“Steve Jobs would have immediately fired anyone for suggesting such sacrilege, but current Apple CEO Tim Cook may have have other ideas,” Mark Reschke writes for T-GAAP. “As the state of California continues on a path toward bankruptcy, the California legislature is desperate to increase revenues. Their plan has been to raise taxes, which has driven California companies to change locations in search of friendlier business environments. In addition, having a world campus located along a major fault line is no bonus either, nor is the traffic, nor the amazingly high salaries tech companies must pay to obtain — and retain — great talent in silicon valley.”
“Texas sits on the other end of the spectrum from California. The Government is stable and flush with cash, tax rates are much lower, and the cost of living is relatively cheap when compared to California,” Reschke writes. “Apple’s operating costs in Texas would run tens of millions less than continuing to operate a its headquarters in Cupertino. And that is not a one time cost savings but would occur year after year.”
Reschke writes, “Watch how the Spaceship campus in Cupertino progresses (or perhaps does not progress) and at the same time how Apple’ Austin campus continues to grow. Over the next few years Apple’s direction may be more than just an opportunistic idea.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, the thought of Austinite Michael Dell being unable to move 3 feet without bumping into an Apple employee is rather delicious.
Related articles:
Steve Jobs’ ‘Mothership’ Apple campus costs have ballooned from under $3 billion to nearly $5 billion – April 4, 2013
Apple breaks ground on 39-acre, 1-million-square-foot Austin, Texas campus – December 19, 2012
Travis County approves tax incentives for Apple’s Austin campus expansion – May 2, 2012
Austin city council unanimously approves $8.6 million dollars in incentives for Apple Inc. – March 23, 2012
Texas Governor Rick Perry announces Apple to invest $304 million, create 3,600 new jobs in Austin – March 9, 2012
Apple eliminates 174 positions from Elk Grove, California; transfers work to Austin, Texas – May 1, 2008
Let Texas secede already. The cretins elected one hell of a moron as governor, a hypocritical one at that. Deliverance country. No place for Apple. Steve’s DNA would die there.
CA’s (North Cal.) weather is much better than Texas’s. Although Austin’s weather tend to be better than, says, Houston, in general Texas’s weather can be a bit tough to swallow.
my 2 cents…
Cook is from Alabama so Rexas was Nirvana growing up. Yet with not 1 top 25 university in the 2nd largest state while Stanford, Berkely, UCal Davis are right there for the life of me I can’t understand moving the Ivory Tower to a place where people think dinosaurs and man walked the earth together. How many Palo Altoites want to live where Dell failed? I mean its just nuts! This is the problem with capitalists. They raise the prices of land, make thousands rich then take them all away leaving an economic sinkhole. CA deserves better treatment from Apple than this and TX had Apple and it didn’t work!
So Dell failed because it was in Texas?
Do tell.
What unmitigated horseshit.
1- California has balanced the state budget for the first time in a very long time under Governor Brown who went over the heads of the Republicans in the Assembly and to the ballot box.
2- Texas balanced it’s budget through the worst of the recession with Economic Stimulus funds by using it to plug holes even as the Republican Assembly and Governor howled about the stimulus package.
So much for the misrepresentation of the base economics.
Texas in the aggregate is a backwater and California IS the high tech promised land. Austin and a few other places are exceptions to the rule, but on the whole it has found numerous ways to suck on the government tit over the years in ways few can match.
If one reclaimed the Federal money poured directly and indirectly into Texas over the years the place would dry up and blow away. California, by comparison, has never taken more than it has paid in since the establishment of the Federal Income Tax. Like a lot of Blue states, it subsidizes the Red states that send Pols to Washington ranting about bootstraps.
With climate change much of Texas will be a very dry desert in not too many years.
I just love the phrase “unmitigated horseshit”. It makes me laugh!
It brings back family memories… My grandfather employed it in the service of his political battles against labour unions, and my sainted mother unleashed the biting phrase more than once against Ronald Reagan’s critics. “He has his own mind,” she’d insist. “He’ll do the right thing.” That phrase resonates in my mind to this very day, and I think that people forget how, only a generation or two past, people could disagree on principle yet still get things done. Reagan was a man of principle, but he understood the value of compromise, and he easily formed friendships across the so-called political divide. We could all learn from his example…
Comforting and accurate Reagan description.
