Customer Reviews

Infinite Loop

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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).

A very readable history of Apple computer. I had heard that some of the views expressed in this book were slanted. I could get a sense of that. Even so, the history presented is clear and very interesting to read. Having followed Apple since the II, it was interesting to hear the complete and inside view of the company. There seemed to be more focus on the period up to the Mac. Some people are portrayed badly, but in the end everyone comes across as human, even Steve Jobs.

Author Michael S. Malone goes behind the myths about Apple Computers to present an in-depth history from Apple's start-up in 1976 to its decline through 1998. He emphasizes that the personalities of Apple founders, Steven Jobs and Steven Wozniak (or Woz), marked Apple's corporate culture with a kind of insaneness that made it great even as it contributed to the company's difficulties. He presents the two Stevens as deeply flawed individuals - one the creative, socially inept, technical genius, the other the narcissistic, untrustworthy tyrant. In places, Malone risks introducing distortions into the story in the interest of drama, especially when he imagines what Woz or Jobs might have been thinking or why they may have taken certain actions. Otherwise, we at getAbstract say sit down in your easy chair with this novelistic business history. Even those who are familiar with the broad outlines of the Apple story will find it fascinating.

Michael Malone did a pretty good job with this book. He has got an explosive combination of ingredients in this book: A perfect plot (Apple Computers History), amazing characters (Steve Jobs just as an example), Intrigue, Drama, Joy, and a lot more. Michael Malone mixed all this ingredients the right way, writting a very good novel/business book. He his sophisticated in his writting, yet very simplistic. I loved finishing the book understanding what he meant by infinite loop. I strongly advise you to find it out for yourself. You will not get disapointed and you will keep turning those pages very rapidly just like a good thriller. Don't get intimidated by the size of the book, or by the fact that is a corporate history book. In fact it is, but it could also be a science fiction novel. That's what is makes it so great.

I have been a Mac user since 1989, and when I purchased this book in 1999, the future of Apple Computer was very much in doubt. This book explains many of the reasons in painful detail. I was in the midst of reading a series of business history books The Continental affair: The rise and fall of the Continental Illinois Bank, Belly Up: The Collapse of the Penn Square Bank and some others, so I was immersed in business failure studies. Its such a fascinating read, considering the resurgence of Apple, Inc. since the book was published. Other books like The Apple Way and Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything were so immersed in the mythology of the company's success, and this one really bares the ugly details of the enormous egos behind the development of the personal computer through the end of the 20th century.

Having been an Apple enthusiast since the Apple IIe, I was intrigued by this new history book an Apple Computer. I was very impressed with the scope of the book ranging from the earliest days of Jobs and Woz all the way to the iMac introduction.

What has been funny to see is that the author paints a dismal picture of the future of Apple and here they are thriving like they did in the old days. Now, if this is the handiwork of Steve Jobs, I do not know. I like Mr. Jobs, the author does not appear to like him. I believe that he was out of control in his younger days at Apple (pre-Sculley years), but that he has matured and grown up to be a VERY successful businessman (CEO of 2 Fortune 500 companies ain't bad).

I would definately recommend Infinite Loop to any of my friends. It is a slow read, and the timelines are out of sync. (You read about Spindler getting fired from Apple in the chapter before Spindler starting the ill-fated licensing of the MacOS.) I only remember the later timeline because I remember keeping up with it as it happened.

Melodrama is always a page turner. And Malone had me turning pages quickly. While entertaining, the book had one considerable flaw: an overwillingness to pass off forced conclusions as psychological analysis. While I definitely enjoy "Steve said this" and "Woz did that", I can make my own reflections into they mean. Issues like identifying psycholgical motivation should always be mindful of thier subjectivity. Malone was not mindful.

However, this book has peeked my interest in learning more about the company that' s given me such a lovely computer (Blue/White G3), and I'm currently seeking out other titles. Too bad I can't find biographies of Jobs or Woz.

I have the strange honor of being the only college graduate from the U. of Puerto Rico that Apple ever recruited for a full time job. I made a big leap of faith in joining the company back in 1991. I didn;t know what to expect. My memory from that time is that of a company where employees were overworked as heck, most were polite and intelligent (with the usual bozo thrown in for variety), and most of us were too busy fighting fires to really grasp the reality outside De Anza Boulevard and environs. Most often, we were too busy to figure out what the company's top management was capable of doing.

The Apple this book paints is substantially different from the one I experienced firsthand. From my somewhat myopic perspective, I could notice from reading this book that the crucial details were left out. It paints the Apple crowd as a bunch of drones, blindly following the usual "management is hell" philosophy of dissing the CEO/CFO du jour. We used to voice our concerns, and even furiously so, but most people at Apple weren't drones. We were busy doing our jobs, too busy, I might add. Many important details from too many SNAFUs Sales and Marketing, Operations and Human Resources made during the last few years before Apple's fall from grace are skipped, in favor of the usual Jobs/Sculley soap opera stuff.

Most of us, during that time, were indeed shielded from reality, and those of us who were laid off as a consequence of John Sculley's blunders do lay the blame on him, but in hindsight, he did have his share of positive things. So did Spindler. So did Amelio. Apple was not Jobs' Saga. It shouldn't be regarded as that.

While this book is quite funny, and does identify many of the precise reasons why Apple fell from top, two principal ones: the left hand not knowing what the right one did, and Apple's ineptitude in nurturing its customers -whereas corporate, the general public, its suppliers and developers- are quite understated. Granted, there were huge egos at work there, but if this book concentrates chiefly on that, it is missing the point.