Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company

Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company | Owen W. Linzmayer | Great History of Apple

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Apple Confidential...

	Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company Owen W. Linzmayer No Starch Press, 2004 - 323 pages average customer review:based on 102 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

pure reading pleasure!

Awesome book. Easy reading, clear and simple language, very communicating and entertaining. (and super fast shipping!)

Great History of Apple

Written in a very "user friendly" style, this is a great recitation of the history of Apple. I especially like the side-stories on almost every page. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in one of the most fascinating American corporations.

But is it Accurate?

I must say that I enjoy this book a lot as if covers many aspects and events within Apple that are sometimes not well documented. There are juicy info-snippets throughout the book, which makes this a good read. I was even at Apple during some of these events during the days during the introduction of System 7 until the acquisition of NeXT, Inc. Despite the praise, I must warn though that I find some inaccuracies and also found that a lot of the information is scrapping off the surface, perhaps from existing research or published works, but doesn't really dig too much deeper as needed in order to develop an informed historical understanding.

One obvious example is where Linzmayer states that "At the core of Mac OS X was Darwin, Apple's Linux-like operating system kernel" (280), but actually specifically Darwin is a modified Mach kernel that runs a BSD spice added. To say the kernel is "Linux-like" is plain flat wrong. In another section, Linzmayer paints the picture that "Apple had focused so much on producing the new generation of hardware and making the system software function seamlessly that creating PowerPC-native programming tools for developers wasn't a high priority" (235) and also that Metrowerks was the hero. Actually, Apple never really focused on developer tools even for 68K hardware, and in fact the MPW C compiler actually compiled C into Pascal code, which was compiled into binaries. Apple made a deal with Symantec to provide command-line PowerPC compilers for MPW, and much later in the game they cooperated with Metrowerks to encourage their efforts (Symantec's Think development division was a mismanaged sinking ship).

There's a lot of little things like this, but one thing profound was that in the chapter "From Diesel to Doctor" Linzmayer gives praise and defends Spindler in noting his "no-nonsense management experience" (233) and defends him by noting that "Spindler is a passionately private man" and notes that without Spindler Apple "would have ceased to exist" (233). However, around this time, Spindler was a brunt of jokes and Apple was left to the mercy of horrific managers, e.g. Dave Nagel.

Linzmayer credits Spindler with the transition to PowerPC processor in stating that "He had successfully polished Apple... while managing that Mac's transition from Motorola's 68000 family of processors to the new RISC-based PowerPC" (235). During this time, I don't think he was really involved as there was already a transition plan in place during the time of Sculley. Specifically, the transition to PowerPC was architected in part by the A/UX team using their nano-kernel and mixed-mode magic as they called it, and later developed on a Quadra 700 with a "Smurf" PowerPC daughter card. The future first generation of PowerMacs were based upon the Quadra 700 architecture using the same ROM running on the "Smurf" card. The hands-off or lack-of management of Spindler allowed the engineers to do what they do best.

In "The Copland Crisis" (273) there's no mention of some of the real problems that were around that time where the next generation OS "'did develop a flat tire on the road to greatness'" (274). Due to lack of management or mismanagement this product "Copland" (externally) or "Maxwell" (internally) became a disaster by trying to graft legacy non-re-entrant libraries like QuickDraw onto a micro-kernel architected - hence re-entrant - system called "NuKernel". Internally, SQA was predicting the OS could ship in 2020 with given metrics.

Later, when Ellen Hancock was on board after the announced Next, Inc. acquisition, her newly created compatibility team (bringing in ex-AU/X gurus with time proven knowledge undocumented ins/outs of legacy Mac internals) achieved 96% classic Mac OS compatibility on "NuKernel" through a sand-box approach in one whole month -- something that wasn't achieved for over 2 years under prior structure and management, which never realized or utilized AU/X team's proven success in bringing Mac OS compatibility to A/UX, HP-UX, AIX (never released), and Solaris combined with the PowerPC transition through nano-kernel. This sand-box was brought to Mac OS X naturally.

None of this material was mentioned in that chapter, and instead it focuses primarily on the NeXT vs. BeOS and NeXT acquisition, and ignores actually what really happened in the trenches. There might not have been a need to acquire an OS if the project was managed properly (though I'm glad they did acquire NeXT and Jobs. Woot. Woot. :).

But don't get me wrong, I think this is a great book, but it is missing a lot of detail, incorrectly paints or portrays some characters/situations, and is inaccurate in some places. Still a decent read (especially in the bathroom :)

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Exciting, Enthralling and Shocking!!

For a long time I wanted to know what was realling happening at this 'most watched' Silicon Valley startup. Due to the proximity problems and a lot of 'hear-say', I had coined my own story of the inside story of Apple. The first of my eye-opener was the movie called the 'Pirates of Silicon Valley'. This time, after reading almost 70% of the book by Owen W. Linzmayer, I am truely excited, enthralled and shocked. As one of the insiders of the Apple (Mr. Jef Ruskin himself) notes that this is very close to the reality, I feel the book is worth a lot more than the money I paid for.

I am sure this book serves as a lesson for all those who are interested in setting-up and running start-ups in the silicon valley. This book also serves as a lesson to those geeks who should be aware of how the business tycoons in the company could rule over the best-of-the-technology as a piece-of-crap.

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Easy to read history with a few faults

Linzmayer's book is an excellent addition to the library of any computer enthusiast and/or historian. This is a well-written, comprehensive work covering a broad range of Apple topics: the development of the Macintosh, the executives, the spin-offs (NeXT and Be), etc.. For a high-level overview of the company to OS X, this is a fine work. One particular feature that I loved was the inclusion of sidebar information, providing background, quotes (many of these are fantastic), and "where are they now" information without distracting the reader.

That said, Linzmayer doesn't sound entirely objective and his likes and dislikes seem rather apparent. That said, if you read this book with a certain political bent (particularly a pro-Jobs one), then you may not like the way certain events are portrayed. A further complaint is the focus on executives without providing enough (in my opinion) about the engineers and thinkers. Personally, I think that more on Woz, Tribble, Tesler, Hertzfeld, etc. would be worth far more than the highs and lows of Sculley's marketing dreams. In this regard, I would say that the best history of Apple, particularly from a technical standpoint is Hertzfeld's Revolution in the Valley.

Bottom line: This is an excellent overview of Apple history. Included among a library of works - I might mention the excellent bibliography included in the book - then Apple Confidential rounds things out wonderfully. A few caveats aside, I recommend reading this book.

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