After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul

by Tripp Mickle

Cook’s new warmness toward the administration was a consequence of emerging issues in China. The country had recently passed a cybersecurity law requiring that all Chinese phone customers’ data be stored on the mainland. It had forced Apple to open negotiations with a state-owned company in Guizhou that would build and operate an Apple data center. The plan had frustrated some members of Apple’s privacy and security team. They couldn’t reconcile Apple’s public refusal to help the FBI in the San Bernardino case with its quiet compliance in China. Instead of his high-minded promise to protect customers’ privacy, Cook had capitulated to the demands of a government known for surveilling its citizens, only to later ask for help from the very U.S. government he had once defied. The practical Cook seemed to lose his moral compass when faced with pressures in the market he had built.

At the conclusion of the review, Apple’s finance staff determined that it had overpaid Zuckerman for his services. They demanded that he repay as much as $20 million that he had billed over the years. It was an enormous sum that represented much of what Zuckerman had earned through his work on the book and other projects. Desperate to avoid financial disaster, Zuckerman begged Ive for help.

behavior of Apple’s finance department. Despite having more than $200 billion in cash, the company had rejected legitimate billings filed by its architecture firm, Foster + Partners, which had worked on Apple Park and Apple Stores. When one of the firm’s partners had told Ive, the designer had been furious and fought back. He couldn’t fathom why the company would stiff its vendors. But his energy for conflict had waned.

Previous temples of capitalism had presaged reversals of corporate fortune. Companies flush with cash had often built with bravado during a boom only to discover later that they had planted the steel at their pinnacle. In 1970, American Can Company had moved to a 155-acre campus in Greenwich, Connecticut, before beginning a series of layoffs and divestitures. Enron had been in the process of building a fifty-story corporate headquarters when it had filed for bankruptcy.

The company sold the older phones to middlemen, who unloaded the used phones overseas.

Jobs had held fast to the idea that lawyers and accountants were there to execute the decisions made by the people at the company’s creative core. But over time, the company’s bureaucratic caboose had become its engine.

A decade later, its share price was at a record high. Its market value had risen more than eightfold to about $3 trillion, and its dominance of the global smartphone market continued unabated. It had become the darling of Wall Street, even as it had lost