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Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date
Computer manufacturing is—after cars, energy production and illegal drugs--the largest industry in the world, and it's one of the last great success stories in American business. Accidental Empires is the trenchant, vastly readable history of that industry, focusing as much on the astoundingly odd personalities at its core—Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mitch Kapor, etc. and the hacker culture they spawned as it does on the remarkable technology they created. Cringely reveals the manias and foibles of these men (they are always men) with deadpan hilarity and cogently demonstrates how their neuroses have shaped the computer business. But Cringely gives us much more than high-tech voyeurism and insider gossip. From the birth of the transistor to the mid-life crisis of the computer industry, he spins a sweeping, uniquely American saga of creativity and ego that is at once uproarious, shocking and inspiring.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
January 21, 2013
Some of the reservations people have about Cringley's style are forgivable: if you haven't read around the subject of the PC revolution and researched the subjects for yourself, you'll think his attitude is to say the least disrespectful. When you appreciate just how weird some of these guys were/are and how arcane technology met classic American entrepreneurial spirit, you'll realize Cringley is actually being honest if not always generous.
As a fun companion to the historical record, it excels. Cringley tries to answer the questions: how did the market evolve? why is it this shape? where will it go? -- and does a reasonable job to answer them. Since the book was published, his long-term view of the structural nature of the computer business has by and large been vindicated. The computer is disappearing, if not all at once and for the expected reasons. The "two standards" market is largely the same, for whatever sector you care to name. And the companies involved are rising and falling for pretty much the reasons Cringley thought they would. So, fun, insightful, reasonably prophetic, what more do you want?
As a fun companion to the historical record, it excels. Cringley tries to answer the questions: how did the market evolve? why is it this shape? where will it go? -- and does a reasonable job to answer them. Since the book was published, his long-term view of the structural nature of the computer business has by and large been vindicated. The computer is disappearing, if not all at once and for the expected reasons. The "two standards" market is largely the same, for whatever sector you care to name. And the companies involved are rising and falling for pretty much the reasons Cringley thought they would. So, fun, insightful, reasonably prophetic, what more do you want?
January 5, 2009
A friend gave me Bob Cringely’s Accidental Empires years ago. Finally got around to it.
Cringely is a gossip columnist for the tech industry, and even he realizes how ridiculous that sounds. It’s important context for Accidental Empires, a smart and interesting read. It’s a history of the microcomputer industry, roughly 1978-1996. It’s fascinating. It’s also more about the personalities than technology. He’s unafraid to call Steve Jobs “a sociopath” and Bill Gates a “megalomaniac”. And it’s not just about them, either, examining the wondrous golden age of Xerox PARC, and the revelation that “All IBM Stories Are True”, and more.
If there are two themes that carry throughout the book, they are that:
* There are only 14 people in the tech industry, because it’s always the same 14 people that pop up everywhere.
* That you can be a good technologist, or a good businessman, but not both.
There are two weaknesses to the book. First, it stops in 1996. Steve Jobs is still at NeXT and has not yet returned to Apple. In 1996, the future of Apple was pretty bleak. Times have changed, obviously. But this weakness in the book opens new opportunities for reflection. After reading this book (and it’s wildly unflattering view of Jobs’ management acumen) I have more respect for Jobs. If what Cringely writes is true, Jobs has returned to Apple and corrected every strategic and technological misstep from his first tenure. I have more respect for him now.
Second, (and you may have guessed this!) Cringely has opinions, his feathers get ruffled, and he appears to hold a grudge. He clearly does not like Jobs. But he seems to consistently point out failings in all of the players. Fair warning if that sort of writing will put you off.
Nonetheless, this book is recommended, as is his weekly column over at pbs.org. He doesn’t know everything, but he can spin what he knows and what he suspects into an interesting stew. Next uip for me is a book about PARC, if I can find a good one. Those guys invented the GUI, the mouse, Ethernet, the word processor, and more and never bothered to make a dime.
Cringely is a gossip columnist for the tech industry, and even he realizes how ridiculous that sounds. It’s important context for Accidental Empires, a smart and interesting read. It’s a history of the microcomputer industry, roughly 1978-1996. It’s fascinating. It’s also more about the personalities than technology. He’s unafraid to call Steve Jobs “a sociopath” and Bill Gates a “megalomaniac”. And it’s not just about them, either, examining the wondrous golden age of Xerox PARC, and the revelation that “All IBM Stories Are True”, and more.
If there are two themes that carry throughout the book, they are that:
* There are only 14 people in the tech industry, because it’s always the same 14 people that pop up everywhere.
* That you can be a good technologist, or a good businessman, but not both.
There are two weaknesses to the book. First, it stops in 1996. Steve Jobs is still at NeXT and has not yet returned to Apple. In 1996, the future of Apple was pretty bleak. Times have changed, obviously. But this weakness in the book opens new opportunities for reflection. After reading this book (and it’s wildly unflattering view of Jobs’ management acumen) I have more respect for Jobs. If what Cringely writes is true, Jobs has returned to Apple and corrected every strategic and technological misstep from his first tenure. I have more respect for him now.
