Friday, January 19, 2007

Apple Confidential 2.0


As you are probably aware, I spend most of my time writing code and exploring new technologies happening in the Windows world. However, several years back I started venturing into the Mac as I was fascinated with the Mac OS X. However, my primary interest on the Mac was still pretty much constrained to using it as an end-user. As a result, I contributed to a few Mac consumer books, such as Mac OS X Unwired, Mac OS X Hacks, Mac OS X Panther Hacks, and Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, as well as several articles on MacDevCenter.

I have always been very interested in reading the success stories of companies, and I have a dozen of books on Microsoft, Apple, and Dell. Among all these books, my personal all-time favorite is still Apple Confidential 2.0 (updated edition of Apple Confidential). If you enjoy reading about how the Mac came about (or just anything about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and all others that played a role in shaping Apple), this book is a very captivating read. It covers Apple’s history since the beginning till the era of the iPod. As this book was published in 2004, it does miss out some of the important events in Apple’s history, such as the transition to Intel platform, the tremendous success of the iPod, and of course, the announcement of the iPhone. But all these do not make the book any less interesting. I especially like the sidebars that appear on almost every page, which provides little snippets of interesting information.

This book will give you a good explanation to the following questions:
  • Why did Apple kill the clones?

  • Heard of Newton? Why is it not around today?

  • How the design of iMac came around?

  • Who is the true father of the Macintosh?

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