For the better part of twenty
years, Apple was my neighbor,
just a few exits north of me
on I-280. It's HQ for many of
those years, 20525 Mariani
Avenue, is a squat but neat
three story affair just off
DeAnza Boulevard. It was a
street address that became
famous with its appearance
on the back of millions of
elegantly-printed user manuals
that found their way all over
the world.
At the time, you could follow
Apple's rapid rise and slow,
painful descent by the
proliferation and disappearance
of the rainbow-striped Apple
logos on equally nondescript
buildings throughout central
Silicon Valley. They popped
up along freeways and
thoroughfares everywhere. It
was understood by a few semi-
insiders that the most humble,
out-of-the-way facilities
bearing the logo would house
some of their most secret
development efforts, many of
which would never see the
light of day. It was a time when
Silicon Valley was all about
chips and hardware (except
for Atari and the burgeoning
video game industry). And the
internet? The number of host
sites didn't break 1,000 until
1984. People still considered
the Silicon Valley rush hour
traffic miserable and the rents
outrageous, but the weather
was great and you were never
more than an hour from the
ocean. And it was a very, very
exciting place to live and work.
One Infinite Loop, just across
the street from their Mariani
headquarters was completed
in 1991 and, for the first time,
Apple had a true campus and
some of the more impressive
architecture in the Valley.
However, it wasn't something
Steve Jobs would call Insanely
Great. When people were
moving in, he was up in
Redwood City, struggling
with NeXT while Apple was
shuffling through CEOs.
But Apple Park was entirely
his vision. And it shows.
Apple Park, more commonly
known as The Spaceship is
virtually invisible. The trees
and fencing surrounding it
are just tall enough to hide to
hide the expansive structure
from view. When I visited, it
was a perfect Bay Area spring
day, the ideal original for the
string of carbon copies that
would continue through fall.
I didn't get my first real look
until I was halfway down
the long driveway off Wolfe
Road, just east of DeAnza. It's
massive—all white and glass
and absolutely surreal, curved
in no way a normal building
could be. It was like coming
upon the mother ship in Close
Encounters. "Surreal" is the
only word for it.
It was about then that the
guard at the gate to the
parking area courteously
informed me that the Visitor
Center was around the
block on Tantau Avenue and
showed me where I could
turn around. Franky, I was too
awestruck to think of pleading
for a photo op on this
hallowed ground. I gave him a
polite wave and drove away.
122 MacDirectory
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