Review: Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired–and Secretive–Company Really Works
Read this in a couple hours. Lashinsky does a pretty good job delving into what makes Apple tick. It’s a decent accompaniment to the Jobs biography. It paints a clearer picture of how
Bottom line, Apple is a company of cogs. Finely honed cogs that do their jobs exceedingly well, but cogs. No generalists. Masters of craft, but no rockstars. That’s reserved for the top ~10 corporate officers. (That’s a mindfuck for MBAs that are taught that each is a beautiful little general manager waiting to bloom.)
Incentivize those with money, prestige, stringent accountability, and a get-it-done culture (all backed by a huge war chest) and you’re good to go. The result is a tightly wound machine, ready to execute on whatever you divine is necessary.
Note, the publicity of this book overstates the insights into the secretive aspects of Apple. -“APPLE IS LIKE THE CIA” etc. (Nah. It operates like the CIA wants to.) What little is provided on this topic is oft repeated. You’ll read about how ID cards don’t work in certain areas probably a dozen times. That’s poor editing.
Fiction: Evi
Evi –
Evi is a new iPhone and Android app which might just give Apple’s Siri a run for her money. She – we’ll call this Artificial Intelligence a she – returns amazing results when consulted. Evi might just be the Siri for the rest of the world, especially since Evi wil run on any Andoid or iPhone, and not just the 4S. I’ve seen her in action and Evi is very, very smart.
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We stood alone. Not because we were all that was left. Not because our homes were gone, and with them our wives and our sons. We manned the city walls because she had asked. And bound by the debt of a billion favors over the years, we were honored to come to her aid in a time of need.
We readied ourselves, checked our ammunition. We planned and she whispered movements and tactics in our ears. During the siege, she spoke of courage. When they charged, an enormous mass of aluminum and black, Evi’s voice stayed steady, and true. To those locked in mortal combat, she offered encouragement. To the weak, she gave purpose. To those who lay broken, she softly told stories of events past, of friends, of mugs of crisp ale, and of family in the snow, until they heard no more.
When they ended her life, we too screamed in agony. We had asked for, and received, so much. She had asked only once, but even that we could not give her.
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Part of my ongoing startup dystopia series. I try to publish one short story (<1,000 words) per week. Previous installments: Basis Science, Uber, PlaceIQ , Flavo.rs, and Hard Drive.
Update on Echoes
Thanks to the hundreds of folks who have grabbed or read the ebook experiment. So far, half read it in the embedded Scribd, and the other half downloaded the iBook version. Would love to hear from more of you. How was the content? Design? Experience?
As of today, you can grab a variety of other formats, including Kindle, PDF, etc from Smashwords .
The very, very short, free, “Echoes of a Life Well Lived” draws upon the the historic and fictional experiences to reveal how we can mentally prepare ourselves for each stage of our lives, and enjoy meaning and success in an increasingly uncertain world.
Readers will enjoy a fast read filled with lessons pulled from such diverse sources as Michael Corleone, Devdas, Karl Marx, King Ashoka, as well as today’s top technology leaders – Bill Gates, Tim Cook, and Steve Jobs.
You can also grab it from Amazon here, but unfortunately, I can’t set the price to zero. Please, don’t buy it, but if you can, do leave a review on the Amazon page. That would be much appreciated.
Things I’ve learned so far:
- Sign up for an iTunes content seller account early (here). It is not instantaneous.
- Adding a book to Amazon takes a little less than 24 hours. Updating it resets that timer. You have no control of pricing at free.
- Formatting for Kindle can be awful. Figured it out. Protips: Use Sigil – a WSYIWYG ebook editor for tweaking. Manually create the Table of Contents.
Release: Echoes of a Life Well Lived
I’ve polished up and packaged my as a short, free, ebook, titled “Echoes of a Life Well Lived.” You can download it in iBooks format . There’s also a Scribd version below the fold.
It’s not really a book. More of an iPamphlet. And, really, more of an experiment to test the feel and the process for my upcoming fiction book. As such, I’d love any and all feedback on this.
Fiction: Basis Science
Basis tracks your heart rate, your movement, skin temperature and the ambient temperature, and your galvanic skin response (GSR, or how much you’re sweating). The sweat tells you how strenuous your activity is and how stressed out you are. All of the data gets uploaded to the cloud and Basis analyzes it. You wear the device 24 hours a day. The device knows whether you are asleep or awake.
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I placed my belt in a Zappos-sponsored plastic bin. Onto yet another city. My life had recently turned into an exhausting mix of precisely measured 2.5oz bottles, TSA anal sniffing, and a series of seat backs in the upright and locked position.
I eyed the guy in front of me and popped another airborne, hoping the stuff worked. He had a tissue box cradled under his armpit, and was using and discarding one after the other in an almost overflowing grocery bag. I kneeled to untie my shoe. Something started to drip onto the ground in front of him. Blood. I jumped up and back. He turned and said something about a doctor. It was all over his hands, his shirt. I looked up. His nose, which I expected to be a mess, was fine. It was his eyes that were bursting.