After Steve

When Steve Jobs died in 2011, Apple lost its founder and its guiding spirit, and two of his closest lieutenants were left to decide what the company would become. After Steve follows them: Jony Ive, the chief design officer Jobs called his "spiritual partner," and Tim Cook, the operations chief who took over as CEO. Tripp Mickle, who covers Silicon Valley for the Wall Street Journal, argues that as Ive's influence faded and Cook's grew, the company changed in ways that cost it something essential.

Ive, born in London, was the second most powerful figure at Apple and the designer behind the iMac G3, iPod, MacBook Air, iPhone and iPad. After Jobs's death he struggled with grief and put his energy into the new Apple headquarters and the Apple Watch. Over time, though, he lost his drive in a company that seemed to care more about margins than about inspiration. Cook was nearly his opposite. Raised in a small Alabama town, he rose through the supply side of the business, where his talent lay in squeezing suppliers, convincing others to build enormous factories, treating inventory as something close to a sin, and grilling subordinates until they sweated.

Under Cook, whom Jobs chose as his successor, Apple's revenue soared and its valuation reached $3 trillion. He built a powerful business in China and proved a skilled political operator, able to forge global alliances and, with a single sentence, send markets tumbling. Mickle's reporting draws on interviews with more than 200 current and former Apple executives and others close to the story, among them Trump administration officials and fashion figures such as Anna Wintour.

What emerges is a portrait of a company that has thrived financially while, in the author's view, drifting from invention toward operational efficiency. Apple has not created a new category of device in years, and Ive's departure in 2019 marked the point where that shift was complete. It is an inside look at the secretive world of Apple Park and at the price paid for success.