Inside Apple: Highlights from the New Fortune Article
Posted 05/09/2011 at 5:48am
| by J.R. Bookwalter
Think you know everything there is to know about Apple, Inc. and CEO Steve Jobs? You probably don’t know as much as Adam Lashinsky, whose new Fortune magazine article “Inside Apple” is stirring up plenty of interest in the latest issue.
MacStories.net has a fascinating breakdown of some of the key tidbits from the latest issue of Fortune magazine. Adam Lashinsky’s piece entitled “Inside Apple” is a veritable treasure trove of info-nuggets about the Cupertino company and its CEO, Steve Jobs, who is often shrouded in mystery.
One of the most detailed events over the weekend was the 2008 transition from .Mac to MobileMe, timed alongside iPhone OS 2, the App Store and the iPhone 3G. As those of us who lived through it can recall, things didn’t exactly go as planned, and one of Apple more public missteps has the curtain pulled aside in Lashinsky’s article so we can see how the company dealt with the mishap.
According to the article, Jobs dragged the entire MobileMe team into a meeting at the company’s Town Hall, apparently asking, “Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” After receiving a correct answer, the CEO ripped into the team with an unprintable expletive, wondering why the service doesn’t perform the way it should. Jobs was also understandably sensitive about the bungled MobileMe launch “tarnishing Apple’s reputation,” complaining that Wall Street Journal reviewer Walt Mossberg even took a pass on recommending the service.
Among the other factoids in the article: It only took two people to write the code necessary to convert Safari for the iPad. Steve Jobs meets with executives on Mondays to review “every important project,” and uses Wednesdays to meet with marketing and communications. Finally, the Apple online store executive actually has no control over what photos appear on his website -- that’s the sole domain of the company’s graphic arts department.
There’s plenty more to read, and if you’re a Fortune subscriber you can access it free through the iPad app; for everyone else, it’s a $4.99 one-time purchase. The “Inside Apple” article is also available as an Amazon Kindle Edition for only 99 cents, but it won’t be available until Tuesday, May 10 -- you can preorder now and have it automatically delivered to any Kindle-equipped device, including your iOS device.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter