An Oral History of Apple’s Infinite Loop
“One thing he did like was the interior courtyard. It served Apple really well. It was private. It was beautiful. It had this collegiate campus feel.”
The unique thing about the Apple cafeteria: chefs and staff are full time employees and approach meal planning like product development. “If I can become an Apple employee and all the chefs can be Apple employees as well, instead of having this third-party nonsense.”
“So, on the next generation we need to do this, this, this, this, this, this…” Literally, we had celebrated for a nanosecond and then we were on to the next thing.
“Leaving Infinite Loop could be traumatic—and bitter.”
Walking around Infinite Loop, the thing I noticed was everyone was good at what they do, and they generally were in the right spots. That place oozes with competence. I had never been in a company that’s spent 95 percent of its time thinking about the product.
‘I expected Steve to be happy. But he was melancholy. He explained why as we passed a deserted building on the property and saw an old Hewlett-Packard sign. Apple had purchased the land from HP, which had been one of the most storied companies in the history of Silicon Valley, started by two legendary founders. Steve looked at the building. “Eventually everything comes to an end,”’