Unfortunately, those days are long gone …
It would make sense for Apple to expand their R&D locations in many places besides Cupertino, but moving people from here to Texas is a very bad idea. A few companies have tried it, and it turns out that it’s not always the best employees who are willing to follow.
-jcr
Why build one when you can build two for twice the price?
Apple can’t afford a move now, Cook decided instead to shovel cash at Wall St traders. Besides, it’s building Aerobie offices in CA in a vain effort to make employees walk in circles.
But seriously, Forbe’s list of “best places for business” puts TX cities behind half a dozen better places in the midwest. But given that Apple doesn’t mind paying CA rates now, it would seem more logical that Apple would prioritize tech center locations where the populace is extremely well educated.
Forbes’ education ranking is as follows:
1 Boulder, CO
2 Bethesda, MD
3 Ann Arbor, MI
4 Cambridge, MA
5 San Francisco, CA
6 Fort Collins, CO
7 San Jose, CA
8 Washington, DC
9 Fairfield, CT
10 Madison, WI
11 Durham, NC
13 Boston, MA
14 Raleigh, NC
15 Seattle, WA
16 Oakland, CA
17 Austin, TX
You can take exemption to Forbes’ methodology if you like, but it looks that Apple isn’t going to find or attract enough highly educated folks in TX. Not all of the cities listed ahead of Austin has a booming software industry, but any of them would be a better place for Apple than the land of Dell / Compaq.
Isn’t Ann Arbor still the city with the highest concentration of Mac users outside of Cupertino?
I doubt Apple will relocate to TX completely anytime soon, since Apple is so deep rooted in Cupertino and the surrounding Bay area. However, It doesn’t mean that Apple will not continue to expand its footprint in Austin, TX or area outside CA.
my 2 cents…
In Texas?! The land of the craziest americans of all, putting weapons into kids hands to teach them how to kill?! Apple should better leave these mad people by their own!
Texas? For heavens sake..u serious? Why don’t you spit on Steve’s grave while yer at it!
Texas is filled with really fat, wierd and gun-crazy-bible-thumping hillbillies, they have a very annoying accent as well.
I am officially switching to Windows after 20 years in the Apple realm if this happens …Texas…ohhh please.
Silicon Valley is synonymous with ‘Apple’ & Steve Jobs. It is essential to honour and show respect for the legacy of the company’s founding father and to keep the ‘spaceship’ where he wanted it to be. Furthermore, Apple Inc. should feel honoured not only to fulfil the wishes of this iconic legend but to also name the finished complex ‘iSteve’.
The only thing wrong with CA is all the Libtards…….well, and Gov Moonbeam…….and well their attempt to ignore the second Ammendment …. And their Senators ………well, forget all that. The only thing right with CA is the weather.
Yes. The weather is the main thing. Funny how good weather only attracts “libtards.” Who can at least spell.
Texas is just taxes misspelt.
William Tecumseh Sherman: “If I owned hell and Texas, I would like in Hell and rent out Texas.”
Talent in CA >>>>> talent in TX. Why in the world would current and futureApple employees agree to leave NoCal for TX ?? They wouldn’t and just find another company’s cross the street. The cost of lost talent is TOO great compared to possible tax and regulation benefits
I used to live in the bay area and knew a few people at Apple and all of them came to Apple FROM OUTSIDE OF CALIFORNIA.
You Libs think that California home grows all its talent? It doesn’t. True, there was a time that Stanford and UC, Berkley provided a lot of the mind assets to SV but no longer. Companies in the south and east bay area pull people from all over the country and world.
But the talent issue is double-edged sword. There may be people ALREADY at Apple who don’t want to move but there are a lot of highly talented people in other places that simply cannot afford to move to the bay area or don’t want to deal with the Marxism that is taking hold there.
I can only guess that recruiting for Apple (and Adobe, and Microsoft, and other SV companies) is getting harder and harder as the income and sales taxes in California rise and scare off these people.
Simultaneously, SV companies are not as flush with money as they might otherwise have been if they didn’t have to deal with such heavy regulatory and tax burdens coming down from Sacramento.
There is zero doubt that there is serious corporate flight from California and qualified and educated people are leaving as their employers leave. This has a ripple effect in a number of ways:
1. The remaining companies have to shoulder an ever heavier tax burden which makes them less competitive with companies who don’t have that burden.
