iSad: My one (sort of, kind of related) Steve Jobs Story

1998's iMac in "Bondi Blue"

"iSad" was my favorite twitter tag for Steve Jobs's demise. It made me chuckle and then feel bad about chuckling.

Aside for my love of the iPhone, I only have one brief brush with Steve Jobs, which clearly didn't happen directly. When I was interning at a plastics manufacturing facility (the largest in North America--which I was taught to say because part of my experience was to give tours of the facility--to who, I have no idea, but I digress), I got my own tour of the site. There are actually four separate divisions of a large multinational conglomerate all under one site. One of those divisions made audio quality plastics used in CDs which required the workers to wear those particle free spacesuit looking things all day.

But one section of the plant that I got to see (it's a perk of being in PR--you get to be in the know on things--most of which you really don't want to know) was a room built for the CEO of Apple. This was 2000, so the iMac that was all in one and colorful had just rolled out about 18 months before. They originally came out in "bondi blue," a color I'm sure we all know now. But they soon rolled them out in many colors and thus began the modern boom of Apple.

The plastics for the iMac came from the plant that I worked out and the room that I got to see was about 200 different color prototypes for new versions. At the time I had to sign a non-disclosure form to enter. There were tons of different lighting set ups so that the Apple execs could see the prototypes in any kind of lighting that might come up. "They're really that detailed?" I asked. "Yeah," said my co-worker. "The CEO comes in to the plant himself to check on the colors. He's into details, apparently."

Little did I know that Steve Jobs was visiting this big ole factory. I was too young to really care about giants of industry (and to a certain extent, I still feel I'm too young to really care). Either way, that's my Apple story.