Second, (and you may have guessed this!) Cringely has opinions, his feathers get ruffled, and he appears to hold a grudge. He clearly does not like Jobs. But he seems to consistently point out failings in all of the players. Fair warning if that sort of writing will put you off.
Nonetheless, this book is recommended, as is his weekly column over at pbs.org. He doesn’t know everything, but he can spin what he knows and what he suspects into an interesting stew. Next uip for me is a book about PARC, if I can find a good one. Those guys invented the GUI, the mouse, Ethernet, the word processor, and more and never bothered to make a dime.
December 1, 2019
The book is full of valuable insights and good, elaborate explanations. Well WORTH the read.
January 12, 2015
I have had this book years, the pages are yellow and I've read it so many times, every time read this book I still find myself laughing out load. It because of Cringely's humour, the comedy factor that makes this book such an excellent education tool. This is my one of my favorite books
February 10, 2024
I enjoyed this more than I expected. I was looking for something along the lines of Halt and Catch Fire, but wasn’t finding it so I settled for this. The tone is playful and irreverent, and there are some good insights and entertaining vignettes and characterizations.
Quotes / highlights:
Years ago, when you were a kid and I was a kid, something changed in America. One moment we were players of baseball, voters, readers of books, makers of dinner, arguers. And a second later, and for every other second since then, we were all just shoppers.Shopping is what we do; it's entertainment. Consumers are what we are; we go shopping for fun. Nearly all of our energy goes into buying—thinking about what we would like to buy or earning money to pay for what we have already bought.
—
Think of Microsoft Word 3.0 as a minefield in Kuwait and Bill Gates as a realtor trying to sell a few lots there before all of the land mines have been cleared
—
Medical doctors, for example, say that spot weight reduction is not possible. "You can reduce body fat overall through dieting and exercise, but you can't take fat just off your butt," they lecture. Bodybuilders, who don't know what the doctors know, have been doing spot weight reduction for years
—
Like the Buddha, Gates's enlightenment came in a flash. Walking across Harvard Yard while Paul Allen waved in his face the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics announcing the Altair 8800 microcomputer from MITS, they both saw instantly that there would really be a personal computer industry and that the industry would need programming languages. Although there were no microcomputer software companies yet, 19-year-old Bill's first concern was that they were already too late. "We realized that the revolution might happen without us," Gates said. "After we saw that article, there was no question of where our life would focus."
—
With his CP/M and invention of the BIOS, Gary Kildall defined the microcomputer. Peek into any personal computer today, and you'll find a general-purpose operating system adapted to specific hardware through the use of a BIOS, which is now a specialized type of memory chip
—
Like other government research, big bucks academic research is done to understand the nature and structure of the universe or to understand life, which really means that it is either for blowing up the world or extending life, whichever comes first
—
Sure, PARC invented the laser printer and the computer network and perfected the graphical user interface and something that came to be known as what-you-see-is-what-you-get computing on a large computer screen, but the captains of industry at Xerox headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, were making too much money the old way—by making copiers—to remake Xerox into a computer company
—
Sam Walton will act as our control billionaire in this study.
—
To realize his dream, Gates had to create a corporate structure at Microsoft that would allow him to be both industry titan and top programmer. He had to invent a system that would satisfy his own adolescent need to dominate and his adult need to inspire. How did he do it?Mind control.The instrument that allowed Microsoft to grow yet remain under the creative thumb of Bill Gates walked in the door one day in 1979. The instrument's name was Charles Simonyi.
—
My father's rule was to imagine that you have the solution already/' Simonyi remembered. “It is a great way to solve problems. I'd ask him a question: How many horses does it take to do something? And he'd answer right away, 'Five horses; can you tell me if I am right or wrong?' By the time I'd figured out that it couldn't be five, he'd say, 'Well if it's not five, then it must be X. Can you solve for that?' And I could, because the problem was already laid out from the test of whether five horses was correct. Doing it backward removed the anxiety from the answer. The anxiety, of course, is the fear that the problem can't be solved—at least not by me."
—
Through the architects and program managers, Gates was able to control the work of every programmer at Microsoft, but to do so reliably required cheap and obedient labor. Gates set a policy that consciously avoided hiring experienced programmers, specializing, instead, in recent computer science graduates.
—
Their contented mid--dle-class style bugs the hell out of Silicon Valley entrepreneur types, who want to do business with IBM and yet can't understand that there are folks in the world—even in the world of computers—who aren't, like them, madly driven to have a fortune and a Ferrari before their midlife crisis.
—
Ross Perot, founder of Electronic Data Systems, was oneIBM salesman who got fed up and left the company when he filled his sales quota for the entire year before the end of January and knew that he wouldn't be allowed to sell any more computers—or earn any more money—for eleven more months.
—
Like nearly everyone else in school and in the world, she wanted more than anything else to be just like her best friends. Only prettier, of course.
—
To engineers—really good ones, interested in making progress—the best of all possible worlds would be one in which technologies competed continuously and only the best technologies survived. Whether the good stuff came from an established company, a start-up, or even from Earl Ziska wouldn't matter. But it usually does matter because the real world, the one we live in, is a world of dollars, not sense. It's a world where commercial interests are entrenched and consumers typically pay closer attention to what everyone else is buying than to whether what they are buying is any good. In this real world, then, the most successful products become standards against which all other products are measured, not for their performance or cleverness but for the extent to which they are like that standard.
