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Apple Plans New Spaceship-like Campus
itwbennett has a story that might answer the question of what Apple is doing with the billions they have in the bank. "Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday presented plans for a new Apple campus to the Cupertino City Council. The office building will look 'a little like a spaceship landed,' said Jobs. It will also be just 4 stories tall, is big enough to house all 12,000 Apple employees (with room for growth), and will generate its own energy." Keep reading to see the riveting town council meeting.
Why do I have a feeling that the Steve Jobs story is going to end with him and a large number of followers drinking arsenic-laced kool-aid in an effort to travel to the alien home planet of Klatlun?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The circular shape is reminiscent of the UK's GCHQ "Doughtnut" [cryptome.org] building. GCHQ is their equivalent of the NSA, they do sigint for the Queen.
Please articulate how a torus-shaped building reminds you of a penis in any state of turgidness.
Seems like Steve saw Walt Disney's old video about the true vision of EPCOT and decided to make it happen.
He was in good form, despite looking poorly. The inane comments from the city council members couldn't have helped.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
I won't comment on the aesthetics of the building, but it seems a no brainer for a company like Apple to build a thoroughly modern building like this.
At least I don't see Apple going out of business anytime soon and they can practically write a check for the whole thing. The money being an opportunity cost that will pay back over the longer term with less building energy costs and having everyone in one place / no lease costs for other locations.
Only downside might be if they ever did need to sell it or lease space to others in the future. (this doesn't seem structured like say the Sprint Nextel campus in Overland Park Kansas .. where the buildings were restructured for other companies use after the original occupant didn't need them anymore for various reasons.
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GCHQ-doughnut.jpg
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
Perhaps because a penis (once removed from a person's body) is homeomorphic to a torus?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeomorphism
Palm trees and 8
I still have to give him props for actually showing up to the meeting. He could have easily sent the summer intern or any number of other people involved with the project. Instead the CEO of a Forture 50 company shows up to a town hall meeting to discuss the new building they're building.
And regardless of what company is building this (and peoples opinions of that company) this actually looks like a pretty cool 'green' endeavor. Less wasted space on parking, more trees, less energy consumption. I wish more companies thought like this.
The Leader is good, the Leader is great, we surrender our will as of this date!
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Leader!
English is not this
Looks very nice with the stunning scenery of a forest. Really brings out the building. As we all know though, in reality the scenery of such designs usually gets switched from the beautiful parklands, lakes or forest in to a giant car park with a tree and a puddle in the corner.
It's the surroundings which make a good building into an amazing design, and it's the surroundings which most often fail new builds.
Hopefully Apple can get it right.
I actually don't have a problem with Apple. I've owned an iPhone before I bought an Android (I had a 2G, so it was upgrade time and I felt like something different), and I still own and use an older iBook G4. But a spaceship shaped building just fits in so perfectly with the cult-image, I couldn't help but think it.
there will be unwarranted rectal probing for all visitors?
i KNEW I should have read the new Terms of Service agreement.
I'm no Apple fan, but damn do people elect stupid people to City Council. That Kris lady or whatever doesn't care about anything besides "Free WiFi" [goto 13:19]. That's what she wants for the city. Screw tax revenue, new residents, etc, etc, no, she wants Apple to give her free WiFi. Again, I don't like Apple, but Steve's response was great, basically, (paraphrased), "We'll give you WiFi when you stop taxing us, since that's what taxes are for, public works projects".
We're not so much a cult per se, more like an autonomous collective of dirty rabble.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If history has any lesion for us it is that when a company decides to build a statement building it frequently coincides with the decline of the company. Mr. Cringley talked about this few months back
http://www.cringely.com/2010/12/edifice-complex/
He's actually always done this. When Apple has business with the City of Cupertino, he's the one that shows up to talk to the city council, not some PR flack or a lawyer.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
App Store purchases started a few years ago, but Apple launched the iPod and iTunes about 10 years ago.
And really, it was just the past few years they exploded. Look at this:
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Apple_(AAPL)/Data/Market_Capitalization/2001/Q2
Note that their massive growth really started in 2005. The iMac had nothing to do with it. In fact, there are rumors that they will completely drop Mac OS X and move all devices to iOS to shift more focus to App Store purchases.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
http://www.apple.com/environment/
The Jonestown massacre was carried out with Cherry and Grape Flavor-Aid poisoned with Valium, chloral hydrate, cyanide, and Phenergan.
iKNEW iShould have read the new Terms of Service agreement
There. FTFY
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
So he's building the corporate version of Wonko the sane's house?
... lol.
No.
Apple makes money hand over fist all on what they're actually making; the 30% on "other people's products" is nice and all, but isn't even in the same league.
The iTunes store is like 5% or so (maybe a few points higher, but not a lot) of their revenue -- and while it probably doesn't have a big margin since they don't have to go out and like, build physical things? Their margins on the things they actually make are huge.
Something like two thirds of their PROFIT comes from their actual iThing products. Then a bit under a quarter from Macs.
The actual, y'know, products they themselves make.
Usually when a company announces plans for a whizbang new campus, it's bad news for the stockholders.
