Day 16: An Apple a day...

Today I went to Apple's Infinity Campus. Not next to it, not into the store by it (although I did go into there) but actually inside past the main entrance and into the Campus itself!  Quick thoughts: relaxed atmosphere, busy but calm, and a lot of beautiful people.  Yup this is definitely the age of the nerd.  

The morning was really productive. I slept really well and had a walk around the surrounding area before coming back to write up lots of things for my novel. The Blessing's have this really nice balcony area where I just sat, relaxed and wrote. Was really productive and I think I may have come up with the ending to the story!  I just need to fill in the middle part now.

Mary then took me out for the afternoon.  We went to Apple :)) Mary has a friend who works (I think head of) the iTunes and iCloud part of Apple, also called Mary. Annoyingly I left my camera and iPad at the house so the two Marys both took pictures on theirs lol. Just to prove I was there. Plus I have a name badge :)

The area is huge, sites about 10,000 employees and is only one of many in the area. They are just building a new site which will hold 16,000. I think Mary said they employ about 150,000 people, excluding all the shops and sites around the world. It's mad. I heard German, Swede, British, Japanese, Indian all sorts of nationalities represented. And they don't go seeking these people out. People come to them if something is advertised.  The whole campus (five buildings) revolves around a massive open area with a BBQ area and trees and area for a stage etc. The cafeteria is also huge and has everything you cold possibly want. Apples are all free.  The fruit I mean. Meetings were taking place outside, all the offices seemed to have balconies with chairs and tables.  The whole place was really quiet and relaxed, yet people were moving about working, in meetings, and obviously getting a lot done.   And the women! Wow!  I think I missed a trick growing up. I should have studied computers or software or something Apple related.  I just tried not to spend the whole time with my mouth open. We couldn't go into a lot of areas, but from what I could see it was just a really nice place to work.  We then went back out to the store. Apparently it's the only place you can buy clothing items. They don't do online shopping for them, and their stores around the world don't stock them apart from for special promotions.   Mary had a 10% or 15% staff discount which she let me use, depending on the item.  So I picked up a few presses for the family :)

We then briefly visited Mary's old church (and Apple Mary's current church) of St Jude's. it was so nice!  Huge. We'd spoken about the parish at both the Finance committee and Trustees committee, and it was nice to see the place. Met a guy called Brock and just sat in the sun for a bit.

We then went on to a brewery restaurant called (I'm fairly certain) BJ's, and met a guy called Kevin who joined us for dinner and the movie. Yup I went to a movie!  The Steve Jobs movie. But more on that later.  I had a proper American cheese burger, which was huge! Appetiser of calamari and a beer in the sun.  It was just the other side of the Apple campus we'd visited and very popular. We got there early (6pm :S) and got seated, but by the time we left there was a que outside.  It was interesting seeing all the employees either come out to eat/drink or leave in there really nice cars.

The Jobs movie, starring Ashton Kutcher (who I wasn't sure could carry the movie, but did really well) just opened that night and was independently made, but obviously with Apples permission. It was very brutal and frank, portraying Jobs as an ass but also a visionary and motivator. Basically he pulled together the right people to produce his visions. It was really good, very interesting, and quite inspiring. The bottom line for me was 'never accept anything less then doing your best, don't settle for what others do and think that's ok, but find a way of making your visions and dreams a reality'

Oh, and going up to the cinema counter and asking for "two tickets for jobs" made me chuckle.