Apple Confidential 2.0: The Real Story of Apple Computer, Inc. by Owen Linzmayer  (27)  £15.99

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Synopsis
January 1994 marked the 10th anniversary of this personal computer breakthrough. A household word now, the Macintosh phenomenon marked a watershed point in techno-popular culture. The Macintosh pointed the way for all future machines - it raised the standard of what one could demand of a personal computer, raised the number of people who could master the use of a more capable, user-friendly one, and raised the stakes of what competing computer avatars (like Bill Gates of then-emerging Microsoft) could produce, sell and earn in the rapidly developing area of PC programming and research. It catapulated the computer industry into an uncharted territory, a mix of technics, economics and show biz. The Mac, columnist Steven Levy explores, became the nexus of all our futuristic dreams. Not unlike the Model T, or the first Apollo mission, it thrust America and US technology into a new millenium. Computinghas never been the same - neither have we.

From the Author
In Days of Apple's worries, a reminder of glory
This book is special to me. From the moment I saw the Macintosh (some time before its release), I was charmed, not only by the machine but the people who created it. Those people in the Mac team became my friends; the machine became my primary tool for writing, and my window into worlds of software and communication. The idea for this book came to me thirteen months before the Mac's tenth anniversary--a relatively short, and somewhat personal history of the Mac to come out just at it turned 10. Since I had been consistently covering the Mac, I already had much of the research done--I followed up with a series of interviews to fill in the holes. (Those interviews were a lot of fun.) I learned stuff I'd never known, and I think for the first time you get a sense of how the Mac really evolved, from ideas like Bush's Memex through Xerox PARC, throught the LISA. You get a sense of what Jobs did, and what the others did. You see why it almost failed, and how the Mac II was made. And in the special addition for the paperback, there's the story of the PowerMac. But most important in these days of Apple's precarious position, I'm happy to have documented why Apple really matttered, and how a computer could change your life.