What I don’t understand is that there are loads of things out there showing the Company disliked Gates and now it is about hating Cook? I didn’t feel this book was structured enough to make for good reading. This is a topic I am interested in however I found it dragging so much.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some interesting elements in this however it is as if they have mushed a bunch of articles together into one as it just didn’t make sense and contrasted at times.
Another thing, this novel is called ‘After Steve’ so why is this about the during? I thought this would be about how it actually ‘lost its soul’?
Too many questions, and so few answers given.

As I write, Apple is the second most valuable company in the world. A couple of weeks ago it was the most valuable, but many tech stocks have taken a tumble over that period. Nonetheless, Apple is currently worth $2.4 trillion.

While Steve Jobs set Apple on the way, it has actually been Tim Cook who has overseen the company’s most truly spectacular growth. This book from Tripp Mickle, a staff writer at the Wall St Journal for the last seven years (although he has most recently joined the New York Times), covers the period following Jobs handing over the company to Cook.

Cook had been responsible for much of Apple’s second-to-none supply chain, ensuring that the company had partners who were capable of producing incredible volumes of complex electronics to meet Apple’s insane growth. It was also Cook who finally got Apple’s iPhone made available for sale to a domestic Chinese customer base, thus seeing a new level in growth.

But this book is also about the growing disillusionment of Apple’s visionary designer Jony Ive. Once Jobs’ right-hand man, Ive had been responsible for so much of Apple’s design ethos, with clear ideas of what he wanted often requiring entirely new manufacturing processes to be created to deliver on his visions.

As Apple grew in scale, so his disenchantment seemed to grow, with Ive spending less time in his office, and taking up more of his multitude of other interests. His final project was really the design of Apple’s new spaceship campus, with Tripp regaling us with remarkable details of how things like glass manufacture were completely changed to meet the design needs of Apple’s new building. No detail was too much.

But we are definitely left with questions about where Apple goes next. The iPhone iterates each year with a new model, but there’s a feeling that we’re in stasis at this point – a slightly faster processor and a slightly improved camera. What’s the next great leap?

The trouble is that when a company reaches the scale Apple has become, pretty much nothing makes a difference to the bottom line. The feeling seems to be that health or cars are the only real places that Apple can go to gain meaningful further growth.

Tripp details the production of the Apple Watch, with the changing emphasis over time from fashion accessory to health tracker. Even then, it’s arguable that it hasn’t quite reached its ultimate purpose yet – struggling with battery and monitoring limitations. The car issue is something else again, but the scale of the motoring industry means that this is an area Apple continues to persevere with.

This book is full of all kinds of insider details, and anyone interested in the tech industry will be fascinated by it. It gets us as close to understanding what makes both Cook and Ive tick as anything short of their own autobiographies.

Thoroughly recommended.

After Steve is a book charting the story of Apple after Steve Jobs' death, exploring the tensions between designer Jony Ive and new CEO Tim Cook. Starting with the background of the company and its successes under Jobs, the book then follows the ups and downs through new products, redesigns, and political tensions, to follow a theme of a company losing its design soul for corporate money.

This is a thoroughly researched history of a company over a period of time, with a great deal of detail and sources (the author spoke to a lot of current and former Apple employees to get the detail). Unfortunately, this meant it wasn't quite what I had hoped from it: instead of analysis of the technology company and how it, as the book's subtitle says, "lost its soul", After Steve reads more like a very in-depth history of a company and two key individuals in it. At some points other companies are mentioned, like a rivalry with Samsung, but I was hoping for more situating in a larger tech world and analysis that isn't just focused on excitement of Apple's designs versus disappointment at bureaucracy.

People who enjoy reading about the history of companies or want in-depth detail about Apple's dealings will probably enjoy this book more, but for me it was too long and not focused enough on arguing about why Apple apparently "lost its soul" and what this might mean for technology.

