Fortune&#39;s &quot;Inside Apple&quot; Shows Apple&#39;s Inner WorkingsS

Fortune's Adam Lashinsky, after months of dogged reporting and research, recently put together a story called "Inside Apple." Appropriate, seeing as he goes at length to reveal Apple's cultural core; This is a company for whom failure isn't an option.

Apple enjoys hit product (iPod) after hit product (iPhone) after hit product (iPad). So what happens when something fails? Well, to give you an idea, this is what happened to the MobileMe seam after the spectacular failure that was MobileMe's launch in 2008:



In a sense, Jobs is hoping to place the weight of Apple and Apple's success and reputation on each employee's shoulder. The whole company is basically built on that sort of clear accountability. They even have a term so everyone knows who's responsible for what: 'DRI' which stands for "Directly Responsible Individual". Furthering Jobs desire to hold people accountable is a story Jobs always tells newly minted VPS about the difference between a janitor and a VP:


It's a really great read to see how Apple runs their company—like how its still so startup-like, how there's a top 100 'clique', how it remains nimble, how its documenting case studies about big decisions Apple has made to teach future employees and so, so much more. The whole report is in the May 23, 2011 issue of Fortune. If you already subscribe to the mag you can download it to your iPad for free, if not it's $4.99 for the issue. [iTunes via Fortune]