As Apple moves into Apple Park, Steven Levy tells the story of the Infinite Loop campus through incredible vignettes from those who were there. These are the story of stories that just transport you , as if you’re in Cupertino and watching from a place outside of time:
Slade: Most meetings with Steve, no matter who was meeting or what the topic, he did 75 percent of the talking. It didn’t matter who it was, he’d just talk. ….
Forstall: Whenever I ate with Steve, he insisted on paying for me, which I thought was a little odd. Even if we went in together and he selected something quick like premade sushi, and I ordered a pizza in the wood-burning pizza oven, he would wait for me at the cash register for 10, 15 minutes. I felt so awkward. Finally, I told him. “Seriously, I can pay for myself, so please don’t stand there and wait for me.” He said, “Scott, you don’t understand. You know how we pay by swiping your badge and then it’s deducted from your salary? I only get paid a dollar year! Every time I swipe we get a free meal!” Here was this multibillionaire putting one over on the company he founded, a few dollars at a time. …
Cook: It was an awful time. The stock crashed, it goes down by 60 to 70 percent. We get a call from Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway. He wants to talk about acquiring Apple. Steve and I went to a meeting with Waitt and their CEO, and it’s a different Steve. Very calm, listening to the comments they made, how they’d probably keep the Apple brand. I was sitting there feeling like my organs were being cut out. Then they said maybe they could come up with a role for Steve, and I’m thinking—he’s going to blow! He’s going to blow any minute! Then they start talking about price. And Steve looks at them—he could look at you with eyes that just penetrated your soul—and says, “Who do you think is worth more, Apple or Gateway?” The meeting lasted only two or three minutes more. And in a few weeks they had some accounting scandal, and their stock crashed. …
Schiller: Steve would say, “Let’s not have a meeting sitting in a chair, let’s get up and walk.” The campus is Infinite Loop—it’s a circle—and Steve would take you for a walk around it rather than be cooped up in an office. We’d do laps. When people talk about walking to close your rings on the Apple Watch, I always think back to that. …
Fadell: My now-wife and I both worked at Apple but hadn’t met. Once we locked eyes at Caffè Macs and I wondered, “Who is that?” Then in 2002, someone in HR told me about her boss and said, “Tony, you have to meet this woman. Go sit in the lobby of IL1.” Dani came down the elevator and sat down with me on the old chairs outside the security zone. Now no Apple employee sits down in the reception area. You just don’t do that, you’re always running around. Because we’re going so long, Steve comes down the elevator, comes out of the secured area, locks eyes on me, sees Dani. I could see it in his eyes—“What the hell are these two doing talking to each other?” So he beelines over and says, “Whatever you’re doing, you guys better not be doing this.” So Steve Jobs shows up on my first date with my soon-to-be wife. We got engaged 11 weeks later. …
Cook: I felt I was filling in for a period of time and Steve would come back. I was always good with that, and that’s how I wanted it to be. I thought that until literally 48 hours before he passed away. …
Cook: We locked up Steve’s office. I would not have moved into his office, and no one has. I decided early on it didn’t feel right to change that office at all. There are some personal things he had in there that are now with Laurene. But it’s the same desk and chair, credenza, bookcase. As a matter of fact, there’s still drawings on the whiteboard that his daughter did. Last summer she came by, and I showed her the stuff that she had drawn. You can still feel him in there, because I saw him in there so much. Some people go to the grave site to reflect on someone. I don’t do it frequently, but I go to his office.
Forstall: Soon after Apple bought land for the new campus, Steve and I walked around the property to get a feel for it. 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,” he said. We looked at each other for a few moments, then walked on.
As much as it makes me miss Steve Jobs, and the wonder I remember from observing his later years at Apple, it also makes me incredible grateful to have been alive to have watched it in the first place. Not every generation has such dynamic leaders, and America is fortunate to have had not only Steve, but also to still have Elon Musk.