Full of insights and inspiring for looking into the future

Offers excellent perspective in Apple’s, and the world’s, reliance on China for manufacturing. Demonstrates why the US can’t bring manufacturing back, and the challenges of mitigating the risk of an over-reliance on China and Taiwan. But most of all: a great read.

I bought this book because I like Apple products. Holy cow! The lengths to which China planned all the technological knowledge they now have is diabolical. If you don’t think China is in every detail, read this book. It’s frightening.

I purchased my first Mac in 1984, and I been a fan ever since. I enjoyed learning how Apple has changed the world in many ways, especially manufacturing. There are many lessons for executives in this book.

Excellent! Especially the first half of the book which is all about Apple building out its logistics and manufacturing in China in the 2000s.

Fascinating, revealing and insightful. Simply impossible to put down.

Apple does a marvelous job of weaving a narrative for its customers: buy our product and your life will be transformed. And in some ways, it may be true. For many Apple customers, that promise and its fulfillment are enough to keep them firmly inside the Apple ecosystem. But what McGee so masterfully explains in his book is that Apple’s ability to deliver on that promise, across multiple products over more than two decades, rests on a sort of Faustian bargain it has made with China Inc. The CCP and hundreds of provincial and local officials enabled a product and manufacturing strategy that is simply not possible anywhere else on the globe. That strategy has helped catapult Apple to the loftiest position in capitalist economies. But as McGee explains, the nearly invisible but dark underside of this bargain is a requirement for Apple to continue to transfer extraordinary tech knowledge and expertise to the Red Supply Chain, a group that also supports Apple’s competitors. Worse, it appears that attempts by Apple to extricate itself from this relationship will not only be difficult. It may be impossible. McGee tells this story not with mind numbing tech speak but with the engaging prose of a mystery writer. I read the book in two days. I simply couldn’t put it down. You’re probably reading this review on an iPhone. Read this book to more fully understand why your phone has the capability it does, sells for what it does, and why the nearly 20 year run of iPhone success probably won’t last.