Book Review: Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky

About:

Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky is a non-fiction book which brings the reader into the behind the scenes world at Apple. Mr. Lashinsky, an editor-at-large of Fortune magazine (as the reader is reminded numerous times) seems to be the right person, with the right connections, for this book.

• 240 pages
• Publisher: Business Plus
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781455512157

 

My rating for Inside Apple – 4
Buy Inside Apple from Amazon.com*
More Books by Adam Lashinsky*

Thoughts:

Even though I’m not an Apple fanboy, I barely owned two iPods in my whole life, I thought it would be interesting to read Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky from a business point of view. There is no denying the great success of Apple, whether or not you own or enjoy their products is a different matter altogether, one of a personal preference.

Apple has fascinated many people, including myself, mainly because of the secrecy and tight control they have over their employees and facilities. This book, even though it also seemed tightly edited, is an entertaining and fascinating look into the company.

This book has something for everyone, whether you’re just reading it for entertainment purposes, a few new ideas for entrepreneurship, or just a fanboy. I realized that Apple’s brilliance was to merge fashion and technology (as well as stellar customer service and easy interfaces) and always wanted to know more about how the two, seemingly separate industries, merged in one company.

From the book I gathered that Apple is very secretive about it’s development, probably rightly so. If you are not working on some particular project, you simply don’t have access to it. As a supervisor, you could be locked out of rooms that your subordinates have access to – and that’s OK.
That’s the culture.

New employees, so I learned, are expected to already know how to hook up their brand new Mac computers when they join. If you don’t than you’re in the wrong job. That whole section seemed wrong to me for a company that prides itself on ingenuity and new ideas.
Don’t you want some outsider to come in with new ideas?

Most of the book is concentrated on the years after Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. While not covering the beginning of the company like, Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender & Rick Tetzeli, it does tell the reader much about the iPhone, a device which no doubt changed the world.

The book gives the reader much insight into Apple’s senior executives and the team that has been responsible for its continued success after Steve Jobs. I thought that these insights alone were worth reading the book.

Buy Inside Apple from Amazon.com*
More Books by Adam Lashinsky*

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I got this book from the local library.
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account