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Steve Jobs Presents His Ideas For A New Apple Campus

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Re: Steve Jobs Presents His Ideas For A New Apple Campus

#111
post #67

Apple style - one monolithic building designed down to the square foot. Google style - a motley assortment of buildings spread out over a large campus, some of which are better than others.

Has Apple found a way to make the sun shine from the North? Otherwise I think there will be rooms that are better than others in the round spaceship, too.

On the other hand: no privileged corner offices.

Re: Steve Jobs Presents His Ideas For A New Apple Campus

#112
post #67

Apple style - one monolithic building designed down to the square foot. Google style - a motley assortment of buildings spread out over a large campus, some of which are better than others.

Has Apple found a way to make the sun shine from the North? Otherwise I think there will be rooms that are better than others in the round spaceship, too.

Maybe there's "One more thing…" about it, and the whole thing rotates.

You know, I wouldn't be entirely surprised, either.

Re: Steve Jobs Presents His Ideas For A New Apple Campus

#113
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of apricot trees... perhaps the odd McIntosh Apple? [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntosh_%28apple%29

I grew up in Ontario, where McIntosh are king (and deliciously awesome!). I was surprised, when I moved, that a lot of people didn't know that the MacIntosh computer was actually named after this apple (trademark, or something, prevented them from using "McIntosh")

"Macintosh" was also chosen because it's acronym-proof

Re: Steve Jobs Presents His Ideas For A New Apple Campus

#114
There are still orchards in Cupertino?!

Not for economic reasons. Modest houses on modest lots sell in the seven figures there. Whoever owns the land could make huge money by selling to developers, but presumably the city council has made it clear that they won't approve a zoning change. Apparently, the people there already really want there to still be orchards in Cupertino, if only as a memory of what was.

Sounds like Steve Jobs wowed the city council, but after paying some attention to SV local politics, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the community rallied against this.

Re: Steve Jobs Presents His Ideas For A New Apple Campus

#115

This isn't impressive to me. What would be impressive would be building a skyscraper in downtown SF. Being environmentally friendly isn't building a massive campus on a plot of suburban grassland. Apple likes to say they think differently, but this isn't different. It's just slightly nicer than most other headquarters in a suburban wasteland.

I don't think it would make financial sense for Apple to move to SF.

Re: Steve Jobs Presents His Ideas For A New Apple Campus

#116
post #109
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of his ego. He must be pissed that he couldn't get that small patch of real estate in the lower left corner. The neighbours have made a powerful enemy ;]

If you take a closer look at the area, you can see they'll actually houses rather than office parks. They actually appear impressively dense by California standards. It's a lot harder to buy people's houses than a corporation's floors.

You're right (well they look like pretty nice apartment complexes) Streetview: http://goo.gl/3Qdhs

Property prices just went waaay up there. Cash in and sell/lease to Apple employees, I'd imagine.

Re: Steve Jobs Presents His Ideas For A New Apple Campus

#117
post #25

I find it extremely interesting that they'll be using natural gas as their primary energy source for the campus and using the electrical grid as their backup. Is this really cost effective? Are many businesses doing this?

I kind of assumed they would be using the cutting-edge Bloomenergy Boxes.

Fuels: Natural Gas, Directed Biogas

Input fuel pressure: 15 psig

Electrical efficiency (LHV net AC): > 50%

http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/data-sheet/

http://www.bloomenergy.com/

Re: Steve Jobs Presents His Ideas For A New Apple Campus

#118
post #78
post #2

Really, really nice looking building and landscaping. Why keep the IL1 campus, instead of just moving everybody into a slightly larger mothership in 2015?

Just because they've got money to burn doesn't mean they want to burn money. They own Infinite Loop, and they'd have a hard time finding a buyer. Besides, moving everybody in the entire company into a new building sounds like a major pain and a disruption to operations.

That is what Amazon did last year, on a rolling basis as leases expired.

Re: Steve Jobs Presents His Ideas For A New Apple Campus

#119

There are still orchards in Cupertino?! Not for economic reasons. Modest houses on modest lots sell in the seven figures there. Whoever owns the land could make huge money by selling to developers, but presumably the city council has made it clear that they won't approve a zoning change. Apparently, the people there already really want there to still be orchards in Cupertino, if only as a memory of what was. Sounds l…

He did point out a couple of times that they're the largest tax payer in Cupertino and while they wanted to stay, they've go a couple of miles up the road to the next city if they needed to. Also note the councillors asked when they'd be breaking ground so they could start taxing them on it. Apple wouldn't have to look hard to get big incentives to hop over the city boundary, and they'll keep reminding the council that they have options.

I imagine a large percentage of Cupertino residents are Apple employees or otherwise directly benefit from Apple being there. I'd think that the majority of the community would be completely happy for the biggest local company to spend a lot of money in their city, and to convert a big chunk of asphalt back in to green space.

Re: Steve Jobs Presents His Ideas For A New Apple Campus

#120

When I saw the photos, I figured that the building's circumference would be so wide that curved glass would not just be unnecessary, but almost counter-productive, as it's difficult to curve glass without imperfections that might ruin its reflections. Surely we'd be talking about small fractions of a degree per pane. Can anyone estimate what the building circumference is, and therefore what amount of curve would be c…

Just looking at the proposed plans and comparing to Google Maps, I'd give a rough guestimate of 1100 ft for the building's diameter. So, that's about 3450 ft in circumference. That means a single degree of arc would cover about 960 ft. If each pane of glass were 10x48 and flat (as long as the building is tall), then they would form a 7200-sided polygon, and the angle between them would be 179.95 degrees, or a deflect…

How do you get a 7200 sided polygon from a 3450 ft circumference? That would be 6 inch wide windows. Steve mentioned them having a process to create the largest pieces of glass in the world... which look to be on the order of 10+ ft wide. That would mean at most 360 panes of glass, each turning a full degree.

Maybe it's not easily perceptible, but how much do you wanna bet they mocked it up and Steve was like "Yeah, you can tell the difference. It just doesn't feel right."

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