Wow. This is an absolute must have for any Mac Head, or especially any self professed Mac Geek like I am. This is the inside story of the creation of the Macintosh from one of it’s original creators. I have read every book on Apple that there is, and this is by far the best I have seen. I literally could not put this book down once I started reading it. In fact it only took a few days. Now it is all short stories of different aspects, but it is really worth while with great photos and old notes and the like. This book was started with the stories on Andy’s web site on Macintosh folklore , and here others involved in the process also got involved to add their stories. I CAN’T RECOMMEND THIS BOOK ANY MORE HIGHLY!

Andy joined Apple and worked on the Apple 2 with the Lisa in development and the Macintosh just starting development. He joined the skunkworks project actually hired by Steve Jobs and actually took Jef Raskin’s desk (Raskin came up with the original concept and name for the Macintosh, but Steve Jobs took it over and forced him out). You take a trip through the whole development process, and for the first time I really learned about Burrell Smith the man who started as a service technician then ended up designing the original Macintosh, the original Laser printer and then went on to found Radius and their first 2 products the Radius Full Page Display and The Radious Accelerator. Thisbooks shows the creation of the GUI, what was taken from the Lisa team and goes up till Jobs was ousted by John Sculley who had brought in to Apple. It also shows how when the Mac team grew to 100 and then to 300 the management really fought with the young mavericks and forced most of them out of Apple all together.

This book is really essential reading for all mac heads, and probably for all computer geeks. I applaud O’Reilly for releasing this! This book is amazing!