
Apple Park Opens to Employees in April - davidhariri
http://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/02/apple-park-opens-to-employees-in-april.html
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nodesocket
Matthew Roberts (not me) has been posting awesome drone flyover videos of the
construction. The video is absolutely stunning and filmed in 4k. Highly
recommended.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvkh5udzKds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvkh5udzKds)

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DigitalJack
I'm guessing Segways will be popular there.

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snewk
or bikes

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mortenjorck
Naming the theater after Jobs is a really nice touch. His product
introductions are among the most iconic parts of his legacy, and you could
always tell just from watching that he took great pride in doing them. A
fitting tribute.

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russellbeattie
My only issue is that I bet the center of the building is going to be a
complete waste and totally deserted except for employees occasionally taking a
shortcut between sides (if the doors are set up to do that). The building is
big (I drive by it regularly), but not so big to give the central area any
sense of privacy, so when you walk out into it, you're going to sense that
12,000 eyes are watching you. I've been in large central courtyards like that
before (in square configurations, of course) and the feeling of being watched
is always palpable. Maybe the trees they plant in there will help, but I doubt
it.

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Someone
In a building that size and with the California climate being what it is,
_everybody_ will take those shortcuts. Also, inside the old Apple campus, I've
seen people play frisbee on the lawns during lunch breaks.

This space also is large enough for bootcamp, yoga classes, etc, and enough
people will work there to find people willing to take part in such activities.

They could even 'hide' a basketball court inside if they wanted (dig a one
feet hole to hold the court; surround it by a 3 foot 'wall' for spectators to
hang around on; add trees and shrubs for camouflage, and nobody will see it
from inside the building)

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dcmininni
It's literally a walled garden. Oh the irony.

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webwielder2
Why is that ironic?

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TheGreatPotatoe
Because Apple makes software walled-gardens.

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Scorponok
Isn't that actually the opposite of "ironic", then?

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iamdave
There are multiple kinds of irony; I keep forgetting this isn't something well
known.

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Eric_WVGG
is "wrong" one of those levels

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schoen
Probably I would inevitably think this about any ring-shaped building, but it
looks quite a bit like the GCHQ headquarters in Cheltenham.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Head...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters#/media/File:GCHQ-
aerial.jpg)

I guess the Apple version is somewhat more slender and (unsurprisingly for
Apple?) a bit shinier.

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jonwachob91
Circular buildings have been around for a lot longer then that. The Pentagon
is essentially a round building with a grassy area in the middle.

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visakanv
> The Pentagon is essentially a round building

I burst out laughing at this comment, because
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism)

Aristotle: the essential qualities of an object are those properties that make
the thing what it is, without which it would not be that kind of thing

jonwachob91: a pentagon is essentially a circle

Aristotle: u wot m8

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dv_dt
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology)

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sangnoir
Reducing complex shapes to topology only muddies the discussion. The Pentagon
and Apple HQ toruses. Humans are also toruses when you consider the alimentary
canal!

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johnhenry
I would argue that humans are not topologically equivalent to toruses as most
humans have many holes beyond the alimentary canal.

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midgetjones
Is a torus made of swiss cheese not still a torus?

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johnhenry
... ... correct.

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hkmurakami
You can see it from a nearby hiking trail, Rancho San Antonio. It's really
rather stunning.

Also, I really appreciate whichever jurisdiction gave the go ahead and funded
the expansion of the on/off ramps on Wolfe/280 (likely Cupertino?). The
traffic in the area has become really miserable over the years and I'm hopeful
that things are a bit better than the current De Anza Blvd situation.

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yarou
De Anza is nightmare to drive; biking is also a fun adrenaline rush because
you have to dodge traffic.

Vallco/Stevens Creek will probably become more congested as a result of the
new campus opening.

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Tiktaalik
This building seems super wasteful landwise, but I guess it's in the sprawling
silicon valley suburbs so no one really expects or cares about compactness or
efficiency.

It'll likely be arduous for someone to move from one part of the building to
the other, but I suppose Apple employees don't typically need to do this that
much.

How long is the walk across the inner square by foot I wonder?

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stuckagain
It is HUGELY wasteful. The statement "one of the most energy-efficient
buildings in the world" is a prime example of obscuring the truth, as well.
When considering full-system efficiency this is undoubtedly one of the most
wasteful structures in the world. 12000 employees, 14000 parking spaces, and a
1-hour walk to the nearest point of mass tranportation (Lawrence Caltrain,
which is poorly served; the more frequently served Sunnyvale Caltrain is a
75-minute walk from this building).

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DerekL
There are VTA buses. They come every 30 minutes, and it would take you about
30 minutes to get to the Sunnyvale Caltrain station.

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stuckagain
As far as I can tell from the schedule the minimum bus trip from this site to
Sunnyvale Caltrain is 44 minutes, plus an average 10 minutes for headway. That
assumes you did not start off on the east face of the UFO, in which case you
should add a walk of up to a mile to get to the VTA stop on Wolfe.

Walking would be just about as fast.

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reustle
Do you really think Apple is going to make their employees walk to the train
station? They will obviously have shuttles running

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stuckagain
That doesn't seem obviously true to me. Google for example doesn't run
shuttles to Mountain View Caltrain.

Apple operates door-to-door shuttles to SF and other population centers but
that isn't really the point. The point is they have obviously provisioned
enough parking to give each and every one of their employees a parking space,
with some left over. It's just irresponsible given the traffic situation in
the area, and to call it energy efficient is greenwashing.

