the notion that Apple is at its peak is patent nonsense. But there is one Achilles’ heel: The fate of all the company’s hardware production relies on the good graces of America’s largest rival.

When the Reese Witherspoon character in Legally Blonde stood in line wearing her pink bunny ears to buy a laptop and study for the LSATs, an iBook was the obvious choice.

These operations played such a salient role in Apple’s success that by 2011 the unassuming character behind them, chief operating officer Tim Cook, was handpicked by Steve Jobs to succeed him as CEO. Cook, unlike Jobs, wasn’t a charismatic leader or a product visionary, but his appointment was a recognition that he’d established unparalleled effici

was worried about pushing too hard, creating even greater risks of

Internal documents obtained for this book reveal that Apple’s investments in China reached $55 billion per year by 2015, an astronomical figure that doesn’t include the costs of components in Apple hardware—the so-called Bill of Materials,

Apple is expected to pull in $414 billion of global revenue in 2025, a company record.

Big Blue wouldn’t release its first home computer, the IBM PC, until 1981.

When Apple shifted production to China in the early 2000s, Washington believed that free trade would help develop a middle class and inculcate democracy in what was then the world’s most populous country. Instead, economic success empowered China’s rulers, reinforcing their once-tenuous hold on the country and enabling Beijing to weaponize its manu

Apple needed, he says, was differentiation.