Infinite Loop

Two years ago, this could have been the definitive book about why one of the world's most well-known brand names almost went out of business. But Apple has since bounced back, rendering some--but not all--of Malone's analysis moot. (In fact, in his foreword, Malone admits that, having abandoned his Mac for a PC, he is now eyeing an Apple G3--though he calls the iMac ""Steve Jobs's triumph of image over reality."") Still, even given the bad timing, Malone presents a cogent account of how Apple ran into trouble. Malone, editor of the technology magazine, Forbes ASAP, grew up near Apple's founders, worked for the company for a time and has covered the firm since its inception. He unearths new information about the company's founders, Steven P. Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, and he puts them in a far less flattering light than the common hagiography, which presents the two as a pair of garage-bound tinkerers and idealists. The story he tells is how hubris, arrogance and IBM-sized egos prevented Apple's execs from diversifying the company's product line. Determined to write the definitive revisionist history of Apple, Malone takes special aim at the company's famous corporate culture: ""Of all the great companies of recent memory, there is only one that seemed to have no character, but only an attitude, a style, a collection of mannerisms. It constructed a brilliant simulacrum of character, in a way a man without empathy or conscience can pretend to have those traits."" Such sentences abound in a book that--at least among Apple execs and the company's famously loyal customers--will be greeted with something other than a smile. (Apr.)