Transcript: Apple CEO Steve Jobs addresses the Cupertino City Council

Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs attended a Cupertino city council meeting on April 18 to announce Apple’s plans to build a second Cupertino campus on 50 acres.

Transcribed by Kimra McPherson for the San Jose Mercury News:

Steve Jobs: I don’t have much of a presentation. … I mostly just came down to tell you something and get your feedback on it.

When we started Apple in my parents’ garage 30 years ago this month — April Fools day — after about a year we moved to Cupertino. We’ve been here for almost 30 years, been here ever since. What’s happened at Apple is that our business has basically tripled in the last five or six years. We’ve gone from 6 billion in sales to 20 billion in sales, basically.

What that’s meant is that our head count in Cupertino has dramatically expanded.

Now we have this great campus down near 280 — but we are in 30 other buildings now. We’ve rented every scrap of building we can find in Cupertino to put our people, and they just keep getting further and further away from the campus, which is — the whole situation’s pretty inefficient and frustrating. It’s inconvenient and frustrating for people.

We decided many months ago that we need to build a new campus, and we didn’t think we could do it in Cupertino, because there ain’t a lot of apricot orchards left in Cupertino.

Full transcription here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Rainy Day” for the heads up.]

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Related articles:
Apple Q2 2006 Conference Call notes – April 19, 2006
Apple CEO Steve Jobs plans new 50-acre campus in California – April 19, 2006

21 Comments

  1. I hope that Jobs will be progressive with his architectural endeavor. I think he should really consider the fact that this is an opportunity to really create a wonderful place to work. My vote is for Rem Koolhaas OMA.

  2. Adam Sandler: And the Oscar goes to… Steve Jobs for his work at the Cupertino City Council Meeting in April. Steve, great job. You were so believeable. What was your motivation.

    Steve: The same it always is — I want to crush Bill Gates and Microsoft. (laughter and applause)

    I want to thank the academy and all of my fans that line up to see me at events in an Apple vest two times a year. Also, I would like to thank my wife and kids who out up with me (laughter and applause). Oh and one more thing…

    Live from New York… It’s Saturday Night Live!!

  3. What’s happened at Apple is that our business has basically tripled in the last five or six years.

    Steve!

    TRIPLING YOUR SALES DOES NOT MEAN YOU NEED TO TRIPLE YOUR HEAD COUNT!!! DON’T TURN AAPL INTO THE NEXT MSFT!!

    If you need to hire people, do it in the Apple Stores. Put people where they can sell & support, not where they just add to HQ’s overhead.

    Sounds like Jobs is a pretty humble guy…

    You need to be humble at City Hall. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> Don’t jerk the people who give the permits!

  4. “Ain’t” is a contraction of “Amn’t,” which is hard to pronounce and which no one uses, but is itself a contraction of “Am not.” This is similar to Isn’t (Is not.)

    It used to be accepted grammar in America (1800’s), and should be again (IMO.)

    Go Steve!

  5. “TRIPLING YOUR SALES DOES NOT MEAN YOU NEED TO TRIPLE YOUR HEAD COUNT!!! DON’T TURN AAPL INTO THE NEXT MSFT!!” – D’nomder

    You need not worry. According to careerbuilder.com, Apple currently has 14,000 employees on its payroll. Steve Jobs is merely looking for a place to locate about 3,500 of them as closely together as possible in Cupertino.

    It makes good sense to keep your design team together so your meetings can be face-to-face. Telephones, teleconferencing, and email are okay, but they are simply not as productive as sitting down with others to discuss and draw out your designs.

  6. Telephones, teleconferencing, and email are okay, but they are simply not as productive…/i>

    Actually you can’t smell their fear when you tell them:

    <i>You’ve baked a really lovely cake, but then you’ve used dog shit for frosting.

    – Steve Jobs commenting on a NeXT programmer’s work as nicely done but incomplete and lacking something.

  7. Since its dead around here, I thought I would post some of Steve Jobs quotes on fixing Apple.

    Seems a lot have come true, I hope he’s changed his mind about some of these quotes.

    On Fixing Apple:

    “The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!”
    — On Gil Amelio’s lackluster rein, in BusinessWeek, July 1997

    So true.

    “The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”
    — Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company, by Owen W. Linzmayer

    So true again.

    “If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”
    — Fortune, Feb. 19, 1996

    Ouch, the iPod was born.

    “You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any more than that it’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.”
    — Fortune, Sept. 18, 1995

    Yikes, I hope it involves Mac’s and Mac OS X.

    “Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could — I’m searching for the right word — could, could die.”
    — On his return as interim CEO, in Time, Aug. 18, 1997

    So true, he saved Apple.

    “It wasn’t that Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it’s that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That’s Apple’s problem: Their differentiation evaporated.”
    — Apple Confidential 2.0

    So true, the Mac was milked and no innovation was added.

    “The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That’s over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.”
    — Wired magazine, February 1996

    Let’s hope Steve is more optimistic now.

    “Nobody has tried to swallow us since I’ve been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste.”
    — Apple shareholder meeting, April 22, 1998

    So true.

  8. His The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years quote was right on. Ten years later, we’re only now starting to come out of the stagnant, drab, boring Microsoft Dark Ages, thanks to OS X, and also to Google, and open-source projects like Firefox and the Linux desktops and related technologies. But Apple is clearly the one leading the charge. It was a long wait.

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