INFINITE LOOP.

• Author: Lohr, Steve
• Position: Review

INFINITE LOOP How Apple, the World's Most Insanely Great Computer Company, went Insane by Michael S. Malone Doubleday, $27.50

Steven P. Jobs has proved an elusive subject for the parade of authors who over the years have tried to fathom the corporate soap opera known as Apple Computer. A business visionary and brilliant technologist with his finger on the pulse of popular culture, or a scheming hustler who became rich and famous by happenstance? Books on Apple invariably toss in a mixture of his Jekyll-and-Hyde traits and then take a stand: hero or villain.

Michael S. Malone's Infinite Loop comes down, with all the subtlety of a jackhammer, in the latter camp. The villainous Jobs, according to Malone, is the central explanation for Apple's fall from grace, despite possessing superior technology for years. But Malone's explanation for Apple's travails has a few flaws. Not the least is that Jobs was not even at Apple during the company's long stretch of lost opportunities and decline from 1985 until 1997. Since his return, Jobs has led a remarkable turnaround for a company thought to have been on the verge of extinction.

Malone begins with a tantalizing opening line: "Before and after everything, companies are about character." But he never really develops the theme except to try to illuminate Jobs' lack of character by piling on anecdotes and descriptions that are often so mean-spirited they undermine the author's credibility, not Jobs'. Before he finishes page two, Malone has summed up the Apple co-founder as a "protean inconstant figure who seemed composed of nothing but charm and a pure will to power."

To give the book its due, Infinite Loop is a lively and detailed chronicle of Apple's origins, rise, descent and recent signs of renewal. Malone grew up in Silicon Valley, went to elementary school with Jobs, worked on one of Apple's annual reports and, as an aspiring entrepreneur, pitched a product to Apple (and was turned down). Today, Malone is the editor of Forbes ASAP, a technology supplement to the business magazine. He certainly knows the personal computer industry, and his book displays a confident grasp of his subject. And Malone writes well, when he's not trying too hard.

At 597 pages, Infinite Loop was intended as the definitive Big Book on Apple. But to achieve that status, Malone's book ought to deliver a wealth of new material or new insights--and it comes up short on both counts. There is scant evidence of fresh legwork by...