End of an era

This is the goodbye letter I sent during my last week at Apple.

Hello!
After almost 15.5 years, my time at Apple is drawing to a close. My last day will be Thursday, April 18th. 

If you know me, you’ll know I’m rarely at a loss for words. Yet I struggle to find vocabulary when trying to express how much Apple has meant to me. 

When I was about 13 my parents had the gall to take me on a road trip in a deeply embarrassing, wood-paneled station wagon. Happily we were the proud new owners of a Blueberry G3 iBook. In the backseat of that tan monstrosity (you know the type… with the third row of seats that faced backwards?) I hunched over the blue clamshell like a witch at a cauldron, ignoring the passing landscape and cringe-worthy parental oversight. My teenage angst sent me exploring deep into the bellows of Mac OS 8.6. This port in the Trapped-In-A-Station-Wagon-In-Nebraska Storm is where I fell in love with Apple. I began telling grownups that one day I (me! A little girl from a small town in Minnesota!) would work for Apple. I didn’t always believe in myself, but my parents did, moving heaven and earth to get me opportunities and hardware. While my career trajectory perhaps got its start thanks to imprisonment in a wood-paneled station wagon, some of my earliest memories are of sitting on my dad’s lap and drawing in MacPaint.

This is all to say that Apple has shaped who I am from the very beginning. And just because my employment with Apple ends Thursday, the incredible things you all do ensures that Apple will continue to transform my life, and the lives of so many others.

I’m very excited for what I have coming up next, but for now, thank you. These past 15 years and five months with each of you have been a joy and a privilege. I can’t believe I’ve been so lucky.

Sincerely,
Betsy Langowski