—
When the IBM PC, for all its faults, instantly became the number one selling personal computer, it became the de facto industry standard, because de facto standards are set by market share and nothing else
—
It's a tedious and expensive process and one that can be accomplished only by virgins—programmers who can prove that they have never been exposed to IBM's ROM-BIOS code—and good virgins are hard to find.
—
Commoditization is great for customers because it drives prices down and forces standard setters to innovate. In the absence of such competition, IBM would have done nothing. The company would still be building the original PC from 1981 if it could make enough profit doing so
—
Like all other high-tech company founders, Campbell mistakenly assumed that Kleiner Perkins was investing in his dream, when, in fact, Kleiner Perkins was investing in Kleiner Perkins's dream, which just happened to involve Gordie Campbell
—
Gates doesn't really give a damn how people interact with their computers as long as they pay up. Jobs gives a damn. He wants to tell the world how to compute, to set the style for computing-Bill Gates has no style; Steve Jobs has nothing but style.
—
Think of Bill Gates as the emir of Kuwait and Steve Jobs as Saddam Hussein.Like the emir, Gates wants to run his particular subculture with an iron hand, dispensing flawed justice as he sees fit and generally keeping the bucks flowing in, not out. Jobs wants to control the world. He doesn't care about maintaining a strategic advantage; he wants to attack, to bring death to the infidels. We're talking rivers of blood here. We're talking martyrs. Jobs doesn't care if there are a dozen companies or a hundred companies opposing him. He doesn't care what the odds are against success. Like Saddam, he doesn't even care how much his losses are. Nor does he even have to win, if, by losing the mother of all battles he can maintain his peculiar form of conviction, still stand before an adoring crowd of nerds, symbolically firing his 9 mm automatic into the air, telling the victors that they are still full of shit.
—
Warning labels on the copy-protected diskettes said, generally, "Copy this product and we'll sue you, we'll take your youngest child, and end your productive life, dear customer."
—
Apple can only sell as many copies of its software as there are Macintosh computers and there just aren't that many Macs in use, compared to Windows machines
—
Like every other important computing technology, client-server has taken about twenty years to become an overnight sensation
—
Why should I have to go to a store to buy software?" Ellison continued. "In a cardboard box is a stupid way to buy software. It's a box of bits and not only that, they are old bits. The software you buy at a store is hardly ever the latest release
Quotes / highlights:
Years ago, when you were a kid and I was a kid, something changed in America. One moment we were players of baseball, voters, readers of books, makers of dinner, arguers. And a second later, and for every other second since then, we were all just shoppers.Shopping is what we do; it's entertainment. Consumers are what we are; we go shopping for fun. Nearly all of our energy goes into buying—thinking about what we would like to buy or earning money to pay for what we have already bought.
—
Think of Microsoft Word 3.0 as a minefield in Kuwait and Bill Gates as a realtor trying to sell a few lots there before all of the land mines have been cleared
—
Medical doctors, for example, say that spot weight reduction is not possible. "You can reduce body fat overall through dieting and exercise, but you can't take fat just off your butt," they lecture. Bodybuilders, who don't know what the doctors know, have been doing spot weight reduction for years
—
Like the Buddha, Gates's enlightenment came in a flash. Walking across Harvard Yard while Paul Allen waved in his face the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics announcing the Altair 8800 microcomputer from MITS, they both saw instantly that there would really be a personal computer industry and that the industry would need programming languages. Although there were no microcomputer software companies yet, 19-year-old Bill's first concern was that they were already too late. "We realized that the revolution might happen without us," Gates said. "After we saw that article, there was no question of where our life would focus."
—
With his CP/M and invention of the BIOS, Gary Kildall defined the microcomputer. Peek into any personal computer today, and you'll find a general-purpose operating system adapted to specific hardware through the use of a BIOS, which is now a specialized type of memory chip
—
Like other government research, big bucks academic research is done to understand the nature and structure of the universe or to understand life, which really means that it is either for blowing up the world or extending life, whichever comes first
—
Sure, PARC invented the laser printer and the computer network and perfected the graphical user interface and something that came to be known as what-you-see-is-what-you-get computing on a large computer screen, but the captains of industry at Xerox headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, were making too much money the old way—by making copiers—to remake Xerox into a computer company
—
Sam Walton will act as our control billionaire in this study.
—
To realize his dream, Gates had to create a corporate structure at Microsoft that would allow him to be both industry titan and top programmer. He had to invent a system that would satisfy his own adolescent need to dominate and his adult need to inspire. How did he do it?Mind control.The instrument that allowed Microsoft to grow yet remain under the creative thumb of Bill Gates walked in the door one day in 1979. The instrument's name was Charles Simonyi.
