Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution

Steve Jobs had told Google that if it included multitouch on its phones, he would sue, and true to his word he sued the Nexus One maker, HTC, a month later in Delaware Federal District Court. More noticeably, he began seeking out public opportunities to attack Google and Android.

A month after the Nexus One was released – and days after Jobs announced the first iPad – he tore into Google at an Apple employee meeting.

“Apple did not enter the search business. So why did Google enter the phone business? Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them. Their ‘Don’t Be Evil’ mantra? It’s bullshit.”

In Dogfight, Wired’s Fred Vogelstein tells the unseemly history of your treasured/ hated smartphones and tablets. It’s a whistle-stop tour of the astonishing technological revolution that makes the pre-iPhone world of 2007 seem so very long ago, and also an insight into the future of media: who will control content and where it will come from.

Featuring testimonies from the inner circles of two of the world’s most influential companies, it is a fascinating, damning document for anyone enthralled by The Social Network or Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs.

There’s business bravado, corporate hair-pulling and screaming matches between engineers frazzled from all-night coding sessions. One Apple employee slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent, locking her in – it took colleagues an hour and some aluminium bats to free her.

Have a read and you’ll never look at your phone the same way again.

Click here to buy Dogfight from Booktopia,
Australia’s Local Bookstore

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About the Contributor

Andrew Cattanach

Andrew Cattanach is a regular contributor to The Booktopia Blog. He has been shortlisted for The Age Short Story Prize and was named a finalist for the 2015 Young Bookseller of the Year Award. He enjoys reading, writing and sleeping, though finds it difficult to do them all at once.

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