Infinite Loop: How Apple, the World's Most Insanely Great Company, Went Insane

Malone, Michael S.

ISBN 10: 0385486847 / ISBN 13: 9780385486842

Published by Doubleday Business, 1999

About this Item

Seller Inventory # GOR014445025

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Infinite Loop: How Apple, the World's Most Insanely Great Company, Went Insane
• Publisher: Doubleday Business
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385486847
• ISBN 13: 9780385486842
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: Fine
• Weight: 975 grams

About this title

Synopsis

The inside story of how one of America's most beloved companies--Apple Computer--took off like a high-tech rocket--only to come crashing to Earth twenty years later.

No company in modern times has been as successful at capturing the public's imagination as Apple Computer. From its humble beginnings in a suburban garage, Apple sparked the personal computer revolution, and its products and founders--Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak--quickly became part of the American myth.

But something happened to Apple as it stumbled toward a premature middle age. For ten years, it lived off its past glory and its extraordinary products. Then, almost overnight, it collapsed in a two-year free fall.

How did Apple lose its way? Why did the world still care so deeply about a company that had lost its leadership position? Michael S. Malone, from the unique vantage point of having grown up with the company's founders, and having covered Apple and Silicon Valley for years, sets out to tell the gripping behind-the-scenes story--a story that is even zanier than the business world thought. In essence, Malone claims, with only a couple of incredible inventions (the Apple II and Macintosh), and backed by an arrogance matched only by its corporate ineptitude, Apple managed to create a multibillion-dollar house of cards. And, like a faulty program repeating itself in an infinite loop, Apple could never learn from its mistakes. The miracle was not that Apple went into free fall, but that it held up for so long.

Within the pages of Infinite Loop, we discover a bruising portrait of the megalomaniacal Steve Jobs and an incompetent John Sculley, as well as the kind of political backstabbings, stupid mistakes, and overweening egos more typical of a soap opera than a corporate history. Infinite Loop is almost as wild and unpredictable, as exhilarating and gut-wrenching, as the story of Apple itself.

About the Author

Michael S. Malone has written for The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other national publications. He is currently the editor of Forbes ASAP, as well as a contributor to Upside and Fast Company magazines. Among his books are The Big Score and Intellectual Capital. He also hosts the PBS show "Malone," an interview series now in its ninth season.