Posts tagged 'apricot orchards'


Steve Jobs’ new official profile page updated

5 Jul 2011 | in Steve Jobs news, Steve Jobs personality

As Apple is slowly updating all parts of its website to complete its late 2010 design refresh, the turn of the Executive Profiles finally came. Including Steve Jobs’ page.

And it’s cool. See for yourself:

Old design

New design

(expert eyes will recognize Albert Watson’s portrait of Steve from 2006).

This is the kind of decision in which, although it has zero importance in the grander scheme of things, I’m 100% confident Steve Jobs has a say. It explains why it’s the first time we’re seeing this picture in color… And why, just like last time, Steve’s portrait is quite dated (the one before was a picture from 1998 on which Steve posed with a 1st-generation iMac).

One thing that hasn’t changed though is the mention of one Steve’s pet peeves, the “apricot orchards” of Silicon Valley that he misses so much:

Steve grew up in the apricot orchards which later became known as Silicon Valley, and still lives there with his family.

There are countless examples of his using these exact words, e.g. this 1995 interview where he said:

My parents moved from San Francisco to Mountain View when I was five. My dad got transferred and that was right in the heart of Silicon Valley so there were engineers all around. Silicon Valley for the most part at that time was still orchards —apricot orchards and prune orchards— and it was really paradise. I remember the air being crystal clear, where you could see from one end of the valley to the other.

or even the recent presentation he gave to the Cupertino city council when he announced Apple’s plans for its next campus — during which he actually insisted that the campus would host actual apricot orchards in its park!

As a side note, it’s also actually quite telling that the bio is much shorter than some of the other executives’ ones, although of course they have achieved much less than their boss….