Walter Isaacson’s brilliant biography of Steve Jobs is one of the most compelling accounts of a driven man I’ve come across. At Apple, Jobs was totally focussed on producing innovative products of superb quality. He wasn’t too worried about how his abrasive nature impacted those he worked with, he just wanted everything to be done ‘right’ and had zero tolerance for anything less. So what would happen to Apple once its driving force had passed? Well, this book tells the story.

The book is really the tale of two men who were to lead the company going forward. Jony Ive had been the Chief Design Officer during the period Jobs introduced the iPod, iPhone and iPad. He and Steve had formed a close partnership, with Jobs dropping in on Ive and his team just about every day. The second figure is, of course, Tim Cook who took over as CEO of the company following the death of Jobs. Cook had formerly been the company’s Chief Operating Officer. If Jobs was authoritarian and a galvanizing force for the company then Cook was democratic in his approach and more focussed on the numbers than the minute details of the products. They were, in fact, chalk and cheese.

This book walks us through Steve’s time at Apple (a scene setter) before focussing thereafter on Ive and Cook. We learn a good deal about what shaped these men and what drove them on, or made them tick. They were very different people: Ive the aesthete and Cook the operations man, forever with his eye on the financial spreadsheet. The chemistry between the two never came close to that established between Ive and Jobs. Eventually Jony became burnt out and, craving more autonomy, left to set up a business of his own. The book points out that despite Cook’s very different style and focus (he eventually turned more towards generating income from services more so than new products) the company's income continued to grow under his leadership.

It’s all told as a story, based on hundreds of interviews with an army of unnamed colleagues, friends and acquaintances of key players. In fact, this is just the way I like to imbibe this sort of information, I loved it and found the whole book to be hugely informative and yet still entertaining, in equal measure. Highly recommended.

This non-fiction book is predominantly set from the death of Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, with some reflections prior to this to give context to the people and places within the book.

I was intrigued to read this, as I will admit I wasn't sure what had been happening at Apple since Jobs death. I found the book extremely interesting - the details and the information in it is truly fascinating - and I was hooked, enjoying reading this as much as I could. There's a lot of information to take in, but that is something that I would have wanted from a book like this. The chronological order of the events are done well, and the information from insiders at Apple is fascinating.

If you enjoyed the Walter Isaacson biography on Jobs, I think this will be the book for you. As someone who had Apple products, then strayed away from the brand (and has come back to having Apple), it's interesting to hear the behind the scenes of what was happening around that time.

As a user of Apple products and someone who enjoys business books, I was looking forward to reading this. It’s exhaustively researched and to be honest I found repetitive at times, although I enjoyed the narrative style. I think it could have been a bit snappier as a book, but there’s loads in here for those interested in the relationships between Jobs, Cook and Ive.

Absolutely fascinating book. As I work in the mobile phone industry, I thought I knew quite a lot about Apple but I was wrong I knew nothing.

It took me ages to read as I kept stopping to discuss things with my colleagues, look things up, line what did the Apple Mac look like etc

I worked the Launch for the first ever iPhone and it was amazing to read how that came about.

If you want to know more about what goes on behind the scenes at the largest tech companies, you should read this book. It is not boring or really techie. I would definitely recommend this book

As an apple employee, I found it quite interesting to know about the decision making process and how the company shifted after the loss of Jobs. I did find the statistics and political aspect a little tiresome but I enjoyed learning about the research and development side of things and the focus on Ive’s creative input into the company

This book is well-researched and highly detailed. It is also very readable. It is strongest on the late-Jobs and immediate post-Jobs periods and less strong on more recent times. It is a little repetitive. There is too much Jobs/Jony Ive idolatry for my personal taste. However anyone who wants to know how Apple survived and thrived post-Jobs to become one of the world's most iconic companies will enjoy this book.

Navigating the tensions and shifting priorities within Apple as it adapts to a future without its co-founder.

A detailed account, repetitive in parts, but an interesting book that will be interesting to fans of Apple as well as those interested in the inner business workings of large companies as they continually adjust to stay relevant in a changing world.

A thoroughly researched and informative read. Things that I never knew about Apple both amazed and shocked me. This book is likely to alter your opinion about how you currently view Apple.