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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.
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.
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'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".
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.
The Jonestown massacre was carried out with Cherry and Grape Flavor-Aid poisoned with Valium, chloral hydrate, cyanide, and Phenergan.
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.
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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.
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
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.
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.