A first tour inside Apple's new spaceship campus

Neil,

The Wired article is a terrific read and I highly endorse it even for people hampered with Windoze machines.

The complexity of the project and the details that went into the smallest design features of this giant enterprise are fascinating to read about.  It's impossible to avoid being impressed by Steve Jobs's passion for what will be his legacy project.

A tour of the new campus is definitely on my bucket list, having been a fanboy since 1986 with the purchase of a Mac Plus, 512 x 384 b/w monitor with 4megs of RAM, an 8 MHz 68000 Motorola microprocessor and a 10 MB "zero foot print" external hard drive, the very bees' knees!

Thanks for bringing the article to our attention!

Cheers - Gary
 
I like this quote from someone with the architectural firm:

"At one point, Behling recalls, Jobs discussed the walls he had in mind for the offices: “He knew exactly what timber he wanted, but not just ‘I like oak’ or ‘I like maple.’ He knew it had to be quarter-­cut. It had to be cut in the winter, ideally in January, to have the least amount of sap and sugar content. We were all sitting there, architects with gray hair, going, ‘Holy shit!'"
 
Z48LT1 said:
A tour of the new campus is definitely on my bucket list, having been a fanboy since 1986 with the purchase of a Mac Plus, 512 x 384 b/w monitor with 4megs of RAM, an 8 MHz 68000 Motorola microprocessor and a 10 MB "zero foot print" external hard drive, the very bees' knees!
Click to expand...

The very first "personal computer" I used was in middle school: The black Apple ][+ with 48 kB of RAM, Applesoft Basic in 16 kB of ROM, a single floppy drive, and was connected to a color television. This was state-of-the-art at the time!

Who else remember cutting a notch in the side of the floppy disk so that you could flip it over and use the back?
 
Z48LT1 said:
Neil,

The Wired article is a terrific read and I highly endorse it even for people hampered with Windoze machines.

The complexity of the project and the details that went into the smallest design features of this giant enterprise are fascinating to read about.  It's impossible to avoid being impressed by Steve Jobs's passion for what will be his legacy project.

A tour of the new campus is definitely on my bucket list, having been a fanboy since 1986 with the purchase of a Mac Plus, 512 x 384 b/w monitor with 4megs of RAM, an 8 MHz 68000 Motorola microprocessor and a 10 MB "zero foot print" external hard drive, the very bees' knees!

Thanks for bringing the article to our attention!

Cheers - Gary
Click to expand...

4mb of RAM? How rich were you! Blimey my first Mac has 2mb although I seem to recall I had a 20mb HD.

My second Mac was somewhat different a Power PC 8500 with all the bells and whistles. I bought an extra 8mb of RAM for it and I was delighted because the price had just dropped and it ONLY cost £800 in 1995! That's the price of the additional ram not the Mac itself which was about £3k. My phone has more memory and probably more processing power now!!!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
DiscoStu said:
Z48LT1 said:
...
A tour of the new campus is definitely on my bucket list, having been a fanboy since 1986 with the purchase of a Mac Plus, 512 x 384 b/w monitor with 4megs of RAM, an 8 MHz 68000 Motorola microprocessor and a 10 MB "zero foot print" external hard drive, the very bees' knees!
...
Click to expand...

4mb of RAM? How rich were you! Blimey my first Mac has 2mb although I seem to recall I had a 20mb HD.

My second Mac was somewhat different a Power PC 8500 with all the bells and whistles. I bought an extra 8mb of RAM for it and I was delighted because the price had just dropped and it ONLY cost £800 in 1995! That's the price of the additional ram not the Mac itself which was about £3k. My phone has more memory and probably more processing power now!!!
...
Click to expand...

My first computer I bought a model that had 2mb and added 6mb.  I told my wife "I can't imagine ever needing more than 8mb of memory".  As you can imagine, I've had to eat those words at every new computer since then.
 
I remember buying a 386 in the mid 80's that came with 1Mb RAM...I ordered it with an expansion card that included another 4Mb and the card with memory installed was a $675 option!  Recently bought a 64Gb Micro-SD card from Amazon for $15.29.  That's $0.00024 per Mb vs $168.75 30 years ago and ignoring inflation...that's progress!!
 
I worked at Apple from 84 to 95.  Fascinating times.  Was in meetings w Jobs on several occasions before he left.  Quite a legacy.  Amazing leader and visionary.  Incredible company.  He brought it back from the grave starting in '97.  The rest is history, as they say.

First Mac was 128K for $2495.  With a 400K floppy.  Follow-up was the 512K.  Hyperdrives were $1500 for 20mb and internally installed.  LaserWriters were $7000.  But the combination was incredible and I sold a ton of them to businesses and higher education.

Wish I had saved all my original Apple gear from the Apple ][ on!  I could afford more Festool now!

This new campus is true Steve.  He so sweated every detail on anything he touched.  Wanted it perfect.  It represents his brand.  And thus Apple's brand.  I still have friends there and hope to visit at some point.
 
[member=167]neilc[/member] ,  Thanks for that link!

As someone who worked for a company at one time that was innovative and who had the interest of employees at heart long before the current levels it was interesting to read.

Too bad that the company I worked for no longer exists and their corporate headquarters will probably be torn down if it hasn't been already.

It was fun walking down the winding yellow "brick" road - actually a yellow 1" mosaic tile winding walkway - on the way to my cubicle every day.

I hope that Apple employees will one day appreciate what they have.

Peter
 
Since someone mentioned memory capacity I thought I would post this, a hard drive from 1952.

This held 5MB not 5GB. The data capacity for about one song, when IBM was king.

[attachimg=1]

 

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Dovetail65 said:
Since someone mentioned memory capacity I thought I would post this, a hard drive from 1952.

This held 5MB not 5GB. The data capacity for about one song, when IBM was king.

[attachimg=1]
Click to expand...

I remember my "friends" calling me an idiot for paying $2K for a 70MB drive ... going on to say I'd NEVER fill it uo!!
 
When I was a boy...

I paid over $300 for 16KB of RAM for a HP-85 in about 1985. This gave me a whopping 32KB in total!

As for hard disk capacity, the cartridge storage tapes could hold 210K data.

 
kevinculle said:
I remember buying a 386 in the mid 80's that came with 1Mb RAM...I ordered it with an expansion card that included another 4Mb and the card with memory installed was a $675 option!  Recently bought a 64Gb Micro-SD card from Amazon for $15.29.  That's $0.00024 per Mb vs $168.75 30 years ago and ignoring inflation...that's progress!!
Click to expand...

When the 386 first came out I ordered one with a 5 Mb RAM card. That card cost an extra $5,000 and the IT personal (all mainframe only) all came to have a look at the "tiny" Ram.

They decided that it was interesting but not like a "real" computer.
 
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