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A new book is set to take a bite out of Apple, exposing the practices at the core of the iPhone and iPad outfit. Inside Apple: The Secrets Behind the Past and Future Success of Steve Jobs’s Iconic Brand promises unprecedented access to the world’s biggest technology company.
The officially-sanctioned exposé is written by Fortune editor Adam Lashinsky, who managed to explore behind the scenes at Apple, headquartered in Cupertino in California.
Lashinsky’s book expands on an article about Apple’s culture and practices last year, revealing Steve Jobs’ quick temper, exacting standards and obsession with secrecy.
Secrecy is totally ingrained into Apple culture. Visitors to the Cupertino HQ can buy t-shirts that read ‘I visited the Apple Campus. But that’s all I’m allowed to say’.
Last year, Apple Store employees had to conceal their identity when they revealed in an interview that working for the company’s shops was like “working at McDonald’s“. Everything works on a need-to-know basis. Engineers don’t talk to people outside their team, and Apple Store employees find out about a new product at the same time as everyone else: when it’s publicly announced.
An officially-sanctioned biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs by US author Walter Isaacson was one of the best-selling books of last year, and may even be expanded with more detail about Jobs’ final days — it was published a month early when Jobs died in October.
The book revealed that Jobs believed the iPhone antenna problem was a Google smear, that he had declared “thermonuclear war” on Android, and that he wanted to replace phone networks with his own Wi-Fi network.
