Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything (2000), by Steven Levy, is a book about the birth of the Apple Macintosh computer. In Steven’s own words, its a book “about how technology, serendipity, passion, and magic combined to create what [many] believe is the most important consumer product in the last half of the twentieth century: the Macintosh computer.” The book traces the story of the Macintosh computer from 1945 when Vannevar Bush, a former VP of MIT and the then Director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development wrote an essay arguing that “the major scientific and engineering effort in postwar America should be the transformation of the way we process, retain, and retrieve information.”
The book was written well! Steven writes about the history of the Macintosh, interviews the main characters involved in this journey, visited with the minor players, and delved into philosophy and linguistics when the situation deanded it. The result is a book that is fun to read and keeps the reader hooked till the end.
And, by the way, the name of the book “Insanely Great” doesn’t refer to Steven Paul Jobs (popularly known as Steve Jobs), but to how Jobs referred to “this new computer”- The Apple Macintosh- that was going to “put a dent in the universe”.
Business in Books 