Rating: 
Summary: This book gave me the answers I was looking for...and more.
Review: Apple Computer, in its heyday, was one of the most respected growth companies of this century. As a devoted Mac user, it's always been hard for me to comprehend how Apple managed to take one of the most innovative products of our time, the user-friendly personal computer, and fail to compete effectively long-term in the mass market. This book gave me the answers I was looking for...and more. Not a dry corporate history book, Jim Carlton has gone to the heart of what went wrong in Apple by focusing on the personalities that shaped this company...and later led it to the brink of ruin. The leaders of Apple could have come out of a Shakespearean play. As Shakespeare knew, hubris, or excessive pride, is the undoing of man. In the swollen egos of Apple's leaders, we see evidence of hubris with a capital "H". Although we may fool ourselves into thinking that technological prowess and All-American competitiveness has lifted us above the men of Shakespeare's day, Jim Carlton's Apple brings us back to earth and reminds us that, above all else, it's the human element that makes or breaks a company.
Rating:
Summary: Unbiased Account of one of the Biggest Business Tragedies
Review: I found Carlton's book to be well-written, stimulating and unbiased. It seems that other reviewers feel that Carlton was flat wrong in his prediction that Apple will ultimately not succeed (he devotes only a few pages at the end to this). To these individuals, I suggest that you reread the book. Carlton did not say that Apple has always been a complete failure. His book was about how the company, which was YEARS ahead of others in terms of technology and design, lost its market share. His prediction is simply that Apple will most likely not thrive in the LONG-term. To those who thought that Carlton's book was overly negative: What else could you call what happened to Apple? A success story? Of course not. Apple DID create an unbelievable company with brilliant design, technology and marketing. But the tragedy is that it chose to ride on its past successes without devising a strategic plan to maintain its lead in the ever-changing technology industry. I suggest that anyone interested in learning how to manage a company over the long-haul read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Jim Carlton Was Wrong
Review: Useful history and inside looks, but reading his 1998 back-of-the-hand dismissal of Apple's chances of survival is pretty humorous nowadays. His opinion that Apple should have licensed earlier is similarly wrong-headed and lacking in any technical appreciation of the downsides of licensing (dilution of brand,difficult QA processes, cherry-picking, loss of platform homogenieity ). He similarly doesn't understand the silliness of Apple developing an x86 MacOS in the early 90's, and again reveals his technical ineptitude by failing to pursue the ramifications of an Apple-brand x86 offering (ie a Mac with an x86 CPU) vs a software-only offering like Windows or NeXT's Yellow Box. He also repeatedly blows the 5300 battery issue out of proportion. But I think the weakest theme in the book is that an alternative platform with less than 10% "marketshare" is automatically doomed to failure. While there is a strong positive network effect for the 'standard' and a negative effect for the alternatives, in his near-hagiography of Gates & Co he simply missed the bigger picture that the lamosity of the Wintel platform's inherent legacy issues is and was a countervening force. 5-10% of the total market is sufficiently large for Apple, given a) it's the top 5-10% and b) Micros~1 continues to [stink] as it always has.
Rating:
Summary: A 'mostly' well-read history of the management of Apple
Review: This book focuses on the business side of Apple Computer, from the departure and return of Steve Jobs. Little is mentioned of the history before John Sculley took over as the 'sole' CEO of the company. The book starts off with a bang, but ultimately it gets tougher and tougher to digest the information; not because of the writer's ability, but because of the repeated failures of the company to recognize success. You are constantly dumbfounded by the repeated mistakes that are made over and over, which ultimately sealed Apple's fate and made Microsoft billions! I found the chapters on Spindler and Amelio to be particularly difficult to follow. I must admit that before reading this book I had a low opinion of Bill Gates, but the book has shed new light for me on the whole history of the GUI wars, and my opinion has certainly changed; Gates had no choice, but to create the Windows platform, since Apple was destroying itself internally and not advancing the Macintosh platform successfully. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to understand why Apple did not succeed beyond it's wildest dreams.
Rating:
Summary: It's OK . . .
