On Friday, February 3, at the lovely Delancey St. Theater in San Francisco, ReadWriteWeb and our new home company, SAY Media, co-hosted a release party for Adam Lashinsky’s new book, Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired – And Secretive – Company Really Works. It was our first joint event since we joined SAY in December. RWW and SAY are working together to figure out the future of media, so a gathering to discuss a book about Apple was a great place to start.
Apple lives at the center of the worldwide technological transformation that’s underway, and Lashinsky’s new book sheds light on how the enigmatic company works. It profiles Apple’s leaders and their various styles and talents, it describes how the organization is woven around them, and it tells the stories of Apple insiders and outsiders at all levels.
I got to sit down with Lashinsky for an interview about the book before MC David Richter opened it up to the whole audience. Our conversation touched on three aspects of Apple that tie the book together: the culture, the leaders and the products.
Lashinsky reveals many telling facts and anecdotes about Apple’s culture in the book. We discussed whether Apple’s obsession and perfectionism are creepy, and to what extent this is driven by the personalities of its leaders.
We considered the extreme secrecy imposed on Apple’s lower ranks and what effects that has on morale and the quality of work. We also thought about Apple’s unique sense of timing, taste and presentation that make it such a phenomenon in the culture at large.
Apple’s organization is centrally controlled by a closed group of leaders, and I asked Lashinsky about the importance of their personalities in the way the company operates. We discussed the extent to which Steve Jobs’ legacy shaped the culture and whether those shapes will hold after his passing.
Then we talked about Tim Cook’s new and starkly different style as CEO. Lashinsky has also referred to SVP of iOS Software Scott Forstall as a “CEO-in-waiting,” and the book points to the contrast between him and Cook as one of the upcoming dramas in Apple’s next chapter.
Finally, we looked at the products, the part of the company where Apple meets the public. We discussed the powerful influence of Jobs’ last products and how we’ll have to wait for the ones that come after him to see the real face of a post-Jobs Apple.
I found our conversation illuminating, and the whole evening was a lot of fun. Here’s the full video of my interview with Adam Lashinsky:
