Inside Apple [ペーパーバック]

i had been anticipating this book as much as i have walter isaacson's jobs biography. i loved the latter, because it was written with a lot of effort, had tons of insider information and the goal of deeply understanding its subject.

this book, in contrast, looks like a long tabloid article on apple - which may suffice for those not knowing the company, but can be truly disappointing for those, who are a bit familiar with the subject. no big surprises, no extra insight, not much relevant research.

to be fair: i quit reading after four chapters. it may get better towards the end, but i felt that keeping on reading was just a waste of time.

Steve Jobs was a micro-manager, bully, made 'impossible' demands, took a no-excuses perspective, and made Apple a very secretive entity. In addition, Apple was rarely, if ever, described as a 'fun place to work,' or high-paying (except for those lucky enough to receive options). Despite, in fact probably because, he violated all these common 'leadership precepts,' Jobs also made Apple into an insanely successful company. Fortune magazine Lashinsky manages to provide useful insights despite Apple's continuing secrecy. Lashinsky contends that secrecy about future Apple products and its management methods was intended to make life more difficult for competitors, avoid stealing thunder from existing products, milk additional free media coverage on product launch days, and avoid disappointments if the eventually released product failed to match the hype.

Other snippets - Jobs demanded inter-group cooperation, product packaging receives strong emphasis (adds to its products' distinctiveness), the products themselves are considered works of art, vertical integration provides Apple complete control, focus groups and/or surveys don't guide product design at Apple, Apple has paid little attention to business sales until now - even so, it still emphasizes appealing to users over IT managers only the CFO has P&L responsibility, and simplicity of operation (for the consumer) reigns supreme.

Upon Jobs' return to Apple in 1997, one of the steps he took was to kill off printer production - Apple provided no product differentiation in that area. He also eliminated 4,000 middle manager positions, and severely reduced both the number of existing and planned new products.

Apple's executive team meets each Monday to review all product plans; two Mondays are required to get through them all. Completion dates are important, and every agenda item has the name of the designated responsible individual (DRI). The company is organized around functions, not product divisions - thus, Ron Johnson, though in charge of Apple's retail stores, did not have control of retail inventory nor its website.

Employee selection is another area that Jobs paid special attention to. Whereas the performance variation between the best and worst cab driver in a city may be only 2:1, Jobs believed it was as much as 50:1 in the area of product engineering and leadership.

Pre-orders for the iPhone4 topped 1 million, vs. 'only' 600,000 for its predecessor. The firm is very focused - eg. iPhone development starved efforts to update MacOS. Jobs' interests also played a role - hence its excellent 'Keynote' software for presentations, and so-so- "Numbers,' that he had little interest in. It has about $80 billion in cash and cash equivalents - harking back to the late 1990s when Apple nearly went broke. (Experts expect its new CEO, Cook, will pay some of that out Jobs reportedly told him, just before leaving, to not ask 'What would I do, rather What's right?'.) Apple's 'Apps store' was a response to learning of Google's plan to do so with its Android system.

Jobs generally disliked MBAs and their emphasis on market research, preferring graduates with science or arts background. Yet, he hired Joel Podoling, Dean at the Yale School of Management, to create Apple University and later to head H.R. at Apple. Joel led a case-writing group that included Harvard business historian Richard Tedlow; cases included the creation of its retail strategy, establishing factories in China.

In 2001, shortly after introducing the iPod, computers made up the bulk of Apple's business. In 2011, Iphones were 44%, iPads 19%, iPods 7%, and computers 20%.

Author Lishinsky sees Apple slowly devolving from being an 'insanely successful company' over time, given Jobs' absence.

The biggest problem with this book is the lack of additional information on Apple.

With all the available books out there about Steve Jobs/Apple, "INSIDE APPLE" did not offer much additional information about the organizational operations of the company to make this a meaningful book. It talked a little about the inside information about the company, but failed to really provide anything additional.

WIth the lack of additional information, the viewpoint and commentary of the author therefore became very objective and sometimes not justified. It became very difficult to understand, or agree with the author, as he continued to express his viewpoints on the future success of this company, base on the few so called insights that he has presented in the book.

If you have read the official Biography, that's probably more than enough for you to try and learn more about Apple. This book does give you some new insights, but most of them were already available on the internet. If you are a supporter of the author, then this book might make sense to you since you would be able to read about this viewpoints.