Review: Jim Carlton's "Apple" is a fascinating account about the growth, the fall, the rebirth, and the slow decline of one of Silicon Valley's original PC pioneer. It provides an exhaustive account of the egos and problems within the top ranks that prevented Apple from being a great company. Again and again, Carlton shows how Apple blew opportunities to become a "standard" in the PC industry if it had licensed its technology, merged with a partner like IBM or Sun, or just had the competence to execute effectively and efficiently. For the most part, I do agree with Carlton's account. However, one cannot help but feel after reading numerous accounts of Apple's "failures" or "lost opportunities" if Carlton is making too much out of Apple's strategy. Carlton also implicitly believes that becoming "the standard" could have been and should have been Apple's only goal. Naturally, like another reviewer, I got tired of reading Carlton's 20/20 hindsight version of history that harps on every failure as somehow contributing to the company's decline. The book was also published around 1999, so while it does include a section on Job's return and Apple's introduction of the iMac, it naturally missed out on some of Apple's more recent accomplishments: the new TiBook, the iBook, OS X, the "digital hub" strategy, and the fact that Apple is sitting pretty these days as other Wintel box makers are seeing their companies disintegrate under brutal price wars and commoditization. Overall, Carlton's book provides a good history of the company, but its propensity to apply a 20/20 hindsight type of history that harps on every mistake the company made gets annoying after awhile.
Rating:
Summary: Missed Opportunities
Review: Carlton relates time after time after time (after time) how Apple rose to great heights of genius and creativity, and then threw opportunity away with both hands and ran the other direction. The title is descriptive of the downs (but the book also covers the ups) of this amazing company. One of the few critical and unbiased (mostly) looks at Apple. All Macintosh fans and Steve Jobsians should read this book to get the other side. I was actually going to interview with Apple until I read this story.
Rating: 
Summary: The biggest blunder is this book
Review: I'm not a big Apple Computer fan, but I was very disappointed by this book. Covering the tumultuous period just before Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the book attempts to provide all the 20/20 insight necessary to explain the company's short-comings. Unfortunately, though, the book is so poorly written -- and doesn't at all hide the disdain the author feels for Jobs -- that it's nearly unreadable. Rather than tell the story in a linear timeline, the book jumps back and forth in a very confusing way. If you didn't already know the Apple story, you wouldn't know what was going on. Also, considering all the success Apple has had since then (with the iMac and Titanium PowerBook), this topic is moot now anyway.
Rating:
Summary: Read a few pages at the Library before buying!
Review: I regret wasting money on this book. I could not finish it. Apart from this book jumping around in time and repeating itself in various parts, it seems to take everything that happened at Apple, take out virtually everything and anything good and condense what's left (with the repetitions and useless details filling in the rest of the book). I certainly do not worship Apple or agree with everything Apple does, but I am a Macintosh user and generally like Apple and its products. This author seems to have quite a bias against Apple though and presents almost everything negatively. It seems to be a never-ending struggle were nothing goes right and no one is ever happy. Although I do not doubt that there have been some such moments at Apple, I really CANNOT believe that this has been the constant mood at Apple. In fact, it would be hard for me to believe this about any company that's been around as long as Apple. Also, in the most recent revision of this book, the author doesn't seem to be willing to change his conclusion according to more recent (and dramatic) developments (since Steve Jobs' return). The author's conclusion is set, no matter what happens. He's left Apple to die, when Apple's very much alive and well with much to come. This is a very biased piece of work. It's almost always in style to bash Apple and leave it for dead, and this book is very much in style. Actually, this book is already showing its age and lack of foresight and vision. I recommend, specially if you can't stand bias works posing as objective, truthful ones, that you take a look at this book at any nearby library first, before you decide to buy.
Rating: 
Summary: good ol apple
Review: I'm a Mac user. When I was a kid I experimented with DOS and BASIC. Then I didn't use a computer for ten years. I remember seeing the neat looking little Macs at friends' houses as I grew up and comparing it to our Packard Bell. Carlton explains what was going on at that time. Apparently I was light years behind apple. Or was I?
