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Apple The rise, fall and rise again of the amazing Apple has been chronicled in a number of academic and journalistic studies. Steven Levy's Insanely Great: The Life & Times of Macintosh: The Computer that Changed Everything (New York, Penguin 95) 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 99) is better value. The history of the Macintosh is described at a Stanford University site on Making the Macintosh: Technology & Culture in Silicon Valley. Jim Carlton's Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania & Business Blunders (New York, Harper 98) is more credible than Owen Linzmayer's Apple Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer Inc (San Francisco, No Starch 99), overly influenced by Hollywood noirist James 'LA Confidential' Elroy. There's a similar account in Michael Moritz's The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer (New York, Morrow 84). Frank Rose's West of Eden: The End of Innocence At Apple Computer (London, Viking 89) 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 98) we just want devices that are efficient, reliable and cheap - they don't need to wear stetsons. Gil Amelio's On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple (New York, Harper 99) is a fun but overly self-exculpatory account of his tenure as Apple CEO. We'd recommend instead John Sculley's Odyssey: From Pepsi to Apple (New York, Harper 87). Provocateur Guy Kawasaki produced The Computer Curmudgeon (Indianapolis, Hayden 92) and the frenetic The Macintosh Way: The Art of Guerrilla Management (New York, Harper 90), in line with the celebratory Guide to the Macintosh Underground: Mac Culture from the Inside (Indianapolis, Hayden 93) by Bob LeVitus & Michael Fraase. There's a similar treatment in Apple executive Jean-Loui Gassee's The Third Apple: Personal Computers & the Cultural Revolution (San Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 85). 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's yet to be covered by a substantial biography.  Jobs is the subject of Randall Stross' Steve Jobs & the NeXT Big Thing (New York, Atheneum 93), the mean-spirited Accidental Millionaire: The Rise & Fall of Steve Jobs at Apple Computer (New York, Paragon 89) by Lee Butcher and The Second Coming of Steve Jobs (New York, Broadway 00) by Alan Deutschman. Michael Hiltzik's Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC & the Dawn of the Computer Age (New York, HarperCollins 99) 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, William Morrow 88) by Douglas Smith & Robert Alexander.    next page  (Microsoft)