After Steve How Apple became a trillion-dollar company and lost its soul

Wall Street Journal reporter Mickle draws from interviews with 200 current and former Apple employees, suppliers, and competitors for his insightful debut, an unsparing take on the company's post--Steve Jobs era. From the jump, Mickle makes his perspective clear: by 2019, design innovation had taken the backseat, and "the creative soul of Apple had been eclipsed by the machine." Privacy, "fend off the government's" attacks, and fortunes to be made from "endless supply of cheap labor" became the priority. This shift, Mickle argues, is in large part the result of tension between the two men who led the company post-Jobs: chief design officer Jony Ive ("Apple's high priest") and COO-turned-CEO Tim Cook. Mickle covers both men's early work and details their efforts to change the company after Jobs's death in 2011. Those years included fiascoes--the initially faulty Apple Maps app, for example--and saw "tremendous revenue growth that had lifted valuation to $1 trillion." Most of all, Mickle writes, turning over the company to Cook, an operations man with mediocre showmanship skills--rather than a design guy--had the greatest impact in changing the company's focus. There has been plenty written about Jobs and Apple; this sets itself apart with its shrewd look at how and why the company's culture shifted. Apple devotees and skeptics alike will find much to consider. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (May)

A report on the tech giant's myriad changes following the death of Steve Jobs in 2011. Journalist Mickle, who covered Apple and other Silicon Valley companies for the Wall Street Journal, crafts a dynamic, eye-opening debut drawing from news articles, court filings, published materials, and hundreds of interviews. The fact that a sizable portion of Mickle's source material is derived from current and former Apple employees lends his report credence, particularly after noting the strict corporate "culture of omertà" workers abide by and the challenges he faced accessing information from this tight-lipped "iPhone syndicate." The author documents how the company's corporate direction changed after Jobs' death, leaving perfectionist Chief Design Officer Jony Ive and former COO and "Apple's king of commerce" Tim Cook in charge. Mickle provides expansive histories on both executives, and he shows how their combined influence led the company away from its core values and culture. The author clearly shows the increasing tensions between the two leaders and the ever expanding differences in how each envisioned the future of Apple. The road became especially rocky after several senior engineers resigned, after which leadership's hesitations and inability to collaborate effectively created further significant problems. Some of Apple's critical missteps included the glitchy Apple Maps app, the tortured development of an intuitive smart watch, a flawed initiative for a self-driving car, and the generally panicked search for "Apple's next big bet" while staying ahead of rivals. This put Cook and Ive's experience and resolve to the ultimate test. While the results were successful financially, they came at the expense of the creative spirit that had defined the company for decades. Circling back on his initial discussions, Mickle points to what he interprets as the nexus of Apple's soullessness: the ascension of Cook, a democratic, operations-focused leader who concentrated more on privacy protections and profit pyramids than pioneering innovative developments. Tech enthusiasts will find this meticulously researched report great fodder for debate on the future of Apple as a tech leader. A focused, perceptive assessment of the evolution of Apple's alchemy. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.