Customer Reviews

On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

On the plus side, there is a lot of unintential comedy in this book. Gil is very impressed with himself, as this from page 1 will show:

"Apple seemed a natural, considering my background as a Ph.D. technologist with a number of patents and my reputation as a business leader who had established a notable record for transforming ailing companies."

Whether this confidence was justified can be discerned in many places in the book, but I will always treasure this one from page 187:

"Solaris, on the other hand, is based on a programming language called Unix..."

For those not technical enough to be in on the joke, Unix is an operating system, not a programming language. While your average man-on-the-street might make this mistake, for a computer company CEO to make it is pretty funny/pathetic.

For those more into human emotion than technical humor, here is a lot of spite in here, mostly directed at Steve Jobs, as shown by this from page 269:

"The success I was creating threatened to get in the way of his plans. Betrayal, assassination, trashing of reputations are all part of the everyday tool kit of a person obsessed with power, control, or revenge."

Even as I type this I confess that I cannot even begin to imagine what success Gil is referring to: the billion dollar losses? the massive layoffs? the plunging sales?

As a bonus, the book has some fascinating contradictions. Take this from page 273, regarding the deal with Microsoft:

"Eager for a dramatic move, he [Steve] called Bill Gates and gave him the deal I wouldn't, handing over everything...But he failed to get the one essential element...Instead he settled for cash, a sum Microsoft could write a check for without blinking."

So Gil doesn't like the deal right? He thinks Apple got taken. But then there is this from the next page:

"It bristled me no end to read in the newspapers about Steve making a deal with Bill Gates, as if no groundwork had been laid"

Thus, we are left with the puzzling conclusion that Gil thinks it was a terrrible deal, and is very resentful that he got no credit for it.

To wrap up, I am conflicted about giving this book only one star, because there is genuine entertainment value in it, in much the same way that "Plan 9 from Outer Space" has entertainment value: as a dazzling bad instance of its type. Hopefully this review, independent of the rating, will give the reader a better idea as to whether or not this book is the type of reading material he will enjoy.

See Gil. See Gil run apple. See Gil get fired. Poor Gil.

This book has some interesting observations about apple culture, and a couple lessons for tech managers, but it's also full of self-congratulatory prose, with an occasional good dollop of self-pity. It's also written at around a 4th grade level - there were lots of opportunities for deeper analysis of what happened at apple, why Gil's strategies for turning the place around might have worked or might have failed, NeXT vs Be, and how apple changed as an organization. Unfortunately, Amelio and his co-author never delve into the details.

First I must admit that I wanted to read this book because I lived through three Apple CEO's, when I worked there. When I left Apple Gil was still CEO, but I didn't have much respect for him. One of major complaints was that I saw Gil saying how things were bad, needed to change, and he was making changes, but I saw little in the way of change. However, what I didn't know at the time was how he struggled to get head Apple managers to do what he felt needed to get done. This was a major source of his frustration.

This book was very well written and certainly a must read for anyone interested in corporate politics, Apple's corporate culture, and how twisted things can get in the newspaper. Obviously this book points to only one-side of the story, the newspapers have also only printed only one-side of the story. The truth of events that took place during Gil's time as CEO will probably only be known to a handful of people, but I suspect this book and this side of the story tells it much closer to the way it really happened.

This book I'm sure was painful for Gil to write, as it is any time things don't work out the way you want them to, however I'll wager that it was also a healing process for Gil. I know it was a healing process for me to read it as a former Apple employee.

A must read for any Apple employee.

Amelio seems totally honest in this book. He still doesn't get it though. He treated Apple like a company and not like the culture that it is. It took him half of his tenure to figure out that Apple had a cult status! He seems absolutely right about his description of Jobs. Amelio didn't seem nearly as pragmatic as Jobs is and that is why he didn't understand the company. But he tried. He really did. I wonder what he thinks now that Apple has had two very profitable quarters? Worth the price of admission.

The authors succeed mightily in presenting the inside story, straight from the horses mouth. Those of us, that are not in the computer industry, will have their curiosity satiated by this tale of coorporate inbreeding. After reading the other reviews, I'm convinced that many missed the point of the endeavor. It doesn't matter if you respect or disrespect Amelio. This is his vantage point. Those that are too close to the picture cannot possibly see if it was painted well. They want to defend or attack the book based on their opinion of this man's short stay in "their" world. They are ignoring the candor and visceral sense that the non-computer person gets within the pages of this well-executed documentary. As a business bio, it is surely destined to become a classic.

signed, Mr. Low-tech

I know he seems rather naive and in a serious mode of self pity, but Jobs is infamously known for getting under people's skin and turning them inside out. He can make you a true believer, a zealot, or fill you with such dour disposition that you'd even contemplate suicide. He's that powerful. And it looks like Gil is caught up in that distortion field to his determent, so cut him a break please.

