Some quick learnings from Inside Apple (the Book)

I’ve been enjoying going through Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired–and Secretive–Company Really Works in preparation to meet the author.  There are several revelations I’ve had which all are deserving of blog posts in-and-of-themselves.  However, due to lack of time, here’s some quick bullets:

• Very few employees say that working at Apple is “fun”.  But most of them love what they do.  I believe Steve said something like “fun comes and goes” but working on something truly meaningful is a rare, life-changing experience.\

• Even packaging has an R&D department, and it’s in a secret building.  How many other companies do R&D on boxes?\

• Each Apple project has two leads: the engineering project manager, and the global supply manager, who argue back and forth on what can be done, and are the heads of the project together.  The way they resolve disagreements are what is best for the consumer experience.\

• Steve was the ultimate editor.  Betas of the most important projects were delivered to him repeatedly, and he would revise.\

• The entire product line could fit on a dining room table.  How many other big companies could do this?  Focusing on so few products can be really scaring, because the company is betting on the success of so few things.  But it also creates amazing products.\

• Apple said no to many features and products because the timing was wrong.\

• Vertical integration was key – Apple could change their software to enable new features in the hardware, and vice versa.\

• I had forgotten, but when Jerry Yang was coming back to lead Yahoo, Steve gave a rare talk to their senior executives.  His message was clear: Yahoo can choose to do anything it wants because it has a lot of cash and talented people, but it has to choose and focus.  Did they want to be a content company or a technology company.  Obviously, they couldn’t decide.  Nobody knows what they are even to this day.

I’m sure there is more, but I have to run!  Also – thanks to Dan Siroker and Eric Siroker who enabled my ability to listen to audiobooks at 2X :)