2. Potential employees from out-of-state are harder to recruit since the cost of living (which was always ridiculously high in the Bay Area anyway) is greatly increased as taxes drive the cost of goods and services up and take a bigger bite out of gross income.
3. Recruiting through head-hunting or poaching is more difficult because many tech companies who might have labor assets that Apple might find of interest have have fled the state and taken that talent with them. So now it becomes doubly hard for Apple or other SV companies to try to woo that talent to return to California once they’ve decided to leave.
4. Just because California is a beautiful state (in spite of the government there by the way) does not mean that it is necessarily worth paying higher taxes and getting less real income over living in a less beautiful state. Many people prioritize a decent income over scenic beauty when it comes to choosing an employer. While Texas is not exactly Bermuda, really neither is Santa Clara county. Actually, it’s kind of an eyesore. If an Apple employee is working in Cupertino but only sees the inside of his cubicle all day his best bet to get away from it all will be to take a vacation far away from Infinity Loop. This works no matter where Apple is HQed. Heck, Bermuda is a much shorter flight from Austin than it is from the Bay Area. Now, having moved from CA, I don’t want to diminish the fact that you can take a drive from SV over to Santa Cruz or up to Yosemite and that is certainly worth something. But if your company is suffering because of morons in Sacramento, you might have to think about giving up that drive or conversely, start voting for [gasp] Republicans.
Bottom line, I don’t think there is any net plus on the talent side to consider staying over leaving. If Apple decided to abandon Cupertino, they would certainly make it worth the while of their employees to move with them. The larger issue for Apple or any tech company is whether staying keeps them competitive or whether finding greener (albeit dryer) pastures makes them more competitive.
Apple has stockholders and if it looks like it is frittering away the rare Apple dividend check by constantly having to pay off the masters in Sacramento, they may get pressure to more seriously think about moving.
Personally, I’d like them to consider Atlanta. Georgia is much more beautiful than Texas, is business friendly, and has traffic patterns that would be familiar to Apple employees who have to drive 85 everyday (coincidentally, Atlanta has its own freeway numbered 85).
I understand the difficulties of remaining in Cupertino.
But move to Texas? Drought ridden, lunatic government, lousy schools, meagre talents and skills Texas?
Spin the wheel again and pick a better state please.
“uh….rush, to list good things”
Subtlety is a beautiful thing.
Snerdly out. 😉
Holy crap!!!!!
Went fishin’ and caught a boat…..
No.
This is a stupid idea. California is not going bankrupt. This year we’ll break even. Next year we’re forecasting a surplus. Job growth is now quite high.
If the San Francisco Bay Area is so bad for business how did Apple and so many others grow so large here and succeed so much better here? The Bay Area is fantastic. It has three international airports, three national labotpratories, multiple world class universities, research hospitals and leading edge corporations. The air and water are clean and the scenery and climate are fantastic.
Texas has an awful climate with drought and extended heat waves not to mention the air and water pollution. Lack of zoning laws has made it into a mish-mash of structures and land use. On top of that the traffic is horrible.
I was shocked to hear just yesterday, from an English friend on assignment to El Paso, that the Rio Grande was dry, because the Mexicans had diverted all the water. WTF? Who signed that treaty? Why isn’t this widely known? If any other major waterway dries up, it’s international news. Maybe my friend was lying.
No, it has been true for years. The treaty (as I remember it) is based on drainage into the river. We allow them to take more as a credit to future payback.
As with many treaties, it doesn’t work out too well for us.
And as with most news, Texas is not of interest, unless there is a way to take a jab at us.
I hope this didn’t come off as a small-minded, Conservative rant. It’s hard for us sheep to separate out regular thoughts from those programmed into us by our AM masters…..
Oh, not you. My uncle. Once when I was little, he took me along on a long haul to Portland, talking and telling stories all the way. He had a couple of songs he loved to sing…he knew all the words to Marty Robbins’ El Paso and something about a West Texas cowboy. He loved being on the road, away from my sister’s manic-depressive episodes which could be an adventure in themselves.
Love Lyle Lovett, by the way. That man stands as proof against the stereotype that Texans haven’t sophistication or subtlety.
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