Steve Jobs' 'private Apple spaceship' seeks public love Apple's head bean counter has asked his company's neighbours to back plans for a new 2.8 million sq ft glass doughnut office in Cupertino, California. Chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer sent out leaflets to locals last week asking them to support the fruity tech titan's planning application for a new gaff - called …
"How many corporate offices ARE open to the public anyway?"
Loads of corporate buildings in New York had ground level atriums open to the public ... seem to think it may even have been a planning requirement.
Think the argument here is that Apple are making a justification for this development the fact that they'll replace lots of tarmac with grass and trees ... but as a large portion of this is surrounded by a 4 storey office building then the difference is not exactly noticeable. If this is to be seen as a "community asset" then perhaps the community should have some access to it.
Having lived and worked in the area, I have to wonder about the traffic and employee parking. A typical parking lot design guide for office space is as follows:
"Related to Personnel: 1 space per 1 ½ plant employees + 1 space per managerial employee + 1 space per 10 managerial employees for visitors.
Related to Floor Area: 1 space per 1,000 sq. ft. of gross floor area for warehousing and distribution. Or 2 spaces per 1,000 sq. ft. of gross floor area used for manufacturing. Or 2.5 spaces per 1,000 sq. ft. of office area."
Quote Reuters-rebrander Anna: Still, it will be green space that the locals won't be allowed into.
But surely they can't wander freely around the old HP Offices that are currently there, can they? So what's the difference?
Or is the local authorities planning on not selling the land to anyone and instead putting a local park in the place that they'd have to fund themselves?
And it remains as lazy as it was the first time.
Complain about Apple's policies, products, and pricing as much as you like, but the fact that they use contract manufacturing for their designs doesn't really set them apart from any other high-tech company.
If the Reg really needs the clicks brought on by Apple-bashing, at least assign someone with some creativity to the job. Like maybe Lewis Page. He just makes up a lot of what he writes, so he's clearly a creative guy.
Jai's comment earlier "... Reuters-rebrander Anna..." almost required me to get a new keyboard.
There is so much anti-Apple invective, diatribes and downright childish name-calling which is served up as serious journalism by El Reg. I know you guys have had some history with Cupertino, but you're in danger of drowning in bile & sour grapes.
Dear C. (too cowardly to use your name??)
I think he meant this Birdy News Site not bothering to fill web space with essentially copy and paste material and just provide the link to the original article.
And please, the constant referring to someone as a re-brander.... for gods sake get a new joke. Really. its old. We get it (although i never really understood it as most companies have to have suppliers. Its not like Foxconn designed the product or suppled the OS. )
Seanie
Hee, well there is that! However, Apple reporting by El Reg I considered for a long time to be very good – perceptive with a delightful dash of irrelevance and it used to wear Apple’s refusal for press passes as a badge of honour. These days, a lot of it is filler, sadly… and a pretty poor standard of filler too.
@Nanki Poo
Been following this Birdy News Site's history with Apple for many years now, so no need to read up.
Its just that Reg were once able to come up with witty one-liners (and not just for Apple) that made me laugh too.
But now, the lines are just the same day in day out. Foxconn rebrander made me laugh to, until i read it for the 1000th time. And the irony is that in that time, Reg Reporting has gone into the drink so that they are really just themselves a rebrander of news from other sites.
I used to like the Reg for their ability to add humour and provide a satirical opinion on tech/corporate affairs, but now it like watching a stand-up comic use the same act for 30 years. You can predict it, heck you could standup and do it.
This Birdy News site is losing its edge.
No, I did. And although the Reuters article was linked to, other websites (e.g. MacRumors) covered this story a few hours before that one appeared.
The point I was trying to make was that with this type of coverage, you might as well just publish the links to other sites. El Reg is slow off the bat reporting them – normally a whole day, or longer if the story broke on a Friday – and just printing the links would save time and its not as if we’re missing much. Apart from tossing in terms ‘Foxconn-rebrander’, this kind of article adds nothing to reports from other sites – it’s filler pure and simple… of the laziest hack kind.
I have time to read one tech site a day, so I'm a definite supporter of El Reg's reporting of things I may not see anywhere else.
"Foxconn-rebrander" may not be entirely correct, and it could be applied to other companies, but when a thing is sold on its "uniqueness", it doesn't hurt to point out the utter fallacy in that.
Regarding Lewis, it seems that there are a lot of people that don't like hearing things that challenge their points of view. That is their problem, not Lewis or El Reg.
<-<- Beer for the staff!
This post has been deleted by its author
It is so unique that there's no chance of finding another tennent...
