On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple [Paperback]

"Apple seemed a natural, considering my background as a Ph.D. technologist with a number of patents and my reputation as a business leader who had established a notable record for transforming ailing companies."

Whether this confidence was justified can be discerned in many places in the book, but I will always treasure this one from page 187:

"Solaris, on the other hand, is based on a programming language called Unix..."

For those not technical enough to be in on the joke, Unix is an operating system, not a programming language. While your average man-on-the-street might make this mistake, for a computer company CEO to make it is pretty funny/pathetic.

For those more into human emotion than technical humor, here is a lot of spite in here, mostly directed at Steve Jobs, as shown by this from page 269:

"The success I was creating threatened to get in the way of his plans. Betrayal, assassination, trashing of reputations are all part of the everyday tool kit of a person obsessed with power, control, or revenge."

Even as I type this I confess that I cannot even begin to imagine what success Gil is referring to: the billion dollar losses? the massive layoffs? the plunging sales?

As a bonus, the book has some fascinating contradictions. Take this from page 273, regarding the deal with Microsoft:

"Eager for a dramatic move, he [Steve] called Bill Gates and gave him the deal I wouldn't, handing over everything...But he failed to get the one essential element...Instead he settled for cash, a sum Microsoft could write a check for without blinking."

So Gil doesn't like the deal right? He thinks Apple got taken. But then there is this from the next page:

"It bristled me no end to read in the newspapers about Steve making a deal with Bill Gates, as if no groundwork had been laid"

Thus, we are left with the puzzling conclusion that Gil thinks it was a terrrible deal, and is very resentful that he got no credit for it.

To wrap up, I am conflicted about giving this book only one star, because there is genuine entertainment value in it, in much the same way that "Plan 9 from Outer Space" has entertainment value: as a dazzling bad instance of its type. Hopefully this review, independent of the rating, will give the reader a better idea as to whether or not this book is the type of reading material he will enjoy.

This book has some interesting observations about apple culture, and a couple lessons for tech managers, but it's also full of self-congratulatory prose, with an occasional good dollop of self-pity. It's also written at around a 4th grade level - there were lots of opportunities for deeper analysis of what happened at apple, why Gil's strategies for turning the place around might have worked or might have failed, NeXT vs Be, and how apple changed as an organization. Unfortunately, Amelio and his co-author never delve into the details.