME would notice it immediately. While there were still some uniquely Apple elements, many aspects of the system strongly reminded users of the Android OS. The security system, in particular, had been copied directly from Android. They had created a secure area for storing personal information and built a separate protection system around it.
The iPod 3 also showed clear references to the Livepod and T-Touch Phone. The one-handed touch interface and overall hardware structure were so alike they could almost be called twins. Some IT publications had even gone so far as to say that Steve Jobs had given up on innovation and was simply copying ID Group.
Still, Yoo Jae-won wasn't particularly disappointed by Steve Jobs' choice. When it came to efficiency, there was nothing better than the me-too strategy. Imitating the successful number one was standard practice, and in Korea, it had even been adopted as a national strategy.
Of course, Yoo Jae-won had no intention of letting sloppy imitation slide. If patent infringement was detected, he would immediately file a lawsuit. But the legal battle with Apple hadn't begun yet. Apple wasn't stupid. They had put various safeguards in place to avoid patent theft lawsuits. When you took the device apart, the iPod 3 wasn't an exact copy of the Livepod or T-Touch Phone. In some areas, the iPod 3 was actually better.
The mobile processor was the key. The chip used in the iPod 3 featured ARM's Cortex-A4 architecture. Compared to ID Technology's MAP, the Cortex-A4 had lower absolute performance but far superior power efficiency. As a result, the iPod 3's battery life was longer than the Livepod's. However, because it sacrificed performance for efficiency, the Livepod still led in gaming. Since the device's main purpose was music playback, that wasn't a major issue.
The same was true for OS X. The area where users felt the strongest similarity was the interface. But a similar interface alone wasn't enough to file a lawsuit. The core kernel system of the operating system was completely different, after all.
Looking at Apple's movements, there was a very high chance they would unveil their trump card—the iPhone—by late summer at the earliest, or Thanksgiving at the latest. ID Group was naturally preparing its own smartphone, but the iPhone would be launching about a year earlier. Even so, Yoo Jae-won showed no signs of worry.
If the iPhone came out this year as he expected, it would be launching seven years earlier than in the original timeline. Even with the massive technological acceleration that had occurred in the IT sector, an iPhone released this early would struggle to maintain a high level of completion. Moreover, the biggest problem with Apple's new products was their economics.
It was true that the iPod 3 was better than the Livepod, but when price was factored in, it made people tilt their heads. Even the cheapest model cost over a million won. Even though American incomes were high, the number of people who would casually spend a million won on an MP3 player was extremely small. If the iPhone launched in this environment, its price would undoubtedly hold it back.
Having reached this conclusion, Yoo Jae-won closed the intelligence team's report. Something more urgent than Apple's movements was right in front of him. It was the Electronic Entertainment Expo—commonly known as E3—the world's largest and most prestigious gaming show.
ID Group had consistently participated in E3 in the past to showcase games from ID Entertainment. This year, however, was different. They had built the largest booth in E3 history. The only disappointment was that they hadn't secured the record for the single largest booth. SCE—Sony Computer Entertainment—had built a booth just as massive.
With the tide coming in, the organizers of E3 had even chosen this year's theme as Xbox versus PlayStation 2. Sony was displeased with this rival framing. How could the PlayStation, which had dominated the video game industry for years, be considered a rival to the Xbox, which hadn't even properly released a single title yet?
But E3 was being held in Las Vegas, America—Yoo Jae-won's backyard—and the majority of gamers had already accepted the rival narrative. With a clear rivalry established, interest in E3 had exploded to an all-time high. Online, the PlayStation faction and Xbox faction were practically at war with each other.
Yoo Jae-won himself felt a pleasant tension. Everything was perfectly prepared. Tomorrow, they would finally reveal everything they had prepared and engage in a true battle to determine who was the strongest in the gaming world.