I have a friend who many years ago worked for a high tech company that planned a beautiful new Utopian campus. For various reasons they were forced to reduce the size of the project. They decided to house management and marketing at the luxurious new campus and stick the engineers miles away in a big box full of cubicles. As for the engineers, keeping management and marketing out of their hair on a day to day basis easily made up for having to work in a giant cubicle farm. The downside was that management lost touch and began demanding silly things and not taking engineering advice seriously. The subsequent poor performance of the company turned the showcase campus into an expensive fiasco. The campus was abandoned a few years later when the company was forced to sell out to a competitor.
It sounds like Apple is doing the opposite here, bringing people who have to work together in a very nice environment. I'll bet there'll be ideas generated and knowledge transferred on strolls through this campus that wouldn't have happened in a formal meeting that required a drive across town. This really looks like a case for what architects often claim but seldom achieve: making buildings that work for the people who use them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Have you actually looked at their financial reports? They make the vast majority of their revenue and profit on hardware. For example, Mac revenue this year is expected to be $20B and margin is normally at 30% which means $6B in profit just from computer hardware sales. Remember also that 30% of revenue of each app and media sales has to cover all costs including datacenter, billing, administrative, bandwidth. That $1B datacenter they just built in North Carolina probably was charged to the online store costs.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
No. He HAD pancreatic cancer which (probably) spread to his liver. He has a new liver and as a result has to (or had to) take anti-rejection drugs, and no pancreas and a bunch of other missing stuff due the whipple procedure used to remove the pancreas, etc. He probably has a hell of a time absorbing nutrients, maintaining his blood sugar, etc. I respect the man for continuing to get out of bed every day.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
I hope they have done an environmental impact report for all of the Smug they will be adding to the atmosphere.
That's no building. I see through your nefarious plan, Jobs. You're building a giant transmutation circle. You'll fill it with 13,000 souls, perform horrifying experiments on them, and then sacrifice them all in order to create a Philosopher's Stone for yourself. You've pushed the boundaries of medical science and human alchemy is all that's left to you now...
Come on, people. Of course I'm not serious. Or am I...?
Hardware sales of iOS, not software sales.
Go look at Apple's own numbers:
iPod - $1.6B
iPhone - $12.2B
iPad - $2.2B
Music/Apps (which is other) - $1.6B
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q211data_sum.pdf
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
No they do NOT lump in hardware with software purchases.
It's under Other Music Related Products and Services (3)
Footnote (3):
(3) Includes sales from the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore in addition to sales of iPod services and Apple-branded and third-party iPod accessories.
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q211data_sum.pdf
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
You're absolutely right: IOS related sales is the vast majority of their revenue.
That does not, *at all*, mean "iTunes Store". It could mean, "revenue from our products, AND the iTunes store" -- but the vast majority of the profit in that category is their products. IPhone, iPad, etc.
Getting precise break outs is impossible, because Apple doesn't specifically release a profit per product, but they do give certain numbers.
http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/25/ios-enables-71-of-apple-profits-with-platform-products-make-up-93-of-gross-margin/
for instance. See where "music" and "software" are, compared to "iPad", "iPhone", "iPod" combined?
You're doing some really weird math where you're saying, "before the store" verses "after the store" and equating the fact that they'd have explosive growth TO profits from the store itself. You're missing the part where they've also had record after record after record breaking quarters selling the actual *products*, iThings -- at a high margin, with huge profits.
Again: no. You're imagining that Apple is first and foremost a media and content delivery hegemony, and you're wrong. They're the biggest music seller in the world right now, but they still make most of their money, hands down, on their devices.
Profits due to "IOS" is not "app store": not even kind of. For apps, they've paid out 2.5b to developers total so far -- TOTAL. For the rest of the content, they don't lump iTunes Store (music, movies, etc) into "IOS" because its NOT part of the IOS profit category. You can get all that content (except books) on the Mac, and they have never really given (at least as long as I've been listening to their financial conference calls) really specific details about how much of their running profit comes from the content stores.
If that's your feeling you've been drinking too much kool-aid.
Are you reading the same Q2 2011 statement I'm reading? In it Apple shows their revenue by products.
(3) Includes sales from the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore in addition to sales of iPod services and Apple-branded and third-party iPod accessories.
(4) Includes revenue recognized from iPhone sales, carrier agreements, services, and Apple-branded and third-party iPhone accessories.
(5) Includes revenue recognized from iPad sales, services, and Apple-branded and third-party iPad accessories.
(6) Includes sales of displays, wireless connectivity and networking solutions, and other hardware accessories.
(7) Includes sales from the Mac App Store in addition to sales of other Apple-branded and third-party Mac software and Mac and Internet services.
From the financial statement, Apple has clearly separated App Store revenue from iOS device revenue. It's not rocket surgery but it's rather simple accounting and in black and white. Steve Jobs has said that the iOS ecosystem is what had made iOS devices successful; however, in terms of financial contribution, the hardware devices make far more money.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Funny, many analysts - and Apple themselves - have said that the App Store runs at "slightly better than break-even." From your hyperbolic claims, you'd think that they were minting money with the app stores and barely breaking even on their hardware sales, which is in fact exactly opposite from reality.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20008540-37.html
The vast majority of Apple's revenue comes from hardware & device sales. Whether you assign App store sales to "Itunes" or "Software" in this chart, it's still a very small fraction of their revenue.
