Apple is flying a pirate flag over its headquarters — here’s why

Kif Leswing
Updated

It’s the 40th anniversary of Apple’s founding on Friday, and to celebrate, Apple flew a pirate flag over its headquarters.

Here’s why: The pirate flag has a special place in Apple history. During a 1983 meeting, former CEO Steve Jobs told the Macintosh team:

1. “Real artists ship.”
2. “It’s better to be a pirate than join the navy.”
3. “Mac in a book by 1986.”

Based on those now-iconic “sayings from Chairman Jobs,” the Macintosh team started to style themselves as pirates. In fact, the phrase “Pirates of Silicon Valley” later became the title of a 1999 Anthony Michael Hall biopic about the early days of Apple.

(“Mac in a book” refers to the team’s efforts to make a laptop. They shipped the the 15 pound Mac Portable in 1989.)

As it turns out, the Macintosh team was so inspired by Jobs that they asked iconic designer Susan Kare — who created the icons on the original Macintosh — to create an adapted pirate flag.

According to a post on Folklore.org written by former Apple engineer Andy Hertzfeld, Jobs loved the flag:

Steve Capps, the heroic programmer who had switched over from the Lisa team just in time for the January retreat, had a flash of inspiration: if the Mac team was a band of pirates, the building should fly a pirate flag.

A few days before we moved into the new building, Capps bought some black cloth and sewed it into a flag. He asked Susan Kare to paint a big skull and crossbones in white at the center. The final touch was the requisite eye-patch, rendered by a large, rainbow-colored Apple logo decal. We wanted to have the flag flying over the building early Monday morning, the first day of occupancy, so the plan was to install it late Sunday evening…

We weren’t sure how everyone would react to the flag, especially Steve Jobs, but Steve and almost everyone else loved it, so it became a permanent fixture of the building. It usually made me smile when I caught a glimpse of it as I came to work in the morning.

Here’s a picture of Jobs with the flag:

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Now Apple is celebrating that history, flying a pirate flag above its headquarters on Thursday and Friday, and employees can’t stop posting photos on Instagram:

 

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If you’d like to buy your own Apple pirate flag, hand-painted versions are on sale at Susan Kare’s website for the affordable price of $2250.

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Photographer friend @PixieLux visited while I worked on an #apple #macintosh #pirate flag commission yesterday pic.twitter.com/VsudqzfmpC

 Buy it here.

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