badoit90's review against another edition
4.0
4 Stars // Whatever you think of Steve Jobs, his influence in our world is still very much felt to this day, even more than 11 years after his early passing in 2011. Strangely, his death was the beginning of a ‘golden decade’ for Apple, with its market cap quadrupling since Jobs’ passing, now hovering around 2 and a half trillion US dollars at the time of recording. Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson wrote a fantastic book about Jobs’ life and career, which I encourage you to check out if that topic is of interest to you. This book then, ‘After Steve’ is somewhat of an unofficial follow-up and shines light on what happened to Apple in the years ever since - from the release of the Apple Watch, Tim Cook finding his ground as newly named CEO, to the work on a rumoured Apple Car and ultimately Jony Ives departure from the company.
The author of this book, Tripp Mickle, is a tech reporter who, for over 8 years, covered the likes of Apple and Google for the Wall Street Journal, before switching over to the New York Times. He has a certain reputation within the tech industry and could therefore pull in some favours of people close to Apple, which is otherwise known to be a very tightly knit and secretive company. Still, don’t go into this book expecting unheard of juicy insights or gossip, it’s more or less a pretty well done summary and documentation of mostly publicly available information on Apple, with the occasional new anecdote scattered throughout.
Now, I might be a bit biased, as I am known to be an Apple Fanboy, which is the reason why I picked up this book in the first place. I was even an in-house photographer for Apple for about 2 years, so I might have a different, less critical stance on the company than most other people out there. Still, I think that this book deserves 4 stars. Whilst reading it, I felt similar vibes to The Cryptopians by Laura Shin, which I talked about in this video, in which she reported on the history of Ethereum. Both books have in common that they want to be very thorough and sometimes this attention to detail turns out to be to their own detriment. ‘After Steve’ then, although being a relatively long book, is still much more concise than The Cryptopians, it has a better flow, pace and structure.
If you are an Apple Fanboy, this is a book for you - which also means that you might have heard of most stories talked about in this book before, there might be little very new for you in here. It’s therefore more of a throw-back to a decade full of technical leaps forward, the tale of a company finding its course under a new leadership and an insightful documentation of the internal struggles that this new leadership had, in all these years, after Steve.
The author of this book, Tripp Mickle, is a tech reporter who, for over 8 years, covered the likes of Apple and Google for the Wall Street Journal, before switching over to the New York Times. He has a certain reputation within the tech industry and could therefore pull in some favours of people close to Apple, which is otherwise known to be a very tightly knit and secretive company. Still, don’t go into this book expecting unheard of juicy insights or gossip, it’s more or less a pretty well done summary and documentation of mostly publicly available information on Apple, with the occasional new anecdote scattered throughout.
Now, I might be a bit biased, as I am known to be an Apple Fanboy, which is the reason why I picked up this book in the first place. I was even an in-house photographer for Apple for about 2 years, so I might have a different, less critical stance on the company than most other people out there. Still, I think that this book deserves 4 stars. Whilst reading it, I felt similar vibes to The Cryptopians by Laura Shin, which I talked about in this video, in which she reported on the history of Ethereum. Both books have in common that they want to be very thorough and sometimes this attention to detail turns out to be to their own detriment. ‘After Steve’ then, although being a relatively long book, is still much more concise than The Cryptopians, it has a better flow, pace and structure.
If you are an Apple Fanboy, this is a book for you - which also means that you might have heard of most stories talked about in this book before, there might be little very new for you in here. It’s therefore more of a throw-back to a decade full of technical leaps forward, the tale of a company finding its course under a new leadership and an insightful documentation of the internal struggles that this new leadership had, in all these years, after Steve.
jeansnow's review
5.0
This was such a page turner for me, and I enjoyed it immensely. Even though I'm a pretty big fan of Apple products and follow what happens with the company, but it was so interesting to really go into the details of everything that was happening, most of which I didn't know. And also to get to know Ive and Cook a bit more. This is a must-read if you have any interest in Apple.
trulyronak's review
4.0
Pretty well written - not as much of a "Apple bad" book but more of a look at how Apple's grown. I like it!
gideonluck's review
2.0
Based on what I'd heard before I read this, and continuing into the first third of the book, I expected this to be summarized as "Jony Ive good, Tim Cook bad". I think I could have dealt with that, but unfortunately it was so much worse than that. The book is actually about how Tim Cook is an unfeeling robot who doesn't understand the magic of Apple and Jony Ive is some kind of delicate artistic genius, who needs perfectly handled to be able to perform his works. The takeaway of this book seem to be that things were better when the company was smaller and Steve Jobs was alive. This seems like a real squandering of interesting inside stories of Apple in the late-Jobs and pos-Jobs eras.
bkish's review against another edition
4.0
I dont have Kindle and my edition is ebook on my Nook!
anyway this is a very interesting book and so the author knows Apple covers Apple and yet theirs is a secret culture meaning that what happens at Apple stays at Apple so for this author to have put together this information about a very delicate time in the history of the company that is Excellent. Yes it is very well written of course as Tripp is a professional writer a journalist.
The main characters for me just for me are not at all likeable and yet this is not a book or a story about who or what the reader likes. It is about an important technology company run by a man who died young Steve Jobs and this man knew what to build that would be used by zillions.
Anyway it is interesting that he turned over his company to an accountant type an ops man lacking much of a personality someone really exact opposite of him.
He liked and respected his design man Jony Ives yet he did not become the CEO
I think too much is made over Ives and that is all I will say
Its a very well done study of the years after 2011 at Apple Computer
Judy g
anyway this is a very interesting book and so the author knows Apple covers Apple and yet theirs is a secret culture meaning that what happens at Apple stays at Apple so for this author to have put together this information about a very delicate time in the history of the company that is Excellent. Yes it is very well written of course as Tripp is a professional writer a journalist.
The main characters for me just for me are not at all likeable and yet this is not a book or a story about who or what the reader likes. It is about an important technology company run by a man who died young Steve Jobs and this man knew what to build that would be used by zillions.
Anyway it is interesting that he turned over his company to an accountant type an ops man lacking much of a personality someone really exact opposite of him.
He liked and respected his design man Jony Ives yet he did not become the CEO
I think too much is made over Ives and that is all I will say
Its a very well done study of the years after 2011 at Apple Computer
Judy g
pengumon's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
petewright's review
3.0
Sigh. I think I think too much about this stuff. It's fine. Well-researched. But ultimately comes off as a weirdly targeted takedown. Unpleasant.