Yesterday Steve Jobs appeared at the Cupertino City Council to propose a stunning new office complex for Apple.
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#31 – Heading to work…
http://tinyurl.com/3tvrz99
#34 LOL
#25 Well, Barney is not my type and I’m taken so you can have him. You know you want part of the Apple action and I encourage you to go after a nice 10inch iPAD. I think they come in black too.
#23 Dallas: Jobs said “asphalt” – for the parking spaces in the area at the moment – not “ass fault”.
I know the area so well – used to work there for years. Although the parking spaces are big, they’re blending architecturally with the environment quite nicely. I’m surprised Jobs willing to go to length to make the area even more green.
Have always like the place! Might even come back there.
They should not approve it with the obscene profits that Apple makes. They should insist that the building is only approved if Apple opens a fund for poor people to buy IPods and IPhones. In addition they should be providing free wi-fi to the city. Also, they should have their building be carbon neutral, including construction, since Al Gore is on their board.
#37 –
Imagine what a horrid campus would be built if Bill Gates was pitching one.
If you google earth Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City, there is a building called 3001 that is absolutely huge. Not as pretty as what Jobs is proposing though.
Its funny how Jobs pitches this just like its his latest iPhone.
I don’t know why Apple should need a new HQ. When their employees can just all work from home, and telecommute to work. All Apple really needs is a super-secure server farm. To protect its part of the Cloud. But I’m think this is just PR, to want a newer and bigger edifice. That the public can see and admire.
If Apple’s new HQ were simply a large monolith slab, of solid state servers and WiFi (think “2001: A Space Odyssey”). It wouldn’t be as impressive to the traditional brick, mortar and glass, edifice investors. Who go by the main office’s square footage, as an indicator of a company’s success.
If anything, Apple ought to be downsizing their central office space. To reflect a more efficient business. And build a smaller HQs, on the east coast. And maybe another overseas, somewhere. Just to handle the manufacturing and distribution of Apple products.
Seems to me that titans like Jobs and Gates always like dealing with little towns, they think they can easily push around, or pull the wool over their eyes. Nobody ever heard of Cupertino city or Redmond, until they came along and put these sleepy burgs on the maps. Google Maps, anyway. Now that they’ve had a taste of fame and good fortune. They have to be asked first, if a billion dollar enterprise can expand a little. Money is the fertilizer of bureaucracy.
It looks good to me. Jobs is doing more for his hometown than most folks do. In fact, he has done more for the world than most folks do. The part I don’t get is why the apricot trees and not apple trees.
@B. Dog
Steve mentioned that all the land they bought use to be apricot orchards so he’s looking to restore some of the land back to it’s heyday.
Hate them or love them, we need company’s like Apple with their obscene profits to invest in land and do some good.
More importantly, will the public be able to walk through the grounds? Seems a waste to have all that beautiful area landscaped and design for the sake of 12,000 staff.
Apple are renowned for their privacy yet this is a building that’ll mainly be made out of glass?
I suppose that answers my first question :/
Nice design however the statement pertaining to natural gas being a cleaner fuel in power generation is completely wrong. Recent studies by Ivy League Cornell University have proven that the process involved in fracturing for natural gas is environmentally worse than mining for coal. The whole process of fracturing for gas involves millions of gallons of clean surface and drinking water being mixed with toxic chemicals and sand, then pumped into well sites under intense pressure. This process is causing peoples drinking waters, lands, and animals to be poisoned from the chemicals. On top of this with gas regulations being the way they are in the US, the gas companies can spill waste water, and leak methane into the environment. Methane is a much more dangerous greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide!
Flawed and very shameful that its not being designed with any renewable energy resources. Solar, Wind, geothermal, etc.
Can’t he just die already!
#47 “Can’t he just die already!”
He is. He’s trying to put a more lasting stamp on the map than his Macs and iDevices. Once he kicks the bucket, those things are likely to become a lot less interesting within a few years without Jobs to add his pizazz to them.
