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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

#171

Post by r00fus »

enf wrote: post #124
bonzoesc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isolation and centralization is useful for the corporation; they have more control over physical security, can manage it so employees tend to interact only with other employees, and it costs a lot less to have space for 12,000 employees off the interstate than to have them downtown (if Silicon Valley towns even have "downtowns;" I know far-flung Miami exurbs usually don't.)

Palo Alto and Mountain View have real places; the rest is pretty much all miserable sprawl. I miss working in downtown Palo Alto.

Cupertino "downtown" is a joke (I used to work there)... it's basically the intersection of two large streets (Stevens Creek at De Anza).

Likewise Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are quite anemic, but Los Gatos, Saratoga and even Los Altos aren't bad. MV and PA are great places to dine.

Cupertino is the only town I've worked in that never had a downtown.

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

#172

Post by tptacek »

bretthopper wrote: post #170
tptacek wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any other city I think this would be a more valid point. But San Francisco is tiny. A lot of people really don't grok just how geographically small the place is. An Apple move to downtown SF would be incredibly disruptive, would generate epic amounts of traffic on already extremely congested roads, would doubtless increase pollution and energy expense, and price thousands of families out of SF neighborhoods as wea…

It sounds like you're treating an Apple building downtown differently than any other skyscraper. It's still just a big tower filled with people. Are you saying that SF is literally bursting at the seams and that it can't support another big office tower? What about the giant Transbay development plan? If you're going to stuff 12,000+ people anywhere, it's better to do it in an already dense area to take advantage of…

Yes. That is what I am saying. That even if Apple could make the building itself as green as conceivably possible, simply moving 12,000 people's workplaces to the city of San Francisco would create additional problems and be a net negative.

If you want to call that "bursting at the seams" that's fine, but Apple isn't in a position to reengineer the whole dysfunctional city of San Francisco.

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

#173

Post by redthrowaway »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #120
redthrowaway wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

See, I knew the math was wrong... thanks for pointing that out.

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

#176

Post by whyenot »

r00fus wrote: post #171
enf wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palo Alto and Mountain View have real places; the rest is pretty much all miserable sprawl. I miss working in downtown Palo Alto.

Cupertino "downtown" is a joke (I used to work there)... it's basically the intersection of two large streets (Stevens Creek at De Anza). Likewise Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are quite anemic, but Los Gatos, Saratoga and even Los Altos aren't bad. MV and PA are great places to dine. Cupertino is the only town I've worked in that never had a downtown.

Cupertino did have a downtown along Stevens Creek and De Anza, but the area changed significantly in the 1950s and 60s when streets were widened and DeAnza College was built. Cupertino certainly doesn't have much of a downtown now.

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

#177

Post by protomyth »

camiller wrote: post #148
checker wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me of the Pentagon, which has the same sort of stuff along with food vendors. It was pretty busy at lunch time and seemed to be a popular place to have a walk and talk meeting.

And the worlds most dangerous hot dog stand. (torn down in 2006 IIRC)

link for hot dog stand http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=1049

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

#178

Post by timcederman »

enf wrote: post #124
bonzoesc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isolation and centralization is useful for the corporation; they have more control over physical security, can manage it so employees tend to interact only with other employees, and it costs a lot less to have space for 12,000 employees off the interstate than to have them downtown (if Silicon Valley towns even have "downtowns;" I know far-flung Miami exurbs usually don't.)

Palo Alto and Mountain View have real places; the rest is pretty much all miserable sprawl. I miss working in downtown Palo Alto.

San Mateo and Burlingame aren't too bad, and San Carlos has a surprisingly good downtown.

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

#179

Post by unshift »

kabdib wrote: post #87

A bit of Silly Valley lore: Go graph "Company builds a new campus" against "Company stock falls like a rock." Atari, 1983. Apple, 1991. Sun (both times, I forget the years). SGI, 1990s. Various other companies (I forget which, it's been a while). It's like the hubris builds up to the point where the company is in a natural position to say, "Hey, we need a new campus," and the Gods decide that a little humiliation is…

VMware, 2007-2008ish

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

#180

Post by adpowers »

Luyt wrote: post #21
paramaggarwal wrote: post #12

Wow, such a beautiful campus.

And all the ugly parking lots will be underground! What a huge gain. It almost makes me want to work for Apple and move to Cupertino.

Not all, if you look at the south part of the drawing there is still an above ground parking structure :(
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