Fortune just published a long, fascinating excerpt from an upcoming book about Apple called “Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired and Secretive Company Really Works“ by author Adam Lashinsky, Fortune’s senior editor-at-large. It reveals how far the company is willing to go to ensure its secretive culture. It also tells a tale of Apple’s organizational structure and what makes them tick. Interestingly, Lashinsky writes that Apple’s design guru Jonathan Ive is among the “untouchables,” corroborating claims laid out in the official Jobs biography book by Walter Isaacson. Apple’s late CEO told his biographer that he made sure nobody can touch his “spiritual partner” Ive at Apple. “That’s the way I set it up,” he told Isaacson. Speaking of Apple’s famous culture of secrecy and lack of corporate transparency (at Apple, everything is a secret!), Lashinsky writes it takes two basic forms —external and internal. Needles to say, many employees can hardly stomach security policies focused on preserving internal secrets:

As you could imagine, this is “disconcerting” for employees. Organization charts are nowhere to be seen at Apple. There are no open doors as folks use badges to access areas that sometimes even their boss cannot. Only few people at Apple are allowed into Jonathan Ive’s industrial design bunker. People working on hot projects are required to sign “extra-special agreements acknowledging that you were working on a super-secret project and you wouldn’t talk about it to anyone – not your wife, not your kids.” Even former employees do not talk to press and some were reprimanded for talking too much. Apple goes to great lengths to prevent secrets from leaking and maintain discipline culminates with carefully orchestrated media events akin to a blockbuster Hollywood movie-opening weekend.

Steve Jobs would often tell executives participating in a meeting “Anything disclosed from this meeting will result not just in termination but in the prosecution to the fullest extent that our lawyers can.” Of course, Apple is keen on keeping everyone else on a need-to-know basis described by a former employee as “the ultimate need‑to‑know culture.” Trustworthiness is not assumed, he recalled:

Apple expects newbies to figure out on their own how to connect their newly issued Macs to the corporate network. In addition, executives teach every subordinate that the hype preceding Apple product launches is “worth millions of dollars,” telling them in no ambiguous terms that the penalty for revealing Apple secrets is “swift termination.”

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  • Adam Lashinsky’s look ‘Inside Apple’ profiles iOS head Scott Forstall as Apple’s ‘CEO-in-waiting’ (9to5mac.com)
  • Adam Lashinsky’s look ‘Inside Apple’ will be released on January 25th (9to5mac.com)
  • Fortune releases ‘All about Steve’ (9to5mac.com)
  • Isaacson interviewed Jony Ive in his bunker, here’s what came out with him (9to5mac.com)