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Having been a passenger on the Apple roller-coaster for the past dozen years, and a Mac journalist for about half that, I was already familiar to varying degrees with most of the elements of the story, but Linzmeyer has done a superb job in knitting them all together in a relatively compact 344 pages. The exhaustive Apple history perhaps not, but the readable Apple history that includes all the important stuff without getting bogged down in boring minutia is an accurate description.
Although his book is not structured in a strict chronological order (see Table of Contents at the end of this review), Linzmeyer begins at the beginning in 1971, with the teenaged Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs Building and selling "blue box" phone "phreaking" devices that facilitated long-distance telephone piracy -- a primitive precursor to the music piracy revolution I suppose.
The birth pangs of the nascent Apple Computer Corp. in a bedroom of Jobs' California home (not the garage of popular misconception) are chronicled, including the "forgotten" or original Apple partner, Ronald Gerald Wayne, who became a 10 percent stakeholder in Apple for a brief 12 days in 1976, getting cold feet and selling his shares for a paltry $800, thus dealing himself out of what would eventually have represented a half billion dollar fortune.
Wozniak gets the lion's share of attention in the chapters covering Apple's genesis and the Apple I/Apple II era, no doubt justifiably, since he was the dominant engineer, while Steve Jobs was (and remains) more of a big-picture conceptual visionary and impresario. Among the many interesting quotes scattered throughout the margins of Apple Confidential are these two gems as from the principle Apple principals:
"He [Wozniak] was the only person I met who knew more about electronics then me." - Steve Jobs
"Steve didn't know very much about electronics." - Steve Wozniak
One could draw a rough analogy with the early 20th Century partnership of playboy financier Charles Rolls and engineering genius Henry Royce (a true Rolls-Royce aficionado might proudly refer to is car as a "Royce," but never a "Rolls"), or even to the latter-day Apple duo of Jobs and industrial designer Jonathan Ive, who gets a chapter of his own later on in the book.
The Jobs interregnum Apple CEOs, John Sculley, Michael Spindler, and Gil Amelio, all get their own chapters as well, as does, interestingly, Microsoft Windows.
Steve Wozniak had relatively little to do with the development of the Macintosh, and more or less left Apple in 1981 after being seriously injured in a plane crash, while Jobs himself was pushed out early in the Macintosh era by the man he had helped hire away from Pepsi, John Sculley, in 1985. The current collaboration between Apple and Pepsi in a joint iTunes Music Store/soft drink promotion is completely coincidental to the Sculley connection, but one of several interesting corporate confluences covered in the book.
Linzmeyer follows Steve Jobs through the formation, rise, and decline of NeXT Computer, which turned out to be, with more poetic symmetry, an important element of the Apple saga, with the NeXTStep OS ultimately becoming the basis of Mac OS X when Amelio purchased NeXT in 1996, returning Steve Jobs to Apple in the bargain. There is yet more symmetrical irony in Jobs going on to be instrumental in Amelio's dismissal in 1997, taking on the role of "Interim CEO," finally making it official in 2001. There is also a chapter on Jobs' purchase of Pixar, and a capsule history of that company.
As the title indicates, this is the second edition of Apple Confidential, with 60 pages of new material, extensive chapter revisions, and many additional photos and timelines a added. It takes us up to the introduction of the G5 with a brief mention of OS X 10.4 "Merlot. " Speaking of Apple product code names, the book includes a whole chapter listing and discussing these names, and there are also many charts, graphs, and lists throughout the book amplifying points covered in the main text.
Linzmeyer is good at accuracy, for instance getting the story straight about the supposed "exploding PowerBook 5300s." In fact, only two test 5300s that were in Apple hands had their Sony lithium ion batteries overheat and catch fire. The thousand or so machines in the distribution channels at the time were recalled and the LiIon batteries replaced with reliable Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) units. To the best of my (and apparently Linzmeyer's) knowledge, no 5300 in consumer hands ever caught fire.
The book also includes timelines for various Apple products, events, and the tenures of the CEOs, (including a whole timeline chapter for Macintosh computer models), and is profusely illustrated throughout with photographs and graphics. As noted, the margins contain many quotes and an assortment of other expository notes.