—
My father's rule was to imagine that you have the solution already/' Simonyi remembered. “It is a great way to solve problems. I'd ask him a question: How many horses does it take to do something? And he'd answer right away, 'Five horses; can you tell me if I am right or wrong?' By the time I'd figured out that it couldn't be five, he'd say, 'Well if it's not five, then it must be X. Can you solve for that?' And I could, because the problem was already laid out from the test of whether five horses was correct. Doing it backward removed the anxiety from the answer. The anxiety, of course, is the fear that the problem can't be solved—at least not by me."
—
Through the architects and program managers, Gates was able to control the work of every programmer at Microsoft, but to do so reliably required cheap and obedient labor. Gates set a policy that consciously avoided hiring experienced programmers, specializing, instead, in recent computer science graduates.
—
Their contented mid--dle-class style bugs the hell out of Silicon Valley entrepreneur types, who want to do business with IBM and yet can't understand that there are folks in the world—even in the world of computers—who aren't, like them, madly driven to have a fortune and a Ferrari before their midlife crisis.
—
Ross Perot, founder of Electronic Data Systems, was oneIBM salesman who got fed up and left the company when he filled his sales quota for the entire year before the end of January and knew that he wouldn't be allowed to sell any more computers—or earn any more money—for eleven more months.
—
Like nearly everyone else in school and in the world, she wanted more than anything else to be just like her best friends. Only prettier, of course.
—
To engineers—really good ones, interested in making progress—the best of all possible worlds would be one in which technologies competed continuously and only the best technologies survived. Whether the good stuff came from an established company, a start-up, or even from Earl Ziska wouldn't matter. But it usually does matter because the real world, the one we live in, is a world of dollars, not sense. It's a world where commercial interests are entrenched and consumers typically pay closer attention to what everyone else is buying than to whether what they are buying is any good. In this real world, then, the most successful products become standards against which all other products are measured, not for their performance or cleverness but for the extent to which they are like that standard.
—
When the IBM PC, for all its faults, instantly became the number one selling personal computer, it became the de facto industry standard, because de facto standards are set by market share and nothing else
—
It's a tedious and expensive process and one that can be accomplished only by virgins—programmers who can prove that they have never been exposed to IBM's ROM-BIOS code—and good virgins are hard to find.
—
Commoditization is great for customers because it drives prices down and forces standard setters to innovate. In the absence of such competition, IBM would have done nothing. The company would still be building the original PC from 1981 if it could make enough profit doing so
—
Like all other high-tech company founders, Campbell mistakenly assumed that Kleiner Perkins was investing in his dream, when, in fact, Kleiner Perkins was investing in Kleiner Perkins's dream, which just happened to involve Gordie Campbell
—
Gates doesn't really give a damn how people interact with their computers as long as they pay up. Jobs gives a damn. He wants to tell the world how to compute, to set the style for computing-Bill Gates has no style; Steve Jobs has nothing but style.
—
Think of Bill Gates as the emir of Kuwait and Steve Jobs as Saddam Hussein.Like the emir, Gates wants to run his particular subculture with an iron hand, dispensing flawed justice as he sees fit and generally keeping the bucks flowing in, not out. Jobs wants to control the world. He doesn't care about maintaining a strategic advantage; he wants to attack, to bring death to the infidels. We're talking rivers of blood here. We're talking martyrs. Jobs doesn't care if there are a dozen companies or a hundred companies opposing him. He doesn't care what the odds are against success. Like Saddam, he doesn't even care how much his losses are. Nor does he even have to win, if, by losing the mother of all battles he can maintain his peculiar form of conviction, still stand before an adoring crowd of nerds, symbolically firing his 9 mm automatic into the air, telling the victors that they are still full of shit.
—
Warning labels on the copy-protected diskettes said, generally, "Copy this product and we'll sue you, we'll take your youngest child, and end your productive life, dear customer."
—
Apple can only sell as many copies of its software as there are Macintosh computers and there just aren't that many Macs in use, compared to Windows machines
—
Like every other important computing technology, client-server has taken about twenty years to become an overnight sensation
—
Why should I have to go to a store to buy software?" Ellison continued. "In a cardboard box is a stupid way to buy software. It's a box of bits and not only that, they are old bits. The software you buy at a store is hardly ever the latest release
February 28, 2015
When you read a book about computing, you can generally predict how good it's going to be based upon how recently the first edition was released. Things move so quickly in the computing world (thanks to Moore's Law) that by the time a book goes to print, it's often already obsolete.
Not so with Accidental Empires. The first edition of the book was released way back in 1992, and even though it was revised in 1996, that was still almost twenty years ago. Despite this, the book still makes for a fantastic read - it's effectively a collection of reminisces anyway, and so it hardly matters whether the story you're reading happened five years ago or thirty years ago.
In fact, Cringely's writing is lucid and prophetic, and he mentions things that he couldn't possibly have known at the time - despite wrongfully predicting that Bill Gates would never marry, a prediction that he revised in the later version, he gets everything else spot on. For example, he predicted the development of the smartwatch and the tablet computer, and he also predicted that the computer would be fully assimilated in to our lives by 2005 in the same way that the television became a staple for evening entertainment. Not bad, considering he made these predictions at the start of the 1990s.
