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We’ve had a peak behind the curtain at Apple, and it seems that 1 Infinite Loop isn’t a haven of childlike wonder. A new article paints a portrait of Apple boss Steve Jobs as a ruthless dictator whose exacting standards set the tone at the company.
Adam Lashinsky profiles the company in Fortune magazine, in an article you can only read in digital form through an iPad app or on your Kindle. Interviewing past and present Apple employees, he reveals a corporate culture in which failure is simply not an option.
When MobileMe failed to live up to expectations, Jobs lambasted the team involved, asking what it was supposed to do before demanding, “So why the f*** doesn’t it do
that? You’ve tarnished Apple’s reputation. You should hate each other for having let each other down.” We imagine someone got a similar tongue-lashing for the recent locationgate and antennagate controversies.
Jobs is notoriously controlling of the company he founded in a garage in 1976, deciding everything down to the food served in the canteen. The creative process at the company behind the iPhone, iPad and iMac consists of “constantly preparing someone —
be it one’s boss, boss’s boss, or oneself — for a presentation to Jobs”.
Emperor Jobs is currently on medical leave. Apple is preparing for the coronation of a new overlord, with business professors hired for Apple University to write case studies that will help future bosses.
The future of the company is discussed in secret meetings of the top 100 people at the company, ferried to a secret location that’s swept for bugs. The cabal of top employees can’t even mark the meetings in their calendars, with the secrecy required because it’s in these meetings that new products are often unveiled.
The full article is available in Fortune‘s iPad edition or as a standalone article for the Kindle. The official history of Jobs’ time at Apple will soon be told in the forthcoming book iSteve: The Book of Jobs.