Nope.
There's no profit in that.
Fortnightly sacrifices on the giant altar at the center of his gold-clad city, however, are more likely.
Save him having to fly around to get on organ waiting lists.
Citation most definitely needed for this. The majority of their revenue may be coming from iOS devices, but it is the *device sales,* not the *app store,* that is accounting for the vast majority of their revenue.
10 billion plus apps downloaded. 200 million iOS devices sold to date. That's roughly 50 apps per device. Some year-old numbers suggest that 75% of the apps in the app store are paid apps - so let's assume that 38 of the 50 apps per device are also paid apps. Again from last year, average price of a paid app was $3.63.
So the "average" iOS device, with 38 paid apps, has generated 137.94 in app store revenue. Apple keeps 30% of that, for a cool $41.40 per iOS device, or 8.3 billion in revenues from every app sold since the app store was opened.
Last year, Apple had 65.2 billion in revenue.
Please show your math that leads you to conclude that the app store is the "major source" of Apple's revenues?
30% of a small number is another small number.
They sell 1 iMac, and bump their revenues by $2000+ dollars. They sell 1 99-cent app, and bump their revenues by $0.30.
Note that that 30 cents is not "profit" to Apple, it is revenue. They still have to pay for administration & maintenance of the online store (disk space, server space, network connections), staffing the app reviewers, paying credit card processors, etc. Apple have publicly stated that they run the app store at "slightly above" break-even after they pay their administrative costs.
Some teardowns estimate an iMac's *profit margin* at 40%, which means that Apple makes $800 in *profit* off of a single $2000 iMac sale. Even if they have a 40% profit margin on app sales, they need to sell 6,667 apps at that profit margin to make $800 in profit - 30 cents in revenue per app times 40% profit margin = 12 cents profit per app. They've implied quite publicly that their profit margins on the app store are nowhere near 40%.
Apple doesn't produce tons of products. And they became the industry giant relatively quickly in the past ten years, mainly through App Store purchases.
App Store purchases are a very minor percentage of Apple's business. You only have to look at Apple's financial statements to discover this.
They make a profit on iPhone/iPad/iPod sales, but 30% of the top on all Apps, songs, movies, books, etc. is where it is at.
You might want to consult Apple's financial statements before saying something that is demonstrably wrong. In 2010 Apple's total combined music and software sales (including 3rd party and their own) totaled just 11.5% of Apple's revenue. Even if the margins are ridiculous, it still just just a small portion of their business. By comparison Apple's NET profit over the same period was 21.4% of revenue. So even if 100% of the music and software sales was profit (and it is nowhere near that I assure you), it still would account for just half of Apple's profit for the reporting period. Realistically it probably accounts for between 10-20% of Apple's profit. Good business but hardly the backbone of the company.
Oh, and Apple does not keep all of that 30%. In fact it's fairly widely accepted among analysts that Apple doesn't make much money at all on their music sales. Doesn't matter though because the point is to drive hardware sales. Any profit from the iTunes store and App store is just a bonus.
And they don't need massive staff to collect money on other people's products.
It's efficient to be sure but you can also be sure that there is a LOT more overhead than you probably think. Software development cost, accounting, transaction processing, software review, data center cost, sales, marketing, utilities, and more. Apple may take 30% but their actual profit will be significantly less.
Disclosure: I am a certified accountant
The spike started in 2005 with music sales, which is exactly my point. Apple takes 30% of the top of other people's content, and that is where most of their revenue comes from. They don't need a huge staff to make money off other people's products.
Apple doesn't profit very much from their App/Music/Book/Video/etc. stores. These are primarily created to provide an added value to their hardware products.
Apple lists their numbers. For example, they have sold 15 billion songs (that's $5 billion in revenue (not profit) since 2005) and have paid $2.5 billion to app developers (that's $830 million in revenue (not profit) since 2008.
Apple takes in more than those two stores combined, in pure profit, every four months or so.
This building is completely not built on a human scale. It places offices and services far from eachother. It's seemed DESIGNED to make people drive.
Take the giant ring and compress it into a 20-40 story dome. Not only would it result in better interconnection between offices, cafeterias, and such, but it would bemore energy efficient (a dome has the least amount of surface area to exchange heat with the outside).
It would use less land, leaving more space for parkland, a farm, solar plant, whatever you want to use it for.
Instead of building a huge fucking parking garage you could place it next to a Caltrain station, and encourage people to use Caltrain to get to work instead of driving.
Hell they could build it in Santa Clara by the Caltrain station there (there's a ton of poorly used space on the north side of it). This is a stop for not only Caltrain (San Jose San Francisco), but also Capitol Corridor (San Jose Oakland Sacramento), and ACE (San Jose Livermore Stockton).
If that's your feeling, you should seriously ask for a sense of humour.
You'd think so; but the OP was modded +5 INSIGHTFUL!!!