The layout is interesting as well. As characters are introduced, the reader frequently wonders "What happened to them?" More often than not, the question is answered in a sidebar. This showed that Apple wasn't just a great product developer, but also a great developer of silicon valley talent.
The book details the extremes of the players personalities:- How Jobs agreet to split the proceeds of an Atari deal with Woz, only to keep 90% of the income himself.- How Woz forced the company to go public early by sharing his stock with too many employees.- How Gasse talked folks out of liscencing the technology until it was too late.- How several successive CEOs tried in vain to save the company.
The book also details some lesser known stories from Apple's storied past:- How the 1984 commercial almost never made it.- How the company decided to abandon Copland. (& Why!)- How the company got sued by Carl Sagan, and how they dug their ditch a little deeper.
There's a lot of "Hows" here, which really shows how deep the author gets into the company's history and soul. You come away with not just a knowledge of the people, but their personalities and why exactly things turned out the way they did.
This book is excellent reading for anyone interested in the world of technology, and an absolute must for fans of Apple.
This book (and Owen's previous Apple histories "The Mac Bathroom Reader" and "Apple Confidential [1.0]") has been meticously researched and uncovers many facts about Apple Computer, its people, and systems that other books don't come close to touching. Instead of rehashing comments from other books which tend to be inaccurate, Owen has spent a tremendous amount of time finding and verifying facts. Instead of just relying on a comment about some aspect of Apple Computer, Owen has taken the time and put forth the effort to communicate directly with those involved with the facts in question. This results in accurate facts, something that many technology computing books about Apple don't always have.
I've been involved with Apple systems since the Apple ][ of the later 1970s and am constantly suprised by the information Owen has uncovered. At one time I thought I knew a lot about Apple's history, but Owen has proven me wrong in a beneficial way.
The end result of Owen's work is an almost definitive book about a fascinating and quirky company that any Apple computer user must have in their book collection.
I'm looking forward to the next Apple Confidential version if such a book will exist in the future.
-David T Craig ( shirlgato AT cybermesa DOT com )
Linzmayer entertains and educates readers by taking them through pivotal points in Apple's history. From the initial collaboration between tech guru Steve Wozniak and assertively business-minded Steve Jobs, through the development of the Macintosh computer, to the inner workings of Apple's corporate culture, Linzmayer looks around every corner to give many perspectives on the development of the company. Timelines are also presented at the end of most chapters, aiding readers in understanding the pace at which important milestones took place.
"Definitive" accurately describes this book! Apple Confidential 2.0 offers readers a deeper understanding of the company, and shows the complete story of how this shining apple helped turn the fruit orchards of Cupertino into what we now call Silicon Valley. Readers will clearly see how Apple created a revolution by the development of the personal computer industry, and fought to make a significant dent in a technological market that continues to grow at a pace unequal to any other advancement in history.
If there is any book that gives an objective view of what happened with Apple, it is this book, and it is written in a very attractive way!Mr. Linzmayer has done a great job in collecting so much information about the history of apple, and writing such a great book about it!
Thank you, Owen.Good history, but is lacking in current developments The other reader reviews all accurately state the positives of this book: the pre-2000 history of Apple is a very interesting read. I picked the book up, however, for a different reason. I wanted to learn more about the current generation of Apple products. Unfortunately, there isn't any detailed information about the development of OS X, the iPod, the G5, or Apple's new business stance as the 'hub of digital life'. (These are all mentioned briefly in the book, but there is no detail about how they came into being.) Surely there are some interesting stories to be told about how the iPod came out of a [then] struggling computer company that only had roughly 5% of the personal computer market. How about the decision to base the next-generation operating system on Linux? (To be fair, the book chronicles the influence of the NeXT and Be operating systems, but it doesn't connect the dots to OS X.) What sorts of decisions were made to develop a 64-bit processor? Who made these decisions and what technological challenges were faced in the process? These are all topics for version 3.0, I suppose. (And I imagine that I will be charged for this upgrade.) Bottom line: an interesting read for those interested in pre-iPod/G4 Apple. However, you shouldn't buy this book if you are mainly interested in their recent technological developments.