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soundlab
Wait there's _17_ megawatts of solar on this thing? Would love to hear more
about how this integrated into the facility. That is an immense PV array.

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jonwachob91
In another comment someone shared a youtube video of a flyover of the
facility. It includes a shot of the solar array, it is absolutely amazing

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trevyn
Wow, for all of Apple's perfectionism, I'm surprised the distorted reflections
on the circular sunshades aren't driving someone bonkers.

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joezydeco
I saw the same thing and thought "If Steve was here, he'd delay opening 3
months while they replaced those undershade panels".

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wehadfun
According to Trulia one of the closest houses for sale by this thing is $4.1
Million.

[https://www.trulia.com/for_sale/37.316929278047,37.342590905...](https://www.trulia.com/for_sale/37.316929278047,37.342590905897,-122.02655364826,-121.98535491779_xy/15_zm/)

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endianswap
It's multiple parcels that are subdividable, they're selling the property for
new development of multiple homes.

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getpost
Building a fancy corporate HQ is often a signal that management has lost touch
with the core business.

EDIT: I can easily make the case this has happened at Apple. Look at their
iPad lineup, for example. How do I figure out which model to buy? IIRC, this
lack of focus on the product line was one of the first things Jobs addressed
when he returned to the company in 1997.

This is not to say that Apple isn't one of the most successful businesses
ever. It argues against bigness. When you're that successful, you can't (it
seems) help but make very expensive decisions rooted in hubris and
grandiosity. Imagine what could have been done instead with a $1 billion new
building and $4 billion in venture capital, for example.

The US government has the same problem. The amount of wealth captured from the
overall economy gives government leaders/lobbyists too much power, and we get
the f-35.

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tomcam
There's a Steve Jobs Theater but no Steve Wozniak Engineering Complex? Ow.

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sergiotapia
This is so beautiful and inspiring. A real legacy. Imagine a world without
Apple computers pushing the envelope. We'd still be using wired mice and ugly
black boxes.

If only Steve Jobs had taken the traditional medicine route he would have been
with us for another 50 years.

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devwastaken
As much as Steve gets credit, the real credit goes to the thousands of
engineers that were the ones who created the envelope of which to push, and
then kept pushing that one as well. Its never one man.

Its unfortunate he chose to not use proven medicine as a treatment, though.

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melling
Why not quote Steve Jobs? He said it much better.

"Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team
of people." Steve Jobs

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zerohm
The size of the glass panels struck me as amazing. Then I read, "clad entirely
in the world’s largest panels of curved glass."

0.0

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wmf
Apple has a lot of practice with large glass panels from their stores.

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SmellTheGlove
That looks great - and even with that, Apple has SO much cash on hand.

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tomcam
... that they haven't paid taxes on

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coldcode
If I could I would work there tomorrow. Sadly I am 3000 miles away and don't
work for Apple today (I left a year before Steve came back, my bad).

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mark_l_watson
Fun for the people who will work there! The Google campus nearby has an ad-hoc
feeling, assembled as existing buildings were purchased (at least when I was a
contractor there). It is expensive, but designing a large beautiful campus
must be great for employee moral.

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thefalcon
It was definitely a boon at Blizzard when their new campus opened.
Unfortunately, by the time it opened Blizzard had already outgrown it and some
departments were left in those ad-hoc nearby buildings.

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y3rsh
Windex.

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Humdeee
Buying all the stock I can right now.

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gist
Considering that Jobs single handedly saved Apple when he returned I would
think he would get a bit more of an honor than a theater named after him.

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nathanvanfleet
What did you have in mind?

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midgetjones
A 50-foot statue made of gold that shouts criticism at employees as they walk
past?

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Shivetya
my favorite part is the natural ventilation. will need to check up on what
larger buildings pull that off

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jpeg_hero
Great Newspeak for their Office Building. In this "Office Building"
approximately 70% of all the employees' time will be 1) writing emails and 2)
having meetings in conference rooms. But instead it is "Apple Park" where work
is leisure and being inside working is actually frolicking.

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HappyTypist
I think that's an extrapolation gone too far with the word 'Park'. Another
take is that Apple is designing a campus that embraces nature with a wide open
space in the middle, accessible equidistantly to everyone.

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sagatsnee
Parts of this should be open to the public. The public has had to endure all
of the construction and has lost a large amount of land-space that could have
been used for the community. Instead, we have a completely private &
inaccessible area. Sure, there are cafes, fitness centers, and working areas
within the building but none of it is public and all at the expense of the
people who live there.

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nodesocket
> Parts of this should be open to the public.

Who do you think financed this? Apple consumers and investors (I am one)
that's who, not taxpayers. Why should it be open to the public? If it were a
government project it would still be under construction for the next 10 years.

> The public has had to endure all of the construction and has lost a large
> amount of land-space that could have been used for the community.

Or, in reality, Apple bought the real-estate, and pumped hundreds of millions
(actually I just looked it up, it is billions with a B) of dollars into the
economy and put scores of construction, engineers, and high skilled people to
work building it. This isn't soviet Russia comrade.

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dmreedy
Nor is this Howard Roark's wet dreams (even if it does also involve
architecture). Your points are not unfounded, but I don't think the Godwin's
Law-esque strawmaning is helpful here.

