What I Saw Inside Apple’s Top-Secret Input Lab — Backchannel

Insiders call it Vallco Parkway. The nondescript building, just a quick hop down 280 from Apple’s Infinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino, houses a nerve center crucial to the fingers of everyone who uses a Macintosh. This is the Input Design Lab, where Apple designs and tests the prototypes for new keyboards, trackpads, and mouses. It’s stuffed with a treasure trove of precision machinery that would make geek hearts patter like a pneumatic drill. Until now, no reporter or press photographer has crossed the threshold. But to mark a new set of iMacs — and perhaps to help implement a spirit of more transparency in the previously locked-down corporation — Apple opened its doors (well, some of them) to Backchannel, and talked about its new iMacs and overall strategy.