A little over a week ago, I received a treasure trove of goodies from a very nice Sloper in Ireland. Among this bounty was this book, which I hadn’t heard about but was delighted to receive (and precisely on Apple’s 50th birthday, no less).
I absolutely devoured the book, and this review will be short ‘n’ sweet.
The book is best thought of as a two-layer cake. Let’s call it chocolate and vanilla.
The chocolate part is about the personalities, the relationships, the business deals, and the drama. That’s the stuff I absolutely loved, and as much as I’ve studied the Silicon Valley since the early 1980s, even I learned a few new things. The chocolate part of the book was dynamite.
The vanilla part was basically a product catalog. It was about computers, iPods, iPhones, model numbers, years of introduction, years of retirement, and so forth. To some folks this would probably be fascinating, but to me, they could have left 95% of the vanilla part out and I would have been fine with it. I really have no interest in the various model numbers of the Quadra line from the 1990s. I found myself skipping entire sections when it was clear I was in vanilla-land.
In sum, I loved the book, but only after I learned the race through the product stuff and get back to the juicy human drama. I think some of you who buy the book will have the same experience as I did.