Now I was there before and after Amelio was there, when things were in dire straits. My manager in a team meeting would ask "Common sense, and why is there none at Apple?" When in a rare moment, all of the QA divisions would say thumbs down to shipping the buggy OS, the infamous Dave Nagel would say ship it anyways. The local community college in Cupertino (who dearly love Macs) had actually put a purchase freeze on Macs. I recall Amelio relaying a story about him trying out the new Macs at his desk, and had it crash all the time; he understood there was a serious problem and tried to do something about it, but unfortunately there was Nagel and others. Some engineers' attitudes was the workaround for the bug was to "buy a new computer". Now Nagel is off to Palm to destroy drive that into the ground.

Other infamous people were Ike Nassi (a.k.a. Ike Nasty) who was known for gauging funding from the TCP/IP stack (OpenTransport) and spending on pet projects he was dazzled with. OpenTransport later became affectionately called BrokenTransport internally.

Gil has account for dealing with these two infamous characters and others, and it is rather enlightening. I only wish he had the minerals to fire their butts.

This book is a very easy read. You can finish it in a single sitting. It talks a lot about how business should be done but is not done. But as I read the book, I kept on wondering why Dr. Amelio talked and acted like a dissatisfied employee and did not take decisive actions like a CEO. He had things in his control, he was the CEO, he had as much power as a person in a company can have. Still his story is that in Apple no one listened to him! Probably, CEOs of our corporations do not possess as much power and control as we think they do.

I would like to see people like Amelio successful and I was sorry to read his account. I hope that his success at National was the reality and his failure at Apple was bad luck and not the other way round.

If what he says about Apple is true, and there are a number of people who say it's pure rubbish, I do feel sorry for Gil Amelio. He was terribly ill-suited for a top position at a "trendy" computer company because he's a older, geeky type of guy. Most of Gil's difficulty came from trying to adapt to the culture at Apple. Which was very different from National Semiconductor. While reading the opening chapters when Gil was being courted to take the CEO position I felt myself saying, "Don't do it Gil. You can't save Apple. You'll hate it there." The bottom line was the book was interesting and answered a lot of questions for me. I hope writing the book was cathartic for Gil because I really wonder if he can show his face in the valley again after all the blaming and bad mouthing that he did. One more thing, he must have kept a very serious journal of his tenure because the details of events and conversations that took place were amazing.

The most accurate description of Amelio's tenure at Apple was his own observation on page 213: "I often think how wasteful it is that those with real capabilities should doubt their abilities, while bunglers seem so damn sure of themselves." Since the entire saga lacks a sense of irony or any shred of introspection it will serve just fine as his epitaph. The book deserves a solid 10 as a reminder of why management gets a bad name.

On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple
by Gil Amelio

Towards the end of the nineties, I came across this book. I was attracted to it because I was partly fascinated by the author's earlier work, 'Profit from Experience: The National Semiconductor Story of Transformation Management' which I had read a few years earlier. The latter documented the author's success story at National Semiconductor. I had also reviewed this book on amazon website.

This book captured the author's unsuccessful attempt to turn around the world's most famous personal computing company, where he had spent some seventeen months earlier at the helm. He eventually got himself fired by Steve Jobs. In the book, he obviously conveyed a sense of disbelief that he had gotten himself into such a mess.

As I was reading this book at that time, I could not help recalling a similar kind of hard-hitting & compelling account of life as a CEO of Apple Computer almost a decade earlier i.e. towards the late eighties. I am referring to John Sculley's 'Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple : A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future.' In the book, John Sculley vividly described how, after working as an executive for Pepsi, developing winning strategies in the Cola Wars, & being promoted to president at age 38, he abandoned a "second-wave" company to join Apple, a "third-wave" firm epitomizing creativity, & innovation. He eventually got himself out-manoeuvred & then fired by Steve Jobs. What a coincidence?

Interestingly, the book also captured Steve Jobs' infamous challenge to John Sculley to take up the CEO job offer: `Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want to change the world?'

Even up to today, what intrigues me most about the 'On the Firing Line' book is the author's failure (he practically faced an uphill task from Day I, despite the fact he is a PhD technologist by training!) in replicating his previous 'model of success' at National Semiconductor in the Apple setting? I can only deduce in broad terms, the 'clash of iconic personalities' & 'culture shock' as possible contributing factors.

I can only say this: if you are still curious about the history of management & marketing, particularly from a CEO's perspective within Silicon Valley, the above two books, namely 'On the Firing Line' & 'Odyssey' certainly offer some valuable lessons.

Both books had been very fascinating for me to read.