PositiveUSA Today3.5/4 stars ... there\'s no way to read it and not feel complete sympathy and sadness.
Leslie Berlin
RaveUSA TodayBerlin's book looks at pioneers like Markkula and others from the earliest days of Silicon Valley, as she shows how they laid the groundwork back in the 1970s and 1980s for the tech boom of today … The point of Berlin's book [is] to take a step back and revisit the earliest days of computing, back when machines engulfed entire rooms at corporations and had less memory than a smartwatch. The early days — and how primitive they were — are an important milestone to document and make for an entertaining read.
Brian Merchant
MixedUSA TodayWhen Merchant focuses on the basic history, he's in good territory ... Merchant connected with many of the key engineers from the iPhone team, which isn't an easy thing to do, as Apple frowns on current and past employees talking in an un-controlled environment. He expands the story by spending time in China, where more than 200 million iPhones are mass-produced yearly, at the Foxconn plants ... But I missed the parts of the story that Merchant left out. He decided not to focus on the birth and growth of Google's Android operating system, which now has an 85 percent market share, or the rise of Apple's chief rival Samsung, and the Galaxy S line of smartphones. He skips out on how Tim Cook, who took over as CEO of Apple after Jobs' death in 2011, has been skimpy on innovation, but has built the iPhone into an even bigger business that now represents two-thirds of Apple's revenues.
