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

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

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.

In just a few years the Greater China region had progressed from delivering minimal revenue to generating almost 15 percent of Apple’s global total.

When SCI was building only circuit boards, it was just a supplier; when it started making another company’s designs, it gave birth to a new industry: electronics contract manufacturing. In the early days, King met all kinds of resistance. America really cared about manufacturing in the early 1980s. His idea wasn’t just new, it was offensive. “I’ve

It’s not merely that Apple has exploited Chinese workers, it’s that Beijing has allowed Apple to exploit its workers, so that China can in turn exploit Apple.

but for the burgeoning middle class, the iPhone was both accessible and conspicuous.

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

In the post–Windows 95 world, Apple was facing an existential crisis. It was quickly losing its raison d’être, but Amelio didn’t get the urgency of the moment. Apple was in such free fall that between 1995 and 1998, revenues nearly halved, from $11.1 billion to $5.9 billion, meaning Apple needed to cut $1.7 billion of costs per year just to tread