It's also interesting to see how the same characters keep on cropping up in the computing world - in the same way that Chris Brogan, Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki pop up everywhere in the world of social media, people like Andy Hertzfeld, John Warnock and Steve Ballmer seem to be everywhere, everywhen. In fact, even Guy Kawasaki, who is now best-known as a technology enthusiast and an authority on social media, is name-dropped somewhere in Accidental Empires.
If you're geeky (like me) and fascinated by computer hardware and software and the companies and developers behind one of the most fundamental changes in our lifestyle since the written word was first invented, get this book. Otherwise, go ahead and miss out - your loss.
Not so with Accidental Empires. The first edition of the book was released way back in 1992, and even though it was revised in 1996, that was still almost twenty years ago. Despite this, the book still makes for a fantastic read - it's effectively a collection of reminisces anyway, and so it hardly matters whether the story you're reading happened five years ago or thirty years ago.
In fact, Cringely's writing is lucid and prophetic, and he mentions things that he couldn't possibly have known at the time - despite wrongfully predicting that Bill Gates would never marry, a prediction that he revised in the later version, he gets everything else spot on. For example, he predicted the development of the smartwatch and the tablet computer, and he also predicted that the computer would be fully assimilated in to our lives by 2005 in the same way that the television became a staple for evening entertainment. Not bad, considering he made these predictions at the start of the 1990s.
It's also interesting to see how the same characters keep on cropping up in the computing world - in the same way that Chris Brogan, Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki pop up everywhere in the world of social media, people like Andy Hertzfeld, John Warnock and Steve Ballmer seem to be everywhere, everywhen. In fact, even Guy Kawasaki, who is now best-known as a technology enthusiast and an authority on social media, is name-dropped somewhere in Accidental Empires.
If you're geeky (like me) and fascinated by computer hardware and software and the companies and developers behind one of the most fundamental changes in our lifestyle since the written word was first invented, get this book. Otherwise, go ahead and miss out - your loss.
September 4, 2012
I just re-purchased it to re-read after I couldn’t find my original. Although Accidental Empires was written in 1996, and has to be read old-school style since it’s not available on the Kindle, this is a great history of how all of the major tech companies that are still around got their start.
It talks about Microsoft, Apple, and IBM and the birth of Windows, the Mac, and the modern PC during the wild west of the computer industry. Did you know that:
• Microsoft started off by buying DOS, and then rebranding it to MS-DOS, with the initial goal of dominating the workplace.
• Bill Gates demonstrated Word himself in the early days, and it only crashed once, even though there were eventually 300+ bugs reported in the version that he shows (he only knew of 6)
• Apple was not always profitable, and almost went belly up after a number of failed computer systems (Apple III, and Lisa).
• IBM initially built the first PC in less than a year.
If you are interested in how our industry started, and want to see that some of our modern day billionaires were poor just like us then fork out the $17.29 ($13.30 + S&H), and check out this book.
It talks about Microsoft, Apple, and IBM and the birth of Windows, the Mac, and the modern PC during the wild west of the computer industry. Did you know that:
• Microsoft started off by buying DOS, and then rebranding it to MS-DOS, with the initial goal of dominating the workplace.
• Bill Gates demonstrated Word himself in the early days, and it only crashed once, even though there were eventually 300+ bugs reported in the version that he shows (he only knew of 6)
• Apple was not always profitable, and almost went belly up after a number of failed computer systems (Apple III, and Lisa).
• IBM initially built the first PC in less than a year.
If you are interested in how our industry started, and want to see that some of our modern day billionaires were poor just like us then fork out the $17.29 ($13.30 + S&H), and check out this book.
November 7, 2013
It's a truly pleasant experience to read this book, actually I should confess that I laughed A LOT in the reading. The book is hilarious.
Besides the fun part, I was inspired by this book too. This book went through the early history of Personal Computer industry, gave the vivid silhouettes of the people, the companies and Silicon Valley in this industry. Mr.Cringely examined why today's Information Technology industry is what it is now, and how it became like this.
The book provided the facts and opinion about how the high tech companies succeeded, and how many more failed. Why Bill Gates is the richest person in the world, and how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created the most beloved high tech company in the world.
It used to say that reading history can make people understand the rise and fall of things. We can learn the lessons from it, and get new ideas or patterns from the past success. Today Personal Computer is declining, and the focus is shifting to Smart Phone and Tablet. Although product is changing, the similar struggles, fights, winning and loss are still happening lively everyday in this industry, just like what it did in the old days.
Mr. Cringely presented a lot of insights in this book, many of them are still valid in these day. It's both informative and educational.
I recommended this book to anyone who is working for Information Technology industry and interested in how INTEL, Microsoft, Apple, Lotus and IBM this big names evolved into today's looking. This will benefit to the observers, thinkers, entrepreneurs and visionaries from both business and technology perspectives.
The only problem with this book is Mr. Cringely has many bias views about company or people, like IBM. He wrote this book in 1993 and updated it in 1996. Many views have been proved obsolete and wrong.
Besides the fun part, I was inspired by this book too. This book went through the early history of Personal Computer industry, gave the vivid silhouettes of the people, the companies and Silicon Valley in this industry. Mr.Cringely examined why today's Information Technology industry is what it is now, and how it became like this.
