Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders [Paperback]

Jim Carlton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 21, 1998

Apple Computer was once a shining example of the American success story. Having launched the personal computer revolution in 1977 with the first all-purpose desktop PC, Apple became the darling of the national business press and Wall Street. Yet by 1995, the company's change-the-world idealism had all but disappeared in a bitter internal struggle between warring camps. Raging internal mistakes, petty infighting, and gross mismanagement became Apple's hallmark, and today the company clings to a mere 3.7 percent share of the market it helped to create. Apple is the spellbinding account of what really went on behind closed doors, revealing the forces that dismantled this once great icon of American business.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

How many companies were started in a garage by a couple of whiz kids, went on to a global presence with multibillion dollar sales, and within 20 years came close to bankruptcy? Meet Apple Computer. Wall Street Journal reporter Carlton follows Apple from when it produced the first Macintosh personal computer, designed for those with little or no technical knowledge. Sales rocketed and Apple became the darling of computer enthusiasts. But Carlton also points out lost opportunities along the way, involving insufficient licensing efforts, mergers allowed to fail, unwillingness to permit products to evolve, lack of interest in exploiting the Internet, and blindness to competitors. Carlton lays much of the blame with Apple's board of directors. An epilog on recent changes at Apple is being added at the last minute. Recommended for larger nonfiction collections and special libraries with an information technology clientele.?Richard S. Drezen, Washington Post News Research Ctr., Washington,
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition (October 21, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887309658
• ISBN-13: 978-0887309656
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #986,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good insights... lousy writing..., December 3, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Apple:: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders (Hardcover)

As an Apple employee I liked Jim Carlton's book because of the behind-the-scenes glimpses at a company that I love. But, geez, I've never read a book that needed a good editor more... there are literally sections that repeat themselves word for word (and how many times can we read a gushing description of Steve Jobs' "long flowing hair and rock-star good looks"? Give me a break. I also disagree with people here who say that he gives Apple a "fair shake". I found his portrayal quite biased and one-sided. Carlton's history of Apple is one that is full of major blunders that would have saved the company (his view). The reality is that, for all its missteps, Apple did a lot of things amazingly well... but you won't find that history in this biased book.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Jim Carlton Was Wrong, June 2, 2002

By 

Troy Dawson (Santa Cruz, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders (Paperback)

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 technical ineptitude by failing to pursue the ramifications of an Apple-brand x86 offering (ie a Mac with an x86 CPU) vs a software-only offering like Windows or NeXT's Yellow Box.

He also repeatedly blows the 5300 battery issue out of proportion.

But I think the weakest theme in the book is that an alternative platform with less than 10% "marketshare" is automatically doomed to failure. While there is a strong positive network effect for the 'standard' and a negative effect for the alternatives, in his near-hagiography of Gates & Co he simply missed the bigger picture that the lamosity of the Wintel platform's inherent legacy issues is and was a countervening force.

5-10% of the total market is sufficiently large for Apple, given a) it's the top 5-10% and b) Micros~1 continues to [stink] as it always has.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book gave me the answers I was looking for...and more., October 15, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Kansas City, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Apple:: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders (Hardcover)

Apple Computer, in its heyday, was one of the most respected growth companies of this century. As a devoted Mac user, it's always been hard for me to comprehend how Apple managed to take one of the most innovative products of our time, the user-friendly personal computer, and fail to compete effectively long-term in the mass market.

This book gave me the answers I was looking for...and more. Not a dry corporate history book, Jim Carlton has gone to the heart of what went wrong in Apple by focusing on the personalities that shaped this company...and later led it to the brink of ruin.

The leaders of Apple could have come out of a Shakespearean play. As Shakespeare knew, hubris, or excessive pride, is the undoing of man. In the swollen egos of Apple's leaders, we see evidence of hubris with a capital "H".

Although we may fool ourselves into thinking that technological prowess and All-American competitiveness has lifted us above the men of Shakespeare's day, Jim Carlton's Apple brings us back to earth and reminds us that, above all else, it's the human element that makes or breaks a company.