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This
page considers Apple, the US hardware and software developer
that redefined personal computing.
It covers -
introduction
Apple is significant as a competitor to giants such as
Microsoft and IBM
and for its emphasis on human-centric computing, emphasising
quality and ease of use.
Its struggles have been chronicled in a number of academic
and journalistic studies; some of the more lurid predictions
of Apple's imminent demise are collected at the Mac Observer's
Death Knell Counter here.
history
Steven Levy's Insanely Great: The Life & Times
of Macintosh: The Computer that Changed Everything
(New York: Penguin 1995) understates the role played by
Alan Kay at Xerox PARC. Michael Malone's Infinite Loop:
How The World's Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went
Insane (New York: Doubleday 1999) is better value.
The history of the Macintosh is described at a Stanford
University site
on Making the Macintosh: Technology & Culture in
Silicon Valley. Michael Hiltzik's Dealers of Lightning:
Xerox PARC & the Dawn of the Computer Age (New
York: HarperCollins 1999) offers a point of reference
in thinking about innovation, network externalities and
market share. It revises the account in Fumbling the
Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal
Computer (New York: Morrow 1988) by Douglas Smith
& Robert Alexander.
Jim Carlton's Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue,
Egomania & Business Blunders (New York: Harper
1998) is more credible than Owen Linzmayer's Apple
Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer
Inc (San Francisco: No Starch 1999), overly influenced
by Hollywood noirist James 'LA Confidential' Elroy. There
is a similar account in Michael Moritz's The Little
Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer (New
York: Morrow 1984). Geek perspectives are provided in
the celebratory Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely
Great Story of How the Mac Was Made (Sebastopol:
O'Reilly 2004) by Andy Hertzfeld.
Frank Rose's West of Eden: The End of Innocence At
Apple Computer (London: Viking 1989) saw the writing
on the wall a decade earlier, although Apple was always
under fire from the likes of guru John Dvorak for not
offering a "man's computer designed by men for men".
Like artificial intelligence giant David Gelernter in
The Aesthetics of Computing (London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson 1998) we just want devices that are efficient,
reliable and cheap - they don't need to wear stetsons.
people
Gil Amelio's On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple
(New York: Harper 1999) is a fun but overly self-exculpatory
account of his tenure as Apple CEO. We recommend instead
John Sculley's Odyssey: From Pepsi to Apple (New
York: Harper 1987).
Provocateur Guy Kawasaki produced The Computer
Curmudgeon (Indianapolis: Hayden 1992) and the frenetic
The Macintosh Way: The Art of Guerrilla Management
(New York: Harper 1990), in line with the celebratory
Guide to the Macintosh Underground: Mac Culture from
the Inside (Indianapolis: Hayden 1993) by Bob LeVitus
& Michael Fraase.
There is a similar treatment in Apple executive Jean-Loui
Gassee's The Third Apple: Personal Computers &
the Cultural Revolution (San Diego: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich 1985).
Steve Wozniak
- eclipsed by Steve ("just pay me $1 a year ... and
a brand spanking new corporate jet") Jobs - was profiled
in a 1998 Wired. He is yet to be covered by
a substantial biography.
Jobs is the subject of Randall Stross' Steve Jobs &
the NeXT Big Thing (New York: Atheneum 1993), the
mean-spirited Accidental Millionaire: The Rise &
Fall of Steve Jobs at Apple Computer (New York: Paragon
1989) by Lee Butcher and The Second Coming of Steve
Jobs (New York: Broadway 2000) by Alan Deutschman.
design
Ignore the numerous typos in Paul Kunkel's AppleDesign:
The work of the Apple Industrial Design Group (New
York: Graphis 1997) and concentrate on Rick English's
photographs.
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