The book provided the facts and opinion about how the high tech companies succeeded, and how many more failed. Why Bill Gates is the richest person in the world, and how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created the most beloved high tech company in the world.
It used to say that reading history can make people understand the rise and fall of things. We can learn the lessons from it, and get new ideas or patterns from the past success. Today Personal Computer is declining, and the focus is shifting to Smart Phone and Tablet. Although product is changing, the similar struggles, fights, winning and loss are still happening lively everyday in this industry, just like what it did in the old days.
Mr. Cringely presented a lot of insights in this book, many of them are still valid in these day. It's both informative and educational.
I recommended this book to anyone who is working for Information Technology industry and interested in how INTEL, Microsoft, Apple, Lotus and IBM this big names evolved into today's looking. This will benefit to the observers, thinkers, entrepreneurs and visionaries from both business and technology perspectives.
The only problem with this book is Mr. Cringely has many bias views about company or people, like IBM. He wrote this book in 1993 and updated it in 1996. Many views have been proved obsolete and wrong.
November 17, 2016
This book is mind-blowing! The history of the first several decades of the microcomputer revolution, told as history should be told: as a series of stories.
So many of the things mentioned in this book - inventions, founding of companies, rise and fall of people and fortunes - particularly in retrospect, are just amazing, particularly because of the personalities involved. We all recognize the names of the people (e.g., Gates, Jobs, Woz), and their products have becoming literally household names (e.g., Apple, Adobe, etc.)... but reading about their origins, the multiple times they trapped lightning in a bottle, the coincidences - and most importantly, the capitalizing on the missteps and short-sightedness of others! - is the most fascinating part of this book.
And it ends just as Jobs is out at Apple and Microsoft unveiled Windows 95. What a cliff-hanger, when you know the rest of the rollercoaster yet to be revealed for this cast of characters!
I cannot recommend this book enough.
So many of the things mentioned in this book - inventions, founding of companies, rise and fall of people and fortunes - particularly in retrospect, are just amazing, particularly because of the personalities involved. We all recognize the names of the people (e.g., Gates, Jobs, Woz), and their products have becoming literally household names (e.g., Apple, Adobe, etc.)... but reading about their origins, the multiple times they trapped lightning in a bottle, the coincidences - and most importantly, the capitalizing on the missteps and short-sightedness of others! - is the most fascinating part of this book.
And it ends just as Jobs is out at Apple and Microsoft unveiled Windows 95. What a cliff-hanger, when you know the rest of the rollercoaster yet to be revealed for this cast of characters!
I cannot recommend this book enough.
February 19, 2016
I was born in 1987 in Ukraine. The first PC I have seen was IBM clone at mother's work around 1993. My first computer I got around 1998 and it was already Pentium with Windows 95 on board.
Now I work as software engineer.
During my teenage I was always wondered where are all other OS except Windows? Why only PCs are around? Why Apple Macintosh claims as professional and so expensive tool? Why IBM is not that big anymore? Why "Windows sucks"? How did it all start?
Had similar questions? Welcome to read this entertaining overview of the computer history.
The book is quite old and for that reasone it's even more interesting to analyze what happened with companies later, were author's predictions close to the current reality.
I found this book very informative and interesting. Hope you will.
Now I work as software engineer.
During my teenage I was always wondered where are all other OS except Windows? Why only PCs are around? Why Apple Macintosh claims as professional and so expensive tool? Why IBM is not that big anymore? Why "Windows sucks"? How did it all start?
Had similar questions? Welcome to read this entertaining overview of the computer history.
The book is quite old and for that reasone it's even more interesting to analyze what happened with companies later, were author's predictions close to the current reality.
I found this book very informative and interesting. Hope you will.
February 5, 2015
I've enjoyed the chapter by chapter re-read on cringely.com.
The book is obviously dated in that it makes comments on history leading to a "present" that was 20 years ago. Still, Cringely's got good insights into many of the companies that are still important in our world (Apple, Microsoft) and some that aren't so important anymore (IBM).
It's interesting to read about the development of hardware and software and the various alliances that are made, strengthened, weakened, and eventually broken.
The comments from other readers can be interesting, too.
The book is obviously dated in that it makes comments on history leading to a "present" that was 20 years ago. Still, Cringely's got good insights into many of the companies that are still important in our world (Apple, Microsoft) and some that aren't so important anymore (IBM).
It's interesting to read about the development of hardware and software and the various alliances that are made, strengthened, weakened, and eventually broken.
The comments from other readers can be interesting, too.
May 20, 2019
A very interesting book on the evolution of PC industry from an IT industry gossip column writer ! Yup, I didn't know such a job existed as well. Although, the writing may come as somewhat disrespectuful, in reality it's just Robert's way of referring to his fellow IT people many of whom he knows personally. The book is filled with anecdotes and interesting personal stories of people responsible for developing much of the technologies we use today.
April 27, 2013
"Develop for it? I'll piss on it!" Bill Gates on Steve Jobs' NeXT computers.
December 4, 2017
Great book and huge influence.
