Review of Apple Confidential

 

Hands-On Review

Apple Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer, Inc.

By Owen M. Lintzmayer

1999 No Starch Press. 268p

Price: $17.95 list, $14.36 Amazon.Com

2/28/00 -- Brought to you by Copyright 2000 by Bill Fox

Let me start off right up front with the bottom line: Apple Confidential is one terrific book. Even if you are not a user of the best ever personal computing operating system and hardware technology, you will find the book hard to put down. Owen serves up all you want to know about Apple Computer, Inc., and the personalities that have revolved around it from the beginning up through early last year and then some. I have closely followed Apple since the late 1970's as a user, supporter, defender, evangelist and lately a part time "volunteer" reporter. But still Owen packed Apple Confidential with many interesting things and event explanations with documentation that I didn't know. I could hardly put it down. In fact, my reading time segments were determined only the airplane's flight schedule.

Apple Confidential is not written like a novel nor as a straight historical time sequence but rather it has a series of subject chapters, kind of like a text book but not really, that themselves generally follow a time sequence. However, each subject chapter has its own complete time sequence reaching back in time through the future that overlaps temporally with adjacent chapters. This is an interesting style that allows the book to be read in chapter by chapter segments and permits one to easily find all there is about a particular subject without having to know where in time to look within the whole book. Many will like this style but some may find the frequent references to other chapters (See "Chapter x," page x) a little annoying. It caused me to leaf forward and backward as I read through the book as I went but I didn't find this objectionable.

The book is full of neat facts. For example, did you know that there were originally three partners in Apple Computer? Maybe. There were the two Steves, of course, and a third partner who is not Mike Markula (he came along later with a bunch of much-needed money). Do you know what the third person is doing today? Read the book and you will. It is interesting to ponder if one would have opted out as Ron Wayne did. From the way that Owen tells it, I'm afraid that I might have.

It surprised me that I didn't realize that there have been so few Apple President/CEOs: Mike Scott, John Sculley, Michael Spindler, Gilbert Amelio and now Steve Jobs, since he just dropped the "interim" designation last month. Owen describes what happened during their tenure, pointing out the screw ups, wastage, blind arrogance, internal politics and opportunities lost, but also carefully and fairly pointing out the key contributions that each made to the survival of Apple as we know it today.

Owen does an excellent job of tracking the winding path of Steve Jobs within Apple Computer, Inc., while he was away from Apple forming NeXT and making Pixar successful and during his recent return. Jobs is clearly depicted as the sparkplug needed for any budding enterprise to be successful. He displays the necessary combination of self confidence, vision, right ideas, drive and ruthlessness as captured in Apple Confidential. Today's Apple Computer is certainly Steve Jobs personified and we, the greater washed, love every bit of it.

There is less information about the second founder Steve Wozniak but his path has been straighter and simpler. Woz comes across as a fairly private guy who has a low financial comfort point and is somewhat incredulous that people give him so much money to do the things he loves to do (like baseball's Babe Ruth) and oblivious to the opportunities to make more. I have never met him but based on Owen's writings, Woz seems to be the intelligent and generous humanist that everyone would love to have as a good friend. This impression is confirmed to me through the occasional emails that he has posted to several of the discussion lists that I subscribe to. Apple Confidential also lists the whereabouts of many other key personalities in Apple's history.

Apple Confidential has lots of interesting notes, quotes, drawings and photographs in the side margins of each page that enhance its reading pleasure. There are also numerous tables of information and timeline charts plus a bibliography and an extensive index.

In summary, Apple Confidential is part novel, part history and part textbook. Owen Lintzmayer weaves this combination into a superbly informative and interesting book for the rest of us. You are not surprised that I highly recommend it, are you?

Copyright © 2000 by Bill Fox
All rights reserved--no use permitted without attribution.

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