Carlton does not over-emphasize the importance of the GUI and its impact on the industry. DOS was an alternative to Mac but certainly one that was not as user-friendly. Then Microsoft copied Apple's interface and set a standard as well as a precedent for Microsoft's business practices. (That whole Xerox issue has really been overdone), The wheel would not be reinvented again unfortunately. Instead of thinking in terms of evolving what has come before, the true innovations often come from a totally different starting point. Maybe if Windows hadn't copied Mac and then gobbled up 90% of the world's market share we would have had a true alterative to the GUI. Carlton realizes that Gates' contributions were "evolutions not revolutions" but he fails to mention how that philosophy harms the entire industry.
In college I began using computers for term papers and always used a PC. Even though there was never a wait to use a Mac. It was not until I started to get into my classes as a graphic design student that I fell in love with Apple Computer. Little did I know what happening behind the scens with that lovely little platinum box.
Carlton does not spare anybody at Apple. Of course Spindler and Amelio are pretty much inexcusable. Maybe Carlton is a little over critical but he speaks of Bill Gates, Ted Waits, and Michael Dell in an equally candid manner. I think that he tends to ignore a couple of mac's saving graces, namely that it truly is a standard in the publishing industry. (You just don't use a PC). He does mention the importance of the Desktop Publishing industry, as well as the education and consumer market, but it is done in passing. Apple just pales in comparison to Window's overall market share.
Compared to other hardware manufacturers, Apple does fine. They sell around the same number of computers as most of the Wintel companies do. Within that small market share they have a dedicated following who can easily co-exist in a windows world. The desktop publishing industry alone could probably support Apple Computer. He also tends to overemphasize a few business "blunders." After reading his book you are supposed to walk away thinking that not liscensing the Mac was an irresponsible business decision. Why? Apples hardware and software are made by one company and integrate seamlessly with one another. For me this is a plus. He does mention this was a problem for Windows '95. Novice users did not know how to hook up drivers for their peripherals etc... Mac is kind of the cadillac of the computer industry and it has the original operating system. Sure, maybe it doesn't go as fast, maybe it costs more. However, the architecture is more intuitive, the OS has less kinks (though it still crashes plenty), it is more user friendly as far as upgrading and installation are concerned, and let's face it, It looks a lot nicer than a PC. These are issues that will always sway some consumers to Macs. Remember, Carlton's book is only one opinion. It was entertaining, maybe a little biased, but I get tired of the people on anything mac.com's glowing optimism as well. Like anything else in life, you gotta get both sides and than make up your mind. Any company needs competition to be healthy and remember this little company in Cupertino has been able to keep up with Windows and Intel over the last ten years. Would the industry have advanced as far without Windows? Certainly not. Is Apple's business model flawed? Maybe. Than again, maybe not. Apple offers an alternative. Us Apple users are a ferverent lot. As long as there is a desire for individuality in the computing world there will be an Apple (or Linux, or something else...)
Rating:
Summary: Just get on with it!
Review: OK, I admit it, I'm a Mac addict, but I'm not adverse to hearing the 'bad' stuff about the company. However, if I had to read *one more time* about how so-and-so left Apple to battle with her weight, or what OLE is, or who the 4 S's were, I was going to scream. So, I didn't read it one more time. Instead, I flipped through the last third of the book. Mr. Carlton could have done with a good editor--this book was probably about 150 pages longer than it should have been, and any message was obscured by pointless references to 7th floor offices and what people were wearing when they met with him. I guess the author was trying to keep track of the various Apple capers that took place over many years, but the jumping around and constant 'step back a few months' drove me nuts. Talk about infinite loop! Chronological, Jim, chronological--only then is it *really* possible to understand the impact of the events that sent Apple on its rollercoaster ride. It also appears that the author isn't a fan of Steve Jobs. I don't believe it's necessary *to* be one to write a balanced account of Apple's history, but really, was the "Many of the moves he has made at Apple, while laudable, were fairly obvious ones to any student of Apple's history" comment necessary? Give the guy a little more credit--either others couldn't see what was necessary, or didn't have the guts to do it. There are some interesting moments in the book (including information on Bill Gates that I did appreciate learning). Unfortunately, there are just too many superfluous, repetitive passages to have to dig through to make it truly worthwhile.
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