It may come as a surprise to some readers of this book that not only was Steve Jobs not the conceptual father of the Macintosh, he actually tried to kill the project at its infancy. The true father of the Mac is Jef Raskin, who joined Apple in 1978 has employee #31. Raskin's idea was seconded by Mike Markkula, who had probably saved the company in 1977 with a $92,000 investment and help in securing a line of credit.
In addition to extensive treatment of the Apple I, Apple II, and of course the Macintosh, there are also chapters on the disastrous Apple III, the flawed but revolutionary Lisa/Mac XL, the Newton, and the Mac clones. The clone chapter includes a sidebar containing the full text of a fascinating June 25, 1985 email from Bill Gates in which he pledges Microsoft's support for the Mac OS licensing project in aid of making he Mac OS "a standard."
Gates wrote, in part:
"Apple should license the Macintosh technology to the U.S. and European companies in a way that allows them to go to other companies for manufacturing. Sony, Kyocera, and Alps are good candidates for OE manufacturing of Mac compatibles.
"Microsoft is very willing to help Apple implement this strategy. We are familiar with the key manufacturers, their energies and strategy. We also have a great deal of experience in OEMing system software."
Who knows what might have been had Sculley, et al. at Apple taken Gates up on his offer?
There is also a chapter on the Mac OS GUI's conceptual origins at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) which produced the revolutionary Xerox Alto computer, a machine equipped with a mouse, which had been invented by Douglas Carl Eberhart of Stanford Research Institute in the 1960's.
There are chapters on the Apple employee signatures that graced the inside of the early compact Mac cases, and on the famous "1984" TV commercial that aired on the Super Bowl broadcast to introduce the Mac to the world, and the much less successful " Lemmings" commercial broadcast a year later. There is a chapter on Apple's unsuccessful (before its time, really) eWorld online community, and the secret, abortive "Star Trek" project with Novell to port the Mac OS to Intel processors. Another chapter covers the Copland project (some elements of which were incorporated into OS 8, and Apple's dalliance with former Apple employee Jean Louis Gasse�'s BE OS before settling on NeXT as the next Mac OS.
Apple Confidential 2.0 will be an interesting and enjoyable read for anyone even casually interested in the Apple Computer saga. It is also a useful reference work (plus conversation piece/argument settler - starter) for Apple kibitzers, commentators and historians, professional or armchair. Owen Linzmayer has packed an amazing amount of information into this book, and at $19.95, it's a bona fide bargain. You won't be disappointed.
Apple Confidential 2.0
The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company
By Owen W. Linzmayer
January 2004
344 pp.
$19.95
ISBN 1-59327-010-0
If you order Apple Confidential 2.0 from Owen Ink, Owen will personally autograph your copy. The cost is just $20 for delivery in the US, and $25 for delivery elsewhere. Send cash, check, or money order to:
Owen Ink, 2227 15th Ave., San Francisco, CA 94116-1824
To pay via PayPal, or for more information, visit Owen's web site:
http://www.owenink.com/ac/order.html
For more information, visit:
http://www.nostarch.com/apple2.htm
Appendix
Table Of Contents
Chapter 1: The Genesis of Apple
Chapter 2: Woz�s Wanderings
Chapter 3: The Apple III Fiasco
Chapter 4: Code Names Uncovered
Chapter 5: Millionaire Mania
Chapter 6: The Strangest Bedfellow of All
Chapter 7: From Xerox, with Love
Chapter 8: The Making of Macintosh
Chapter 9: Macintosh Insiders
Chapter 10: The Greatest Commercial That Almost Never Aired
Chapter 11: The Mac Meets the Press
Chapter 12: Mac Models Timeline
Chapter 13: Why 1985 Wasn�t like 1984
Chapter 14: Telecom Troubles
Chapter 15: The Remarkable Rise and Fabulous Fall of John Sculley
Chapter 16: Windows: What Went Wrong?
Chapter 17: The Fallen Apple
Chapter 18: What Jobs Did NeXT
Chapter 19: The Pixar Phenomenon
Chapter 20: The Star Trek Saga
Chapter 21: From Diesel to Doctor
Chapter 22: The Clone Quandary
Chapter 23: The Doctor�s Strong Medicine
Chapter 24: The Copland Crisis
Chapter 25: Happily Ever Apple?
Owen W. Linzmayer is a San Francisco-based freelance writer who has been covering Apple since 1980. He has written four other Macintosh books including The Mac Bathroom Reader (Sybex).
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