Its high tech office space in CA...... I dont see a problem there...
add to that, its going to be made largely of glass, which will mean a steel subframe, it is quite proberble that an enterprising person would come along, snap it up cheap and make a few quid out of recycleing the glass and steeel....
big brother.... well it is apple innit
The problem is that most of those CA towns learned their lessons when "HUGE UNSTOPPABLE COMPANIES THAT WILL LAST FOREVER - NEW ECONOMY - FREEBIRD" didn't quite last forever and they were stuck with buildings no one wanted and the town couldn't afford to get rid of. My town went through this with a commercial locomotive service facility. This 230,000 sqFT facility had a solid copper roof and granite walls - salvage profit? -$1,200,000.
Most exterior commercial building glass is not recyclable, there's pretty much no glass in it, all non-recyclable plastics. Secondly it costs more to cut the steel and transport it than it is worth.
"If they don't let them build it they will relocate. It's as simple as that."
Yes, I remember when I was in the area 12-ish years ago (from what I can tell, I lived about 10 mins walk from where this will be built!) that Fry's Electronics wanted to replace their Fremont store with a much bigger mega-store which I think went against local planning guidance. So they simply went to the City council and said "we'd love to be able to keep on paying you all the city sales tax that you levy on our sales, which will be even bigger in the new store, but if you don't give us planning permission then we'll reluctantly have to ask if one of your neighbouring cities would like us to move there instead" ... needless to say the new mega-store was approved.
BTW, given the plans for this new campus seem to be designed around the ability to keep all employees "inside the circle" at Apple only restauants etc to avoid gossip then its not exactly going to do much for a "busier town" ... apart from at morning and evening commute!
Finally, note the circular offices are 4 floors high ... again seem to recall that (at least for residential property) Cupertino city had a rule of no more than one floor - something to do with not having your "yard" overlooked by neighbours.
In article <rone.9j2jd0$89...@ennui.org>, "cave deum" <^#...@ennui.org>
wrote:
> i'm kidding. crack will be passé in 3001.
[Interior of Arco-Habitat 39B, Ganymede Altruity. Several hundred
silver-jumpsuit-clad ascetics line the interior of a cuboctahedron-
shaped chamber in shining white. Silver wires are connected to
each one at the base of the skull.]
ASCETIC 1138 I rejoice in my transhumanity!
ASCETIC 124C41+ I rejoice in your rejoicing!
ASCETIC 1138 I rejoice in your rejoicing at my rejoicing!
[SFX: Ding]
[A 900-FOOT STEVE JOBS materializes in the center of the chamber.]
STEVE JOBS GET A MAC!
ASCETIC 124C41+ I rejoice in your condescension!
ASCETIC 1138 Everything is perfect now!
[A BLONDE IN RED SHORTS bursts into the chamber directly
opposite our two ASCETICS and tosses a hammer at 900-FOOT
STEVE JOBS. The hammer hits STEVE JOBS in the middle of
the forehead, causing him to double over and exposing...]
ASCETIC 124C41+ CRACK!
ASCETIC 1138 CRACK!
ASCETIC 124C41+ I am revolted and horrified. I reject
transcendence and all associated states of
metahuman superconsciousness!
ASCETIC 1138 And where's our 2GHz Son of Pismo with stamped
enameled metal enclosures? I ask you!
ASCETIC 124C41+ BURN BABY BURN!
[The inhabitants of Arco-Habitat 39B break through the outer
shell and are blown out onto the airless, frigid surface of
Ganymede, surveyed only by the pitiless cyclopean eyeball of
the planet Jupiter. But then TOYNBEE RESURRECTS THE DEAD.]
--
Matt McIrvin
Circular buildings suck. Nothing fits well inside, and a lot of space is wasted trying to get rectangular-ish desks / cubicles arranged efficiently in the curving space. As a resident in such a building either you get lucky by being at the edge and get a lot of space, or you're closer to the centre and get more crammed in.
Architecturally they look fab, but from a purely practical point of view they're not so clever.
Which is somewhat typical of Apple I think; form over function every time.
Apple may well overestimate the number of employees that they can actually comfortably fit in this design. They may have to cram people closer together more than they thought. The risk is that the working environment will actually turn out to be crap, which is the exact opposite of their aim of making an environment in which staff feel comfortable and able to relax. And that wouldn't discourage them from going to off-site bars and leaving iPhones everywhere.
I live near a major HP campus and it isn't public. It's a fortress with barbed wire and guards. A former coworker of mine used to work there and had a horror story of leaving his badge behind when he went to the cafeteria for lunch and was ridiculously told he could not leave it without producing his ID. He said his only choice was to run through the halls with mall-cops (ok, campus-cops) chasing him to beat them back to his desk where he left his badge to prove he was an employee. If Apple owns the land and it's a place of business, they can reserve the right to restrict parts or all of it from the public.
But the implication is that Apple are making a green and pleasant land from what is a brownfield site and that local business should laud this fact(ion) to the local authorities despite getting no benefit from it whatsoever save the view of the mothership and its workers antlike trails in and out at dawn and dusk.
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