Inside Apple

If you're a fan of Apple and following Apple news at least for the past 2-3 years, you really don't need this book. Go and get Steve's Biography.

The book follows a way of praising Apple and Steve's strategy which will surely make the fanboys happy. On the other hand, while talking about people Adam also has bare minimum details which any fanboy has.

I feel this book should have been written by Walt Mossberg who has better insight about Apple and Steve's personal favorite journalist.

The book covers about Apple's way of keeping secrecy, the people who handles it, how Steve is relevant/irrelevant for the company. What are the strong point of Tim Cook? How it's like a new joinee to Apple etc. which can give you better but not worth of reading insights.

Anyway a good read but not really mandatory!

At first, when I saw this book online, I thought it’d be one among the many, ‘post Jobs Cashing In’, books to be released by a capitalist publisher and a greedy author, with due respect to both of them. So while I was thinking of which one to order among so many of them, somehow, like all Apple products, this one ‘Felt’ right. And Boy, could my intuition be more accurate!
‘Inside Apple’ is an all access card to a secretive behemoth called Apple. The book takes you through all the areas of management, communication, product development and the workflow at Apple. Their obsession with perfection, their emphasis on details right from the text in their ads to the packaging of products, subliminal branding and most importantly, Focus.
There’s a line in the book, which says, Apple is “a company whose methods fly in the face of decades of well established management maxims.” I believe it’s only because they follow a method much older than recent management maxims. Their method is pretty much based on the Zen philosophy of Focus, Minimal and Simple.
It’s very rare for a company to grow to be the world’s largest, in the lifetime of its founder. Through this book, you’ll know, how Apple doesn’t care about either, the size or the growth rate In fact, doesn’t even care about the shareholders. Their focus, like their products, is Simple. Make “Revolutionary” Products and a “Wow” Product Experience, and the rest will take care of itself. Unusual and Surprising, are understatements for both, the company, and this book.
Adam tries to scratch the surface of Apple’s famous Secrecy policy. Right from anecdotes like, the company having plainclothes security at a close by bar to watch over if any Apple employee leaks some information in the heat of the moment, to their memento store at the office, which sells a tee shirt that reads “I visited Apple, but that’s all I’m allowed to Say.” So much is their belief in keeping things secret that most of the times, employees at One Infinite Loop, don’t even know what the person in the next cubicle is doing. The work culture is unlike any of the ‘Best Places to Work’ magazine issues. Something that amused me the most in the book was “Everyone inside Apple is trying to get out, and everyone outside is trying to get in.”
One more thing, it takes us through the leadership and succession planning for the post-Jobs scenario. As an Apple fan, you may rest assured, that the company’s going nowhere south in the near future, for Steve’s pumped enough of his vision into each employee. However, it’ll be interesting to see how things pan out thereafter. The closest one can get to know how Apple works without working there, is through this book. Adam Lashinsky has thrown this light on the ‘dark side of moon’ in a manner that you can’t not be amazed by this company which takes being Casual, very Seriously. I highly recommend it to all. It’s Unputdownable.

The book tries to get an answer to one of the most intriguing questions of this year - What makes Apple click ?

I mean they have weirdest PR, outrageously secretive way of working and a very quirky way of functioning. Yet they have the one of most valuable brands in the world and the most successful company today. Why?

The book does give us a few insights, but honestly there is nothing new that was not already there in the market. The author claims to have done a fair bit of research but he fails to impress. I being a fanboy, knew almost everything he wrote in the book.

So a major disappointment on that front. Nevertheless, it can be a fun read for a Apple fanatic, just because, at the end of the day, it is about Apple. :)

My recommendation : Don't buy it. Put some more bucks and buy his biography instead. That's one hell of a book ! :)

Inside Apple gives a peek into inside working methods of Apple. But as a read, it might have been structured a little chronologically or based on some other parameter. If it would have come before the Job's Biography, the impact would have been different. For those who read the Job's biography this book is not an essential.

Overall it's really a nice book, very well written. I can recall there are coule of instances in which the author tries to funny & pokes sum humor about Sir Steve Jobs, which I didn't liked. Other wise it's a must read. You Should definitely buy it.