June 25, 2021
So I purchased the hardbound when it came out. This book is a story of the sort of arbitrariness of business and industry. It's another underrated book.
2 Oregon PBS documentaries were made of this story of largely Apple and the Silicon Valley. I have not met Cringley but know and work with people who have.
In addition to reading this book the 3 hour Triumph of the Nerds and 3 hour Nerds 2.0.1 should be viewed. I know quite a few of the people interviewed (I'm in a different part of the computer industry, not the microcomputer part). Nerds 2.0.1 is more about the Internet, and I was a part of that (host 3, UCSB (I was frosh student, a wonderful college experience until the Chancellor decided to cut the funding (worse decision any Administrator of any institution is cut the future off)).
Nerds 2.0.1 was also made by a book by that director Nerds 2.0.1 by Stephen Segaller. I also highly recommend this book despite a few errors. He also used some of Katie Hafner's book Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. Nerds, the book and the documentary shows the arbitrariness which was involved in the hostile take over of Cisco. The start up firm "Architexts" would evolve into Excite and then Excite@home.
Some historians don't care for the casual styles of all these books. That's tough. I lived through some of this.
2 Oregon PBS documentaries were made of this story of largely Apple and the Silicon Valley. I have not met Cringley but know and work with people who have.
In addition to reading this book the 3 hour Triumph of the Nerds and 3 hour Nerds 2.0.1 should be viewed. I know quite a few of the people interviewed (I'm in a different part of the computer industry, not the microcomputer part). Nerds 2.0.1 is more about the Internet, and I was a part of that (host 3, UCSB (I was frosh student, a wonderful college experience until the Chancellor decided to cut the funding (worse decision any Administrator of any institution is cut the future off)).
Nerds 2.0.1 was also made by a book by that director Nerds 2.0.1 by Stephen Segaller. I also highly recommend this book despite a few errors. He also used some of Katie Hafner's book Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. Nerds, the book and the documentary shows the arbitrariness which was involved in the hostile take over of Cisco. The start up firm "Architexts" would evolve into Excite and then Excite@home.
Some historians don't care for the casual styles of all these books. That's tough. I lived through some of this.
February 12, 2020
A lovely book on the birth of Silicon Valley and its life until 1991. On the updated chapters there are even some mentions of Windows95. Bill Gates in this book is still in his greedy phase keeping all the money for himself and Steve Jobs is in and out creating more trouble than profit.
The insiders look in the industry is refreshing because it doesn't have all that nowadays glory. It tells stories how Apple, Microsoft, IBM and other giants were built in a quite entertaining way. Not like the serious books would explain startups.
For example:
"Apple is a very sexy company, and Jobs wanted his people to lavish that libido on the products rather than on each other."
or
"The large profits that Sculley was able to generate during this period came entirely from improved budgeting and from simply cancelling all the whacko projects started by Steve Jobs. Sculley was no miracle worker."
"King and his group developed SQL in a closet, lied about it, then finally showed it to the big
shots who were too impressed to turn the product down. Frank King knows how to get things done."
The insiders look in the industry is refreshing because it doesn't have all that nowadays glory. It tells stories how Apple, Microsoft, IBM and other giants were built in a quite entertaining way. Not like the serious books would explain startups.
For example:
"Apple is a very sexy company, and Jobs wanted his people to lavish that libido on the products rather than on each other."
or
"The large profits that Sculley was able to generate during this period came entirely from improved budgeting and from simply cancelling all the whacko projects started by Steve Jobs. Sculley was no miracle worker."
"King and his group developed SQL in a closet, lied about it, then finally showed it to the big
shots who were too impressed to turn the product down. Frank King knows how to get things done."
November 7, 2017
My version was printed in 1996. It was a set book for an Open University course which I was taking, and is Cringely's own account of how the personal computing industry started up. I was concerned that it would be stuffed with jargon and concepts beyond my understanding, but it wasn't. I found it informative, entertaining, and most importantly, it was easy to read. At times, I found myself laughing out loud- my favourite tale was about dust contaminating silicon wafers used by Intel to make their microprocessors. Despite every precaution being taken by the supplier and Intel, Intel were receiving a high proportion of duff wafers. An investigation showed that an Intel shipping clerk had been opening the hermetically sealed boxes as they arrived to count each item inside, which naturally spoiled the product. Cringely tells the story so much better, and he left me with a comic vision which still comes to mind today.
July 27, 2020
The author warns at the beginning this book is nothing but a collection of gossips from early Silicon Valley days - and you should take his word for it. Book offers little to no value, doesn't hold water years later and the few "bold" predictions Cringely attempted to make about future of IT industry are laughable. I don't recommend wasting time on this book.
Read
January 6, 2022Fun read. I enjoyed Cringely's writing style. It was written in the 90s and yet still feels very fresh, and uninhibited.
Really appreciate Cringely's pure hatred for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs too. The guys are sociopaths!
Really appreciate Cringely's pure hatred for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs too. The guys are sociopaths!
Read
February 17, 2022I read this book about twenty years ago.It is very informative and witty. I loved it. I would recommend this to anyone. Although the title has changed slightly. It used to be "Accidental Empires: Or how geeks get laid." But what an eye opener! Amazing book.
