Some emotions cannot easily be described, but this one will be understood and felt by the ones who love Appple and what it represents, and by the ones who have followed our footsteps until now.
June 2005: Une night, really unexpected, a phone call arrives, directly form Apple U.S.A., Cupertino in our answering machine at All About Apple.
So please could you contact me, you can call my cellular phone at 555-XXX-XXX, in the United States, or you can email me, again my name is Brett M., brett_xxx@apple.com, so we can redirect the package.
So… congratulations for opening museum… bye bye
At first the reaction, we admit this, was ‘It is a joke!’. But after a few hours an email message directly from Apple denied this idea:
My name is Brett M. and I work in the marketing department at Apple in Cupertino… We noticed you launch in May and wanted to welcome you to the Apple family! As a welcome we tried to send you (via DHL) a package of silly Apple marketing things as a gift, but DHL requires a signature to deliver it! It’s sitting in Italy right now looking for someone to be at your mailing address to accept it.
Below is the information on the package… If you get this soon, please email Jan C. at DHL (address below) and let them know where they could redirect the package to.
I hope this gets to you and best of luck with the museum!
…………………………………………………………………………….
Brett M.
Senior Manager, Marketing Communications
Apple Computer
b_xxxx@apple.com
555-XXX-XXX mobile
APPLE COMPUTER U.S.A. has called All About Apple for real, giving his regards and to give us a present.
Starts in this way a short exchange of email messages to explain the delivery address, and our Brett – Apple Senior Manager – delivers us by DHL the goods.
What was in the box? 250 Apple stickers, dozens of brand new posters , and three beautiful t-shirts, but most important this letter:
How to comment such an event? Apple America, towards who we never addressed because of our modesty, thanks us of the opening of the museum and says that we have so many machines to overtake their collection and that we are the biggest Apple Museum of the world!
Moreover, Brett sends us this email:
Subject: Re: Brett M. from Apple in Cupertino… Hello!
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 10:36:00 -0700
To: Alessio Ferraro
Hello Alessio!
It looks as though your email to Jan will make sure you get all of the odds and ends we sent your way. If you end up finding that things that are easy to ship (like posters) are useful or fun for the museum then let me know. Maybe every six months or so I could send some more things over!
If I had to guess, you probably are the most supplied Apple museum in the world! Of course, I am not aware of any other Apple-only museum either. The Computer History Museum here in Silicon Valley has a nice Apple collection, but it only consists of a dozen or so CPUs (including an Apple I in a wood case signed by both Steve Jobs and Wozniak).
I’ll be honest, I only have the opportunity to work with Steve Jobs on rare occasions, but I will certainly pass on your invitation when the opportunity presents itself! I am much more likely to bump into Steve Wozniak since we live in the same small town (Los Gatos, CA) and I seem to see him everywhere.
I wish you the best of luck with the museum, I would love to be kept informed of your progress and let me know if there are any ways I can support you!
~Brett
In this email Brett – not only says again we are the largest Apple Museum of the world – tells us that he sometimes works with Steve Jobs, and that in that occasion Brett will invite him for a visit to the Museum in Italy.
What’s odd is that Brett, who lives in Los Gatos, is a fellow-citizen of Steve Wozniak, the famous creator of Apple I and of Apple II, companion-in-arms and friend of Steve Jobs.
Fantasy runs… Steve Wozniak in Italy? Steve Jobs at the Museum, maybe all together at dinner?
In the meantime we have one real thing for sure: the invitation from Brett (see below his last email) to go and visit Apple Campus in January 2006, as their guests, for the Mac World Expo… “there are not so many things to see – he says – but I’ll be your host”
Brett in his last message considers us as “Apple ambassadors in Italy”. Do you know what I say? We deserved this!
Subject: Re: Brett M. from Apple in Cupertino… Hello!
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 16:58:57 -0700
To: Alessio Ferraro
Great! I’m glad the package made it!!
I thought you might appreciate the internal “Confidential” envelope given how secretive we are about everything.
I’m going to keep a running stack of items for you that I can send over every once and a while. We have to keep our “Italian Embassy” stocked up properly.
(…)
I would be more than happy to meet with you at Macworld next January! Maybe you could take one day to come down to Cupertino and I could show you around the campus. There is not a ton to see, but I am more than happy to play tour guide for you. I’m sure you’d enjoy it. Besides, I could get you 15% off of anything you would want to buy at the company store (iPods, shirts, software, etc.; not Macs though). Not a bad thing!
We can certainly stay in touch and plan it out further as the year marches on!
Brett