But we still have major icons like the Chrysler building, the Empire State Building, and had the Sears Towers (which would still be standing but for outside intervention). Among other notable structures, many of which have been around for a century or so.
By creating a new corporate HQ that Jobs has a hand in designing, he assures that his name, fame and style will be remembered for several more generations, long after his iDevices have become bland and people have largely forgotten what a Petty, Totalitarian Prick he is/was personally.
Some of the comments here make the council members request for WIFI and a KOI pond appear brilliant.
#48: The “Sears Tower” is standing very nicely, in Chicago. The new owners just changed the name.
@IntrepidExplorer
Asking for something like “Free wifis” is not doing their job. Nor should be kissing his ass, but let’s try to be intelligent perhaps?
Jobs’ response to the free WiFi question should have been:
“Of course there will be free WiFi — for all of our 12,000 Apple employees. Oh wait – did you mean free WiFi for the City of Cupertino? I thought providing services for the city was the city council’s job? What are you doing with all that tax money that Apple is paying? Wouldn’t feeding the poor be a better use of those taxes?”
Cool! He does not look good, but he talks a lot of sense.
However, how can is stand talking to and wasting time on that stupid city council is beyond me. Either you guys di what you need to do or Apple go somewhere else…
And the wify thing, come on, give me a break!
Rename the city to Appopolis, CA.
It’s a pleasure to see successful progressives build the new economy while respecting, promoting quality of life and preservation of natural resources through conservation and efficiency.
Compare this to the Puke and Teabagger plans for drilling for more of the same dino-juice. Send tax dollars to Haliburton for the death, destruction and reconstruction of people we don’t even know. How do these scumbags and their sheeple followers live with themselves? What exactly do they tell their spawn whose future they sell to the highest bidder?
#58 TeaDud
This is the very system you claim to support.
Jobs makes the gold, so he deserves to make the rules. That’s not progressive.
You want the same rules/opportunities for everyone? Even those who don’t “earn” it by making billions? You hippie liberal, thinking all people are equal…
So, why was Jobs there? I saw no special needs. Seems to me the “project” should be a naturally conforming structure to the building codes and zoning laws–so what did he want? Usually tax breaks or variance or both.
Absolutely NOTHING new or unique or admirable about the project. How about residential units built in as part of the project and cut down on carbon footprint?
Why a circle? Why not an Apple?
Jobs won’t live to see the building complete, unfortunately… Will there be some sort of mausoleum on the campus?
#61 TeaDud
I thought progressives were all those freeloaders who don’t make any money and don’t pay any taxes.
Make up your mind.
“The rest of us must pay dearly…”
Are you some kind of freeloader? If you can’t afford to pay for things like fancy buildings and healthcare maybe you should work harder.
#61 TeaDud
“we are the majority of Americans, not you ruling class elitist snobs…”
Perhaps you could join some sort of union! Join your working class brethren in the fight against the ruling class elite!
#62 why is Jobs there?
Because he’s CEO of the largest employer, largest property owner, largest tax payer and holds the key to the that communities present and future. Oh, he happens to be building on that city, the largest campus around that impacts every part of that city for decades. Oh, and he’s Steve Jobs, the next most important person after Obama and Jesus.
I think it was a requirement that he personally bring first hand clarity to the project and personally answer questions on that project regardless of how stupid that Teabagger’s wifi question was!!
#68 TeaDud
Goonion Thug!
#70
“This is NOT a free country, we are being subjugated by evil, greedy, tyrannical corporate interests who sit on every level of Government, and the courts, preventing economic activity, unless its one of their fellow elitists who is being harmed.”
Fixed that for you.
Go ahead. Show me a case where Cupertino denied a building permit to an entrepreneur who makes millions in tax revenue and thousands of jobs, just because he held Conservative beliefs. Links or it didn’t happen. I know you wouldn’t just make something up, TeaDud.
stunning