Thursday 6/28/2007

I saw Steve in person several times when I worked at Apple. There were the events, both public and private, the “fireside chats” broadcast to other auditoriums scattered around the company and the last time, I scored a 5th row, aisle in Town Hall. It was late 2008. This was right after they released the Unibody MacBook and before his first leave of absence. As he walked down the steps toward the stage, everyone rose to their feet and started to applaud. He smiled and nodded, almost embarrassed and definitely humbled by the reaction. He was thin.

He took the stage, quietly thanked everyone and told us to stop. He told a story about Ray Kroc. We laughed. He was on his game as usual but he was also… gentle. I don’t recall any specifics other than that.

But the one time I remember most was Thursday, June 28th, 2007 — the day before iPhone launched. Steve sent out an email about a Town Hall meeting at 11. I happened to be in Cupertino that day and as luck would have it, my 10 AM meeting cancelled.

The following is an excerpt from an email I sent Doreen that night.

… He used words like “glorious” to describe the software running on it and “sublime” to describe the design and “revolutionary” to describe the engineering and “magic” to describe the hard work that went into everything.

[…]

He took a few more iPhone related questions he thanked a whole laundry list of people by name and various teams for their hard work. He expressed genuine thanks for their work, sacrifice and commitment. It was a very personal moment and people were choked up.

After a long silence he told us to stop and enjoy today, the day before the iPhone launch, because it’s rare to be part of something so completely ground breaking.

“I still remember the day before we launched the Macintosh like it was yesterday.” he said, “It’s ancient history now but I feel it like it just happened.” “This is a rare thing to be part of. We have a tremendous team that has worked hard on iPhone and now all of you will too.”

To show his thanks he said he’s giving every U.S. FTE and PTE that’s been with the company for at least one year by the end of July an iPhone because “You all need to enjoy using it as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it.”

The. Place. Exploded in cheers.

He went on to tell us that we’re what makes Apple special and what makes ideas become reality and thanked us for our hard work and commitment.

And that was it.

A few hours later I was sitting in the main building catching up on email when Steve and Jonathan Ive, the designer of our products, walked in. They stood admiring a large scale mock-up of iPhone. As they walked away from it I glanced up to watch them walk by. Steve looked me dead in the eye. I froze for a second remembering all the horror stories of employees getting fired for small reasons.

I gave him a “Thanks for the iPhone” nod.

And he nodded back.

From there, I joined the inside sales team for an end of quarter bowling party, rushed to catch my plane (I was the last to board), was seated next to one of my customers, who I got to know, sat in the Boise Airport for two and half hours because our connection was delayed and finally made it home at 12:30.

What a day.

What a life.

Thanks for everything, Steve.