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.

Comments

Now he's building a mothership. This will end well

[elrous0]

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?

Re:He looks sick

[0100010001010011]

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.

Re:Now he's building a mothership. This will end w

[InsertWittyNameHere]

The Leader is good, the Leader is great, we surrender our will as of this date!

Re:Now he's building a mothership. This will end w

[Whalou]

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Leader!

Free WiFi??? WTF?? @13:19

[rotide]

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".

Interesting Highlights

[guttentag]

• The new campus would be not far from the existing campus, on the north side of Interstate 280, one exit east, between Wolfe and Tantau, adjacent to the freeway.
• The new building would provide office space for 12,000 to 13,000 people starting around 2015.
• The new building would have its own auditorium because they don't like having to go up to the Moscone Center in San Francisco (the traditional home of the MacWorld expo, which was once Apple's primary stage for announcements) every time they announce a new products
• The property seems like it would be like a large park with a parking structure WAAAY off by the freeway and a lot of parking underground.
• Jobs said Apple has learned a lot from building all its Apple stores around the world and as a result can make really big pieces of curved glass that would be used in construction here. There wouldn't be any flat glass on the building. He said he felt architecture students would come from all over to see it.
• The land was originally apricot orchards and he has hired a Stanford horticulturist to consult on ensuring indigenous trees are planted, including more apricot orchards.
• Jobs mentioned that he called Bill Hewlett at home (looked him up in the phone book because there were no unlisted numbers then) when he was 13 and asked him for some spare parts, and it was about that time that HP bought the land Apple plans to use for this
• One member of the city council attempted to haggle with Jobs, listening to his plans for this new campus and suggesting that in exchange for letting Apple stay in the city Apple should provide free WiFi (a la Google in nearby Mountain View). Jobs responded by calling himself a simpleton, and said he's always believed that the city should provide those services using the money Apple pays in taxes as the largest taxpayer in the city. He did offer to provide WiFi if the city would allow Apple an exemption from paying taxes. She played if off like she was joking at that point, but I think she seriously thought she was going to haggle with Jobs over this.
• The city asked for their own Apple store so they don't have to go to Apple stores in Santa Clara's Valley Fair mall or downtown Los Gatos, but Jobs said the traffic isn't there to make it work, to which the city replied, "we'll help you make it work." No response from Jobs on this, though. The new campus would be walking distance from the Cupertino Square Mall, which is relatively small, anchored by a Sears, Macy's and JC Penny and underwent a major renovation a few years ago. That brought in a nice new AMC theater which I think does well, but the rest of the mall seems constantly on the brink of folding, with lots of empty spaces (even before the great recession) and cheap no-name stores... Jobs would never say it but Apple doesn't want its brand associated with that.

Re:He looks sick

[MachineShedFred]

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.

Gosh, this thing actually seems to make sense.

[hey!]

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.

Re:Design: lush forest, reality: drab carpark?

[whiteboy86]

If you bothered to watch the video you would have known that they are increasing the number of trees from 3000 (current state) to 6000 trees on the site. The multilevel car park will be all underground and the building will be self-powered by those fancy green power generators Google is using already. So it will be green and also local environment friendly. Given the unlimited resources they have at their disposal I bet the project is realized the way they plan it and as intended, no snake words, gloomy conclusions or the general /. pessimism is needed here.

Re:Only 12.000?

[NatasRevol]

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

Re:Only 12.000?

[UnknowingFool]

Are you reading the same Q2 2011 statement I'm reading? In it Apple shows their revenue by products.

• Macs: $4.96B
• iPod: $1.60B
• Music and other online store services (3): $1.63B
• iPhone and related (4): $12.30B
• iPad and related (5): $2.84B
• Other peripherals (6): $580M
• Software (7): $743M

(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.