May 16, 2021

Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda

This is probably the best book Apple’s internal workings that I’ve read. It is also a great technical manager book with lots of stories and examples. It shows some of the real friction that exists within a perfect company like Apple — which gives you perspective of problems we all encounter.

My agreeable personality also enjoyed that this is an inside baseball book published with some sort of permission/blessing from Apple. This is not a disgruntled employee complaining and airing out the company’s internal failures. Not that that wouldn’t be a great book — but the good nature of the writing doesn’t get in the way of making me question the reasons behind each statement. I felt safe taking the stories at face value.

I absolutely recommend this book to anyone who likes Apple, the iPhone, and software development in general. Much like Michael Lopp, I hope Kocienda continues to write on these topics. I will be very interested in any other follow up books.

---