The 9 greatest Apple books money can buy

The wonderful LX Factory library in Lisbon, Portugal

If you never read another Apple-related book, make sure you’ve read some of these:

Infinite Loop

Michael Malone

The best out of print Apple history book you’ll ever read, Infinite Loop was and remains a poster child for how to make corporate history interesting. If you can get hold of a copy, you should. You sometimes find it at this Amazon link.

Apple Confidential 2.0

Owen Linzmayer

If you want to understand the early years of Apple, you need this book. It’s an excellent behind-the-scenes account of what happened in those early years, from the making of the first computers in Steve Jobs’ parent’s garage, Atari and more.

Revolution in The Valley

Andy Hertzfeld

The history of Apple is intertwined with the Steve Jobs rebels and the making of the Mac. It’s a great book, full of intertwined plot lines and political intrigue. If you are curious about the creation of the Mac, you must read this book.

Inside Apple

Adam Lashinsky

Want to know what it was like to work at Apple? This book, subtitled, ‘Apple: How America’s Most Admired – and Secretive – Company Really Works’, is a pretty good guide. Thing have changed since Cook took the helm, but it’s good insight all the same.

Insanely Simple

Ken Segall

Segall is the man behind the Think Different ads and his book attempts to explain some of the ways of thinking that enabled the success. Apple fans will like the inclusion of a host of first hand Steve Jobs anecdotes, and anyone engaged in product management should probably take a look.

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs

Alan Deutschman

This is the book to read for the history of what happened to Steve Jobs once he’d been kicked out of Apple, his work with Pixar and Next and his subsequent return to the company he cofounded. Critical in some places it does more to articulate the depth of the founder’s character than some more recent titles.

Becoming Steve Jobs

Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

This book focuses on different material rather than the now widely known stories about Jobs’ personal failings. That’s not to say this title lets him off, far from it, but what it does provide is a deeper, more intellectually satisfying insight into the nature of Jobs.

Design Crazy (no longer available)

Max Chafkin

This is a super read. It consists of quotes from fifty people who’ve worked at or with Apple across the years. It provides “a compelling and deeply revealing oral history of how design evolved at the most creative enterprise of our time, the company that one entrepreneur says “taught the world taste”,” the book jacket says. That’s a pretty good explanation.

Steve Jobs

Walter Isaacson

I can’t honestly claim this attempt lived up to its potential. Given unparalleled access to Steve Jobs in his final months, Isaacson produced a work that provided very little insight or depth. All the same, those nuggets it does contain make this an essential read for Apple watchers, albeit a complete disappointment given the level of access this guy got.

Looking for more Apple history? Try looking through these.