Hmm, What Is Apple Doing?

Exactly what I have been saying from Day 1 of the Apple watch. If it were replacing the cell phone (ala Dick Tracy communicator?) that is one thing. Obviously, fabulous brainwashing from Apple (tremendous sales of it) but I ain’t drinking the Kool-Aid until it can tune up my Honda…

Shaking my head.
In 2001, who would buy a thousand songs in a pocket for $399? Me bought two :heart_eyes:.
In 2007, who would buy a 4GB iPhone 2G for $499? According to Steve Balmer, no one since it doesn’t have a keyboard. I queued up the night before to buy two.
In 2010, who would buy a iPad for $499? Media said is a let down, a major disappointment.

My family owned three Apple watches :joy:

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This is a very good article on the Apple Park, aka The Spaceship

The product obsession shows through and through. Otherwise there is no way to explain the 4-story high glass doors for the cafeteria. This is NOT customer obsession. Eating in a cafeteria with 4-storey high glass doors won’t matter at all to Apple employees’ well being or productivity. This is Jobs and Ive’s product obsession.

I think what Apple is doing here is to embed Jobs deeply and physically into every fiber of Apple. This is the reincarnation of Steve Jobs’ vision. So being inside the Spaceship one cannot escape being reminded of Jobs, and how he would approve or disapprove of something. By that metric I think the 5B is well spent.

God damn it, now that the spaceship is done, can we have a MacBook Pro that doesn’t suck? Go do something useful for us poor users! I am still holding onto my 10 year old 17inch like grim death. Give me something worthwhile to upgrade to!

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[quote=“manch, post:125, topic:1073”]
Eating in a cafeteria with 4-storey high glass doors won’t matter at all to Apple employees’ well being or productivity.
[/quote]“It’s frustrating to talk about this building in terms of absurd, large numbers,” Ive says. “It makes for an impressive statistic, but you don’t live in an impressive statistic. While it is a technical marvel to make glass at this scale, that’s not the achievement. The achievement is to make a building where so many people can connect and collaborate and walk and talk.” The value, he argues, is not what went into the building. It’s what will come out.

This would be a workplace where people were open to each other and open to nature, and the key to that would be modular sections, known as pods, for work or collaboration.

“And how many restaurants should we have? One restaurant, a huge one, forcing everyone to get together. You have to be able to bump into each other.”

Yes, Apple insists that by working in a place where artificial hills are dotted with pines transplanted from Christmas tree farms in the Mojave Desert, its employees will make better products. But didn’t Apple create its marvelous Apple II in a bedroom and its ground­breaking Macintosh in a low-slung office park building? The employees who work at the new campus are leaving behind the buildings that provided sufficient inspiration to invent the iPhone.

Hard to communicate with people who always extrapolate the past and like to remain where they are.

That’s just statistics. Or math, really.

Is instructional to know history but to be trapped by it is regressive.
Life is like rowing a boat against the current, not moving forward is moving backward.
Impact of the Apple Park on creativity and productivity won’t be known for at least 3 years.
How to measure the impact? The operating expenses as a percentage of net sales should decline? More future products per R&D dollar?

The original debate is about whether Apple is customer-obsessed, and it is shifted to debate whether Apple Park helps creativity. Jony Ive’s statement clearly is not about product.

In the video, Jobs was talking about how they were able to produce some of the largest sheets of curved glass from their experience with retail stores… gives the impression it is more about the technical know-how and quality of design than it is about the people (employee or customer).

I can see how employees might be excited about moving into the new campus, but despite its size and open feel it is really a self-contained spaceship sealed off from the outside. It would be claustrophobic (to me) being surrounded by miles and miles of coworkers in cubicles. It reminds me of visiting my parents’ workplace when they worked in another company’s mega-campus (2 million sf over 400acres). Plus, I was reading about how people in some professions are actually more productive in settings with private space.

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It won’t host all of Apple’s employees. It’s going to suck for teams that are deemed not important enough to be in the new building or the old main campus.

If you’re presenting the project to the city council, how do you sell your project to the city council?
Talk about how your company, employees and customers would benefit tremendously?
Talk about how this project benefits Cupertino, raise the reputation of Cupertino, something Cupertino would be proud of?

If you’re the journalist, how do you write the article?
Talk in detail about how the various aspects of the structure helps collaboration, creativity?
Talk about the technical marvel?

When I was young, always want to be recognized. At my age, I know my place :grin:. What you said would happen, can’t help it. Hopefully they would be matured enough to understand that.

You would need to address the project’s impact on the environment and whether it meets the city’s plan. Most of the additional landscaping is in the central courtyard, and the whole campus is off-limits to the public (?) Jobs chose to focus on the building and other material aspects of the project rather than the human side, which would lean towards jobs, housing and transportation/traffic concerns. I assume these issues are included in the 600+ page document Apple submitted, but didn’t carry as much weight in his presentation, anyway. Sorry that it was his last public appearance :cry: but you still get a strong sense of his personality in that video.

Anyone already an Apple Pay user? Hate to be old school with the wallet with actual CASH, but I am still leery with this new tech via Iphone…

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I use it everywhere I can. It’s convenient and more secure than scanning a card or using a chip reader. I honestly think the chip reader tech will be a big fuss of nothing within a few years.

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You cats with the multi units down that way are loving life…

What housing issues? No new employees, they are from other offices in Bay Area.
Only have housing issues if employees are additional and from outside the Bay Area.

Then do we have an office surplus?

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