The All About Apple Museum
To see a central repository for Apple history, you might
want to brush up on your Italian. Savona, Italy, has more
historical ties to Christopher Columbus than Steve
Jobs, yet thanks to the generosity of a friend and a
happy accident, the All About Apple Museum is home
to more than 9,000 Apple artifacts, from the Apple I to
the latest Apple TV.
“Take What You Like”
The story of the All About Apple Museum began in 2002
when IT consultant Alessio Ferraro went to a party to
celebrate a friend’s retirement from a computer com-
pany. At that party, another friend and the company’s
new manager led him to a computer warehouse and told
him to take whatever interested him.
Ferraro left that night with the keys to the ware-
house and the seeds for what would become the start
of his collection, a large number of Apple artifacts,
some of which date back to Apple’s beginning in 1976.
“There were a lot of very interesting things in that
warehouse, like the Lisa,” said Alberto Crosio, a lighting
consultant who contributed some pieces in the begin-
ning and is now a member of the museum staff. “I know
it sounds weird, but he said, ‘Look at what I have in my
house,’ and it was like 10 people who collected their old
things. I added a NeXT computer. We were all into it. It
was just crazy.”
Ferraro and friends, all serious fans of Apple, formed
a user group and pooled their items to form the collection.
As it grew, the idea of a museum followed. All About Apple
opened its doors in 2005 and has moved a couple of times.
It’s now located on a peninsula that juts into Savona’s
harbor on the Mediterranean.
An Unofficial Thumbs-Up from Apple
While Apple executives have publicly dismissed
the notion of a museum, the All About Apple
Museum received a bit of an unofficial nod from
Cupertino. Apple marketing executive Brett Murray
invited the museum’s founders to California to tour
Apple’s facilities there and offered praise for the
care the museum was taking with Apple’s history.
The unexpected acknowledgment sparked quite
a bit of excitement among the museum’s staff.
Along with a letter (shown on page 107), Murray
sent a box of 250 Apple stickers, brand-new marketing
posters, and T-shirts to congratulate the staff in Savona
on the museum’s inauguration. “Officially, they do not
want to be related to something in their past,” Alberto
Crosio said. “But they complimented us on what we
were doing.”
The letter, while friendly and respectful, is not
a full endorsement. One senses some hesitance on
Apple’s part, as if the company is impressed by the col-
lection and, at the same time, a bit bewildered by it. In
another email exchange, Brett Murray expressed a will-
ingness to send more knickknacks to contribute to the
museum’s collection, as long as they were easy to ship.
Works Like New
The devices in the museum work just as they did on day
one and are thus able to show the 40-year evolution of
personal computing in action. There are nearly a thousand
computers, 142 of which are Apple predecessors such
as the Commodore, Atari, and Olivetti machines — these
provide historical context for Apple’s innovations. The
collection includes 244 monitors, 152 printers, and more
than 13,000 peripherals, such as keyboards, mice, and
drives. There are also Newtons, iPods, preproduction
prototypes, manuals, brochures, posters, and software.
Many of the devices are warehoused to serve as a
source of parts to keep the working models running.
There are also more personal items: the first com-
pany sign, a toolbox belonging to Steve Wozniak, and
an Apple II with a synthesizer that was used in the 1977
movie
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
to produce
that famous five-note melody used to greet the aliens.
The unintentional museum creators now find
themselves at a crossroads. While the group believes
the museum is popular enough to be open five days
a week, it makes barely enough money to sustain
itself, and everyone on staff has kept their day jobs.
Each member of the group takes turns staffing the
museum, which is open two days a week. They’re
considering hiring a full-time manager. “We are
enthusiasts, but it grew so fast that it became more
than a hobby,” Crosio said. “It is a passion and we
cannot lose this. We know we must grow up.”
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