Site of the Unveiling of the Original Macintosh Is Now Rubble
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The famous Flint Center, the location of several key Apple events, including the unveiling of the original Macintosh in 1984, is being demolished. The last event Apple held there was in 2014 when the company debuted the first Apple Watch.
While Apple eventually outgrew the Flint Center and opened up the Steve Jobs Theater at its Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, the facility served a purpose for the iPhone maker for over three decades.
The Flint Center was the site of Apple’s first-ever shareholders meeting as a public company in 1981. The Flint Center auditorium at the De Anza College was required to provide enough space for all new shareholders to attend. At that time, Apple headquarters was located at 20863 Stevens Creek Boulevard, Cupertino, a scant half a mile away from the Center.
Unfortunately, the media back then didn’t cover every little bit of news concerning Apple. However, several sources, including The Pop History Dig, report that the first shareholders’ meeting was a less than happy event.
At the company’s first shareholder’s meeting in January 1981, there was some rough going for Jobs who had been interrupted in his speech, and according to some accounts, delivered a long, emotionally charged talk about betrayal and lack of respect.
Soon after, Jobs took over the Macintosh project, while the rest of the company focused on what was expected to be a better performer: the Lisa computer.
The 1984 Debut of the Macintosh
By 1984, Apple’s headquarters had moved to 10260 Bandley Drive in Cupertino, just under a mile from the Flint Center.
On January 24, 1984, Jobs took the stage to unveil the first Macintosh, as shown in the YouTube video below. The event was also dramatized in the 2015 Aaron Sorkin movie, Steve Jobs, which was filmed at the center over several days beginning January 29, 2015 — 31 years after the real event.
The original beige Macintosh was powered by a Motorola 68000 processor running at almost 8 MHz and boasted 128 KB of RAM. The OG Macintosh also sported a 9-inch Black and White monitor with a fixed resolution of 512×342 pixels and a single 400 KB 3 1/2-inch floppy drive. It originally sold for $2,495 USD.
The Flint Center
Those 31 years were not good ones for the Flint Center. As reported by SiliconValley.com, a 2015 study showed that the center was being booked 17% to 24% of the time. Even for events it had been booked for, only seven events a year had more than 2,000 attendees, leaving the center, which had a capacity of 2,400, a quarter empty for even the most well-attended events.
The building was also in severe disrepair and would have cost an estimated $50 million to repair and remodel, leading to the decision to demolish in 2019. The site has remained abandoned for nearly five years awaiting its final demise, which began this week.
The majority of the demolition is expected to be finished by March 2025, according to Paula Norsell, a spokesperson for the Foothill-De Anza Community College District.
Happily, the center won’t be replaced by a soulless parking lot, as the district is planning to build a new multi-million Creative Arts Building and an adjacent Student Services center in its place
The projects will be funded by Measure G, which was approved by district voters in 2020. The measure provides $898 million for upgrading and repairing facilities, classrooms, and labs and acquiring and constructing facilities and equipment for De Anza and Foothill College.