December 18, 2022
Simply fantastic. Cringely is observant and funny, knows how to pace a story, and he understands the world of tech at a much deeper level than most. This book, along with Hard Drive, are the best books to read about the early days of the PC industry.
June 13, 2017
Good, the basis for his show about nerds.
July 27, 2018
Seriously outdated, rampantly racist in too many parts.
April 25, 2019
If you want to know how we all wound up with a computer on every desktop, here you go!
January 16, 2020
Great read if you really wanna know your personal computer history. Nice addition to Triumph of the Nerds documentary.
April 10, 2020
More like a historical account of events at this time, but never the less worth a read. Also identifies with so called "nerds" as the root of all success in IT.
June 24, 2020
Even more interesting because it was written in the 1990s!
November 21, 2020
An entertaining read, good historical perspective (business is always a mess), and many insightful predictions and analyses.
June 11, 2022
Entertaining, but quite dated. Still interesting, especially as a window into how fast views have changed since 1990 when this was written.
October 6, 2013
Accidental Empires by Robert Cringely, released in 1992, tells the story of an insider’s view of the rise of the personal computing era. The Rebooted edition was released online for free earlier this year. Find it here: http://www.cringely.com/2013/02/04/ac... (use the Next & Previous links at the top to change chapters). The individual stories are fascinating. Bill Gates always trying desperately to prove he could do anything (and in desperate need of a shower most of the time). Steve Jobs torpedoing the LISA project, which was his idea in the first place, and instead focusing on the Macintosh products (and also always in need of a shower). Don Estridge, who led IBM’s successful attempt to launch the first PC in 12 months, turning down Steve Jobs and a million dollar signing bonus and a million dollar annual salary to take essentially a demotion at IBM. The book looks at many different companies and projects and the people behind them from Apple to Atari. Some were successful, many weren’t.
The history here seems to indicate that success can come against all odds. Those with vision and drive changed the world, even when they should have failed. Shoestring budgets and desperation led to many breakthroughs. Skunk work projects saved companies. At the same time very professional projects ended without any commercial success. Either there are no rules, or the rules are always changing.
For me the best parts were about the famed research center Xerox PARC out of which came Ethernet, laser printers, the Alto workstation, and early graphical user interfaces. Apple borrowed heavily from their research, so did many of the other early pc companies. In part because many of the researchers left to turn their concepts into products. Much of what Xerox invented was actually based on work done by Doug Englebart at the Stanford Research Institute. When Doug Englebart passed away earlier this year the news credited him with inventing the computer mouse. In truth he envisioned most of our modern computing era, apparently by having a vision of much of our modern technology while driving to work one day in 1950. Doug Englebart and his team gave a demo of that computing vision in 1968 at the Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. This “mother of all demos” was described in this fashion by Robert Cringely: “the demo was equivalent to dropping-in on a model rocketry meeting and bringing with you a prototype warp drive. The world of computing was stunned.”
Xerox PARC didn’t bring much to market, but sure came up with some cool stuff. Since they were trying to go as fast as possible they used a flat organization. Everyone reported directly to Bob Taylor who was a psychologist, not an engineer. He knew he was capable of handling at most 40 to 50 researchers and 20 to 30 support staff. With this fixed number of researchers they sought to hire only the very best. Which they did and then turned them loose to create new stuff while Bob facilitated collaboration between work groups. The approach somehow worked well enough for them to implement tons of new technologies, even though it broke all the rules that we know of about successful organizations.
The history here seems to indicate that success can come against all odds. Those with vision and drive changed the world, even when they should have failed. Shoestring budgets and desperation led to many breakthroughs. Skunk work projects saved companies. At the same time very professional projects ended without any commercial success. Either there are no rules, or the rules are always changing.
For me the best parts were about the famed research center Xerox PARC out of which came Ethernet, laser printers, the Alto workstation, and early graphical user interfaces. Apple borrowed heavily from their research, so did many of the other early pc companies. In part because many of the researchers left to turn their concepts into products. Much of what Xerox invented was actually based on work done by Doug Englebart at the Stanford Research Institute. When Doug Englebart passed away earlier this year the news credited him with inventing the computer mouse. In truth he envisioned most of our modern computing era, apparently by having a vision of much of our modern technology while driving to work one day in 1950. Doug Englebart and his team gave a demo of that computing vision in 1968 at the Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. This “mother of all demos” was described in this fashion by Robert Cringely: “the demo was equivalent to dropping-in on a model rocketry meeting and bringing with you a prototype warp drive. The world of computing was stunned.”
Xerox PARC didn’t bring much to market, but sure came up with some cool stuff. Since they were trying to go as fast as possible they used a flat organization. Everyone reported directly to Bob Taylor who was a psychologist, not an engineer. He knew he was capable of handling at most 40 to 50 researchers and 20 to 30 support staff. With this fixed number of researchers they sought to hire only the very best. Which they did and then turned them loose to create new stuff while Bob facilitated collaboration between work groups. The approach somehow worked well enough for them to implement tons of new technologies, even though it broke all the rules that we know of about successful organizations.
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