8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Infinite Loop - definitely slanted, but comprehensive, February 23, 2000
This review is from: Infinite Loop (Hardcover)
As a devout Mac user, I've been interested in reading Infinite Loop since it was released. And boy is it good -- although it's definitely biased, and Malone certainly has an axe to grind with Steve Jobs and Apple.
The book is good for recounting the story of Apple -- from its rise out of Jobs' garage to his sacking, the dark ages of the mid nineties and the company's reemergence with the iMac. Of course, Malone is skeptical about the iMac's success, and tries to pass his book off as an eulogy when it's clear that Apple is currently in the midst of a resurgance.
More than anything, this is a corporate history, and is often mired down with business and technological details that might boggle the mind of the uninitiated. But if you're genuinely interested in Apple, the PC industry, and a fascinating story populated with colorful real-life characters (minus Gil Amelio of course), then you should check this book out.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
How Apple wrotes the story of the PC; then got written out of its own story, February 25, 2007
This review is from: Infinite Loop (Hardcover)
At first the story of the PC industry's scruffy origins, "Infinite Loop" becomes the cautionary fable of Apple Computers - from the garage to the iMac (1999 - the book closes before the dot-com bust and the "iPod".) Though I can't vouch for accuracy, "Loop" is encyclopedic and compelling though at times prone to hyperbole. (Malone uses words like "technologist" in their simplest sense or "guru" and Steve Jobs's famous "reality-distortion field" as if these words were real.) "Loop" is an incredible tale - of great achievement mixed with catastrophe, and promising more of the latter. Apple created great products or at least great ideas, but profits were often stymied and market share eroded. Malone makes an interesting point comparing Apple to Intel, the CPU giant that didn't create the market for processors over which it now reigns with near supremacy - having to find its way in an existing market ensured that Intel would remain a real and practical company; Apple arose when computers were largely fantasy - unsurprisingly, Malone's Apple remains a fantasy of a company.
Bringing computers to the masses, Apple's story unsurprisingly recounts the dawn of American cyber culture. The concept of PC's seems to predate capable technology and quality-assurance. (The original "Apple I" debuted in a time when people bought computer kits, and had to supply their own cases; later Apples suffer all sorts of QA problems.)
Malone offers a fascinating study of a techno-cultural revolution - in which the techno-savvy (who once comprised the entire market for computers) and market-savvy worked with and against each other to bring PC's to a generation of Americans who hadn't yet embraced the VCR (and never learned how to program them). The two sides were best typified by the founding Steves of Apple - Wozniak & Jobs. "Woz", a brilliant, if feckless engineer, was easily the genius of the two, but he was otherwise manipulated like a chess piece by Jobs. If Woz was the brains of Apple, Malone has Jobs as Apple's heart. Charismatic, yet childlike, entrenched in the computer industry while lacking any genuine background in their technology, given to mercurial whims and not infrequently making himself unwelcome, Jobs's life soon eclipses the evolution of computing in the story of Apple's rise and fall.
As Apple grows into a real company (in Malone's view, a genuine-looking company, soon to be robbed of its primacy when real competition appears), the strains appear. When the issues were technological, Woz rescued Apple - among other things, Wozniak refined the iconic Apple II and invent practical disk-drives. IBM entered the fray with its MS-DOS based machines - setting the stage for cheap, if initially unfriendly computers to exile Apple to the market's fringes. With Woz marginalized, Jobs courts John Sculley to take over as CEO, then gets ousted by a Sculley-backed board. In one of the ironies that will prove typical in Apple's story, the two will exchange verbal blows before Apple's board citing each other's respective weaknesses - each side's character assessment will prove painfully accurate. Moreover, the Sculley-Jobs war will set the pattern for succession of Apple's leadership - battles for control of Apple between flawed characters roughly equal in their capacity to doom the company.
Apple peaks at the dawn of the Macintosh - the Mac was impressive, and the "1984" spot aired during Superbowl XVIII is now legendary, but sales were disappointing, the result of mistakes that rendered the machine overpriced and underpowered.
With the arrival of IBM PC's and clones, "Loop" concentrates on Apple rather than the industry which has already begun to marginalize it. The story falls into a bit of a loop itself - returning to contradictory failures and successes, market share and profit margins, boardroom battles, unpopular execs and repeated calls to regain market share by licensing Mac-clones.
"Loop" is a great read, but loses steam in its latter half when it focuses on Apple - we know that Apple is being cut off from that larger digital world, but Malone never shows us how much that world had changed since the days of Woz's garage. Instead of a story showing technology changing the world, we've got dueling execs, indistinguishable from those in other corporate-fables. Malone interjects a bit much, which obscures the line between fact and subjective observation. (ex.: when a post-Apple Sculley is asked to comment on the course of the industry, Malone basically writes "Who the f**k cares what Sculley thought?" - we get the idea, Sculley=bad.) Also, Malone is perhaps a tad too forced in charting how Apple would have progressed had the principals (mostly Jobs, but also Woz) seen the obvious. (Malone has Woz demonstrating a terminal he built/designed for another company well before the dawn of Apple - was the conceptual link between that terminal and the internet that slim?) Lastly, Malone's closing with Jobs's return and the debut of iMac seems forced - with the dot-com bust that followed "Loop", the finality of a story ending in 1999 is, to the say the least, premature. As mentioned by others, Jobs gets tarred here, but he's not alone - painful and embarrassing flaws haunt all of his successors. Worse than failure, they failed and shunted away.
Though weaker in the end, "Loop" is still consistently readable, a compelling (if dated) tale of a company and a dream of all it could be.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Informative and entertaining, August 1, 2002
This review is from: Infinite Loop (Hardcover)
Michael S. Malone's Infinite Loop: How The World's Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane is the tale of a company that had it all - and blew it.
In the early days of personal computers, Apple had superior technology and customers that displayed fanatical product loyalty. Its young founders became instant archetypes of the bravado and creativity that made the U.S. high-tech industry the envy of the world. But Jobs and Wozniak achieved too much too early in life, and Apple, it seems, lost its magic.
From the unique vantage point of having grown up with Jobs and Wozniak, and having covered Apple for years as a journalist, Malone manages to tell a fascinating behind-the-scenes story of the world?s most insanely great company.
As a technophile, I very much enjoyed this book. As a Mac addict I couldn?t help wanting to put my hands over my eyes and scream as I read about some of the company?s great blunders.
No review would be complete without also noting that while Malone brings to this account authority and understanding of the big picture, his disgust with Steve Jobs at times oozes from the pages of this book. Still, Infinite Loop is a great read and the most comprehensive account of Apple Computer?s history. I also recommend The Little Kingdom by Michael Moritz (if you can find it).
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