After Steve

How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost its Soul

By: Tripp Mickle

Narrated by: Will Damron

From the Wall Street Journal’s Tripp Mickle, the dramatic, untold story inside Apple after the passing of Steve Jobs by following his top lieutenants—Jony Ive, the Chief Design Officer, and Tim Cook, the COO-turned-CEO—and how the fading of the former and the rise of the latter led to Apple losing its soul.

Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his “spiritual partner at Apple.” The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative force who most embodies Jobs’s spirit, the man who designed the products adopted by hundreds of millions the world over: the iPod, iPad, MacBook Air, the iMac G3, and the iPhone. In the wake of his close collaborator’s death, the chief designer wrestled with grief and initially threw himself into his work designing the new Apple headquarters and the Watch before losing his motivation in a company increasingly devoted more to margins than to inspiration.

In many ways, Cook was Ive’s opposite. The product of a small Alabama town, he had risen through the ranks from the supply side of the company. His gift was not the creation of new products. Instead, he had invented countless ways to maximize a margin, squeezing some suppliers, persuading others to build factories the size of cities to churn out more units. He considered inventory evil. He knew how to make subordinates sweat with withering questions.

Jobs selected Cook as his successor, and Cook oversaw a period of tremendous revenue growth that has lifted Apple’s valuation to $2 trillion. He built a commanding business in China and rapidly distinguished himself as a master politician who could forge global alliances and send the world’s stock market into freefall with a single sentence.

Author Tripp Mickle spoke with more than 200 current and former Apple executives, as well as figures key to this period of Apple’s history, including Trump administration officials and fashion luminaries such as Anna Wintour while writing After Steve. His research shows the company’s success came at a cost. Apple lost its innovative spirit and has not designed a new category of device in years. Ive’s departure in 2019 marked a culmination in Apple’s shift from a company of innovation to one of operational excellence, and the price is a company that has lost its soul.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

The sequel to Walter Isaacson

Biography. Fantastic piece of research and writing. Worth the listen even if you’re not an Apple fan.

Captivating and Insightful

A very well researched book that recounts the important events that occurred at Apple after the death of Steve Jobs. While focused mostly on Jonny Ive and Tim Cook, I enjoyed the insights on the other executives like Scott Forstall and the creation of new Apple products and services after Steve. This book is a great listen and hard to stop. The narrator does a great job as well. I highly recommend it

Deep dive into Apple

As much as there is probably a good amount of conjecture, this book is incredibly well sourced and the balance is fair, not trying to push any specific story. Really appreciated it, and it is an interesting deep dive into the world’s most successful company

Fantastic

Highly recommend for anyone who’s grown up from the days of Apple ][‘s two Steve’s with great insight to the Cook years.

Must listen for Apple fans!

The Apple of Steve Jobs has been greatly reported on, but it's rare to get such insight into how things have been since. This book goes into the changing of the company culture and the new projects like the watch, airpods, car, and move towards services. It's fascinating to hear the inside story of these products that I know so well about. I remember hearing rumors about why certain projects were designed a certain way and why strategies were implemented, but after listening to this you realize just how many of those were incorrect and in fact often the opposite! It explains a lot about how Apple operates today, Apple fans won't be able to turn it off until the end!