Creative Selection

Hundreds of millions of people use Apple products every day; several thousand work on Apple's campus in Cupertino, California; but only a handful sit at the drawing board. Creative Selection recounts the life of on of the few who worked behind the scenes in the final years of the Steve Jobs era, the golden age of Apple.

For fifteen years, Ken Kocienda was on the ground floor of the company as a specialist, directly responsible for experimenting with novel user interface concepts and writing powerful, easy-to-use software for products including the iPhone, the iPad and the Safari web browser. His stories explain the symbiotic relationship between software and product development for those who have never dreamed of programming a computer, and reveal what it was like to work on the cutting edge of technology at one of the world's most admired companies.

Kocienda shares moments of struggle and success, crisis and collaboration, illuminating each with lessons learned over his Apple career. He introduces the essential elements of innovation, inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste and empathy, and shows how a small group of developed an evolutionary design model and intuitive software that billions use every day.

1. The Demo
2. The Crystal Ball
3. The Black Slab
4. One Simple Rule
5. The Hardest Problem
6. The Keyboard Derby
7. QWERTY
8. Convergence
9. The Intersection
10. At This Point

Well, this is a book written by a run-off-the-mill programmer, that happened to work at Apple and was invited a few times to make demos for Steve Jobs during the iPhone development.

From this, he tries to make a book (which is OK), but sadly lacking in any valuable content or insights (except what any semi-intelligent programmer would get after a few years of experience).

Nothing Apple-specific in this book. You can miss it without regret.