Rating: 
Summary: fiendish, negative reading, but interesting
Review: Apple can't suck that much, but after I was done with this book, I couldn't believe that the company is still around. It's interesting reading, but seems awfully negative.
Rating: 
Summary: A great account of the biggest "What If?" ever
Review: This book offers a great illustration of the personalities behind the decisions that led to Apple's near-demise. It's amazing that a company with so many bright people managed to spin its wheels for 10 years. It's also amazing that Apple is still around.
Rating: 
Summary: Very difficult to read
Review: This book offers some wonderful insights on how the former powerhouse, Apple, went to near bankruptcy in the early '90's. I found much of the information very intersting. The only problem was that I could not follow the book at all! The story seemed to jump all around with no clear direction. I often found myself reading along about the company in 1992, then suddenly find myself reading about what happened in 1989 in the next paragraph. I could not draw any line of cohesion in this book, which is truly a shame. With better organization, this could have been a very good book.
Rating:
Summary: It breaks your heart!
Review: This was my first read about life and business in the PC industry in America in the 80s and 90s, mainly through the exploits of APPLE. And what a picture of arrogance, ineptness and business blunders that Jim Charlton portrays. It just breaks your heart to read some of the stories here. The failed and mainly unfinished projects, the missed and botched opportunites, the damaging egos and the obscene mis-management. At times I felt both compassion and anger at APPLE. In the end though, you just felt sorry for the whole company and the many people with a bright and the right idea, who were knocked back. Jim charlton really does a wonderful job in certain areas. His criticisms of CEO's such as Micheal Spindler and Gil Amelio are quite justified.Icould go on, but will APPLE? I truly hope so.
Rating: 
Summary: What you never knew about Apple.
Review: Jim Carlton writes masterfully the story of Apple Computer. In so doing he provides a comprehensive picture of the computer industry as a whole. Even the novice will be quickly absorbed by this intriguing account of a once innovative company, trashed by greed, arrogance and huge egos from within. Microsoft chose "evolution over revolution." The Apple passion was to "change the world." Carlton describes in unbiased detail how after years of mismanagement, the world would change around Apple. This book is recommended reading for Mac evangelists.
Rating: 
Summary: Misses the mark
Review: The book fails to capture the reason the Macintosh become popular in the first place. Just the title of the book denote's Jim Carlton's bias. Interestingly enough, his predictions of the future of Apple is ironically incorrect. Apple's recent comeback in the computer industry is a testiment to that.
Rating:
Summary: Earth to Mr. Carlton: Think Different
Review: Apple Computer company has, in the past two years, made a bona fide turnaround. It is easy to enumerate a few facts supporting this proposition, not the least of which is five straight quarters of profit after some very tough times. The iMac was the number one best selling computer in the last quarter of 1998. Steve Jobs is a charismatic and visionary leader back at the helm. Apple has a creative community of loyal users like no other computer company. Apple has a powerful OS in the offing called Mac OS X. Many developers, particularly game developers, have been jumping back on board the platform. Apple's agreements with Microsoft has guaranteed its office software development for the Mac for five years minimum. Apple has, now, a powerful board of directors, as well as a little reported technology genius named Avie Tevanian, and with Avie comes some very adaptable software from the former NeXT team which is being wrapped into OS X. Apple has Quicktime -- the muldtimedia standard. And now Apple is marketing their stylish, yet powerful, new computers with pizzaz via the amazing advertising firm called Chiat-Day. Et cetera, et cetera... If all these facts make my contention that Apple is on the right track to gaining some semblance of market share back from Microsoft "absurd" as Mr. Carlton, as well as certain previous reviewers of this book, might contend, so be it. In the light of Apple's current day performance I will accept my absurdity like a man. I don't suggest that the road ahead wont be rough and competitive for Apple. All I'm saying is that Apple is today in a promising position. Journalists like Jim Carlton should now stop ladling the erroneous attempt at the self fulfilling prophesy that Apple has no niche, no chance, and no capacity to be a serious, albeit positively unorthodox, player in the game. Jim Carlton's book assumed that Apple's culture was stuck and etched in stone and monolithic. It is his book, however, which has become obsolete decades before Apple Computer will see its demise. The book, in its present form, is a catastrophic mis-prognostication, along with some interesting tid-bits on a portions of Apple's history. Mr. Carlton would do well to produce a second addition in which the author learns to "THINK DIFFERENT."
Rating:
Summary: Excellent history but unneccesary negative tone
Review: Aside from some negatives described below, I really enjoyed this book. Jim Carlton has obviously assembled an extensive history of Apple and it's people. You really get an inside look at Apple. On the negative side, there are endless criticisms of Apple's blunders that are all too easy to make in hindsight. It's also interesting to see how far Jim Carlton was off the mark in predicting Apple's demise. Since the book was completed Apple has made a tremendous turnaround. His book gives the impression that Apple's collapse was just around the corner. Now his book can be subjected to some 20/20 hindsight! But this is still an excellent book and I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: How did it survive?
Review: It's amazing, though the Wintel crowd wants to refute it and say that the war for the desktop is over, that Apple survived through the events Carlton describes in this book. Reading the book today is like reading about a completely different company. The book illustrates how Wintel boxes became the standard - because Sculley and Spindler were ignorant (and Amelio was just brain dead) of what had to be done to push the company and industry forward. Now Apple is regaining marketshare and developers are coming back onboard. They've fallen out of the ivory tower and realize that they can't compete living inside of it. However, Microsoft now resides in that tower, thinking nothing can touch them. Apple, IBM, Intel, Gateway, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard all realize the world is starting to turn away from MS (and towards the Mac and Linux), just as they did from Apple earlier this decade. Bill Gates and his crowd would be wise to read this book and realize there is no such thing as a desktop standard, and that they're making many of the same mistakes Apple made. But they won't. Eventually, Windows will be eaten alive and MS will be brought back to an applications company. And Apple will still be standing.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but ultimately unsatisfying
Review: I enjoyed this book to some extent but it consistently failed to answer one simple question: Why, in this era of Wintel dominance, do people still buy and support Apple products? And the answer appears to be passion. There appears to still be a place for Apple for some time to come. Wow, what a ride!
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