This book, written by a Wall Street Journal technology reporter, is the most detailed study to date of the past decade of Apple's turbulent history. Jim Carlton walks us down company corridors, into the boardroom, and through barriers to research laboratories, and reveals a seething cauldron of petty infighting and buried secrets. Through exhaustive interviews with more than 160 former Apple employees, industry experts, and competitors--including Bill Gates, Scully, and Amelio--Carlton discovers confidential memos, late night rendezvous, and fateful decisions that forever changed the company's path. He portrays a company very different from the glamorous technology leader that designed computers for "the rest of us" and illuminates what might have been and what really happened to this once-great icon of American business.
Computer users who favor Macintosh products are truly enthralled with their machines. But after reading Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders, even the most zealous may be hard-pressed to defend the company that produces them. Here, Wall Street Journal technology reporter Jim Carlton chronicles the missteps that have befuddled the fallen giant of Cupertino between the initial and current regimes of cofounder Steve Jobs. Carlton combines a keen sense of observation with a slew of previously undisclosed facts to produce a damning history that will leave many wondering how the firm has managed to survive.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
Interesting to see the accumulation of "could haves":
While others have noted the writing style (tolerable - I've seen far worse), the book as a whole is rather thorough and interesting. Granted, it was published before Apple's comeback, so there is (perhaps) too much emphasis upon the failures. However, the accumulated "could have" stories are interesting fare, things that may have been overlooked in the tale of a successful company's history. Here we see the flirtations with Sun, with Apollo, the AIM alliance and PowerPC, porting to x86 hardware, the Newton,... more info
Jim Carlton Was Wrong:
Useful history and inside looks, but reading his 1998 back-of-the-hand dismissal of Apple's chances of survival is pretty humorous nowadays. His opinion that Apple should have licensed earlier is similarly wrong-headed and lacking in any technical appreciation of the downsides of licensing (dilution of brand,difficult QA processes, cherry-picking, loss of platform homogenieity ).
He similarly doesn't understand the silliness of Apple developing an x86 MacOS in the early 90's, and again reveals his... more info
It's OK . . .:
Jim Carlton's "Apple" is a fascinating account about the growth, the fall, the rebirth, and the slow decline of one of Silicon Valley's original PC pioneer. It provides an exhaustive account of the egos and problems within the top ranks that prevented Apple from being a great company. Again and again, Carlton shows how Apple blew opportunities to become a "standard" in the PC industry if it had licensed its technology, merged with a partner like IBM or Sun, or just had the competence to execute effectively... more info
Missed Opportunities:
Carlton relates time after time after time (after time) how Apple rose to great heights of genius and creativity, and then threw opportunity away with both hands and ran the other direction. The title is descriptive of the downs (but the book also covers the ups) of this amazing company. One of the few critical and unbiased (mostly) looks at Apple. All Macintosh fans and Steve Jobsians should read this book to get the other side. I was actually going to interview with Apple until I read this story.
