iCon

29 Jun 2005 13:27

Apple's products, personalities and corporate culture have spawned a veritable library of books, but iCon: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business doesn't add much in the way of new anecdote or incisive analysis.

Given this fact, there are only two possible justifications for publishing yet another book about Steve Jobs or Apple. One: there have been dramatic new developments since the last book was published. Two: the author(s) have close, inside personal contacts that give them a new and unique perspective on events.

Neither of these things is true in the case of iCon. The authors refer frequently to other titles -- especially Alan Deutschmann's 2000 book, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. They speculate about what this or that person thought. They note that the people closest to Jobs don't talk, for fear of excommunication. The closest inside contact either of them seems to have is William L. Simon with former Apple CEO Gil Amelio, who was ousted when Jobs returned to the company: Simon co-authored On the Firing Line, Amelio's account of his thousand or so days as Apple CEO, so all that material has already been published. The only dramatic new development has been Apple's move into digital music with iTunes and the iPod, and that (along with fights between Disney and Pixar) occupies only the last 50 pages of the book.

Instead, iCon covers the life of Steve Jobs, from his beginnings as an adopted child through his triumphant reigns at Apple and Pixar over the last few years. The upshot is that there is very little that's new in this book -- an occupational hazard of writing about a company that's already been so well documented. The boardroom battles that ousted Jobs from Apple in 1986? Better covered with more drama and detail in West of Eden. The actual creation of the Macintosh? Better covered with more drama and detail in Insanely Great. The process by which Jobs attracted shares in Apple and Pixar --thereby becoming insanely rich -- that might, or perhaps should, have gone to other founders and engineers? Best exposed in Charles Ferguson's High St@kes, No Prisoners.

Ferguson was founder and CEO of Vermeer, the company that originally produced what is now Microsoft's Front Page. In that book, Ferguson considers company structures and their implications for stock ownership by founders at great length, using Jobs as a prime example of what to avoid as an employee in a start-up. (Simon and Young counter Ferguson's criticisms by noting that people shouldn't complain so loudly, given that Jobs funded Pixar employees' salaries for years.) The best advice would be to wait until someone writes the book about Apple and digital music, if that's what you're interested in, and otherwise go back to these authors' sources.

Story URL: http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/productivity/0,1000001108,39205937,00.htm