Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs yesterday presented his proposal for a new, additional Apple Campus to the Cupertino City Council.
The presentation lasted around 21 minutes and includes Jobs reminiscing about his call to Bill Hewlett, asking for spare parts for a frequency counter, and how he got a summer job at Hewlett-Packard to build frequency counters. Now Apple has recently bought about 150 acres, including some from HP.
The design for the new Apple campus puts 12,000 employees in one building! “It’s a little like a spaceship landed,” said Jobs. It’s a giant 4-story ring; curved all the way around with not a straight piece of glass in the place. Jobs said that Apple’s experience building extreme glass for retail stores contributed to the campus’ design know-how.
When asked by a council member what benefits to Cupertino the new Apple campus would bring, Jobs reminded the council that Apple is the number one taxpayer in Cupertino and the company also brings many highly-educated and affluent people to the community, plus far less asphalt and more trees. When asked specially and somewhat jokingly if Apple would provide the Cupertino area with “free WiFi, or something like that” Jobs replied to much laughter, “Well, see, I’m a simpleton. I’ve always had this view that we pay taxes and the city should do those things. That’s why we pay taxes. Now, if we can get out of paying taxes, I’d be glad to put up a WiFi network… I think we bring a lot more than free WiFi.”
Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong, brandishing his iPad 2 “Which I love,” told Jobs that “We would love to have an Apple Store here in Cupertino.” Jobs replied, “Yeah, the problem with putting an Apple Store in Cupertino is there just isn’t the traffic… If we thought it would be successful, we’d love to.”
The site will go from approximately 3,700 trees to around 6,000. The employee count increases by 40%, space will increase by 20%, landscaping by 350%, the aforementioned trees by 60%, and the surface parking (asphalt) decreases by 90%.
Apple plans to generate their own power via natural gas and other means that will be cleaner than using the electrical grid. They will use the grid as a backup, not as the primary power source.
Jobs, without turning on his RDF, told the council flat out: “I think we have a shot at building the best office building in the world. I really do think architecture students will come here to see this. I think it could be that good.”
Jobs wants to submit detailed plans to the council “fairly quickly,” “break ground next year,” and “move in in 2015.”
Jobs gives the Cupertino City Council a keynote presentation –– or as the Cupertino City Council tags it, a “Presentation: Presentation” (sigh) –– about Apple’s proposed campus and amazing supercollider headquarters!
The following presentation was recorded Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at the Cupertino Community Hall:
MacDailyNews Take: Amazing building and Jobs’ personal presentation to the town council yesterday shouldn’t hurt Apple’s stock price any, either.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Cupertino Anonymous” for the heads up.]
lots of people (e.g: dumbo Blodget) said Steve looked alamingly sickly during the WWDC keynote but one day after that Steve was presenting to the Cupertino council. He looked fine and very coherent talking to the council.
Few so called ‘healthy’ people can keep up the schedule Steve does.
Now THAT is an infinite loop!
Apple and Jobs is smart. New design besides just being good environmentally and aesthetically
also actslike a giant Advertising Billboard.
Jobs is right that people will be visiting it and talking about it a lot. Millions of bucks of free advertising for years. (remember Msft spent $500 million advertising Windows Phone – I suspect the free publicity of the ‘spaceship’ if factored in will offset a huge chunk of construction costs).
I think being able to speak the English language clearly and correctly should be a requirement to being on City Council. That was scary.
I understand the no free wifi, but come on…not a single apple store in cupertino? Wha?
I love it. Underneath will be a mini super colider accelerator designed by Apple. 100000000x more efficient so you don’t need miles and miles land. They’ll also have matter/antimatter power generator in case of blackouts of course. Can’t wait to see the place once the transporter is completed. 😉
Wi-fi is not an entitlement. It is like everything else in the world. If you want it, you pay for it. The notion that it should be free is asinine.
If Apple were to leave Cupertino it would be a huge, disproportionate, crippling hit to their tax base. And yet, you have these professional chair warmers, time servers, liberal bureaucrats with relentlessly greedy hands out saying, “Gimme more! Gimme free wi-fi! Gimme something (although we haven’t earned it, we left-wingers don’t believe in people actually earning things)”.
And ya gotta love the genius who asked if Apple would design it with all the necessary safety precautions. WTF!
And finally, they ask about the non-smoking policy. Sheesh!
These are just the sorts of people who wind up in power positions, taking our money, regulating us into inaction, and throwing our financial and creative potential down the rathole – all so they can exercise the micromanaging control they so neurotically and desperately require to feel like “good people”.
You forgot to mention the awesome iPad demo that contestant #4 gave!
These people get paid? That was embarrassing. And to make it worse, Apple is probably responsible for a good portion of their salaries.
Once Steve was done with his presentation everything fell apart real fast. Maybe it’s because I finished listening to someone with very high intelligence speak, making the average person sound stupid. Or maybe I’m being nice, and they really are that stupid.
That’s one giant stargate 😛
Hallowed are the Ori… 😉
What a beautiful concept. I live in London and so get to enjoy Norman Foster’s work on a daily basis.
I also have white, straight teeth 🙂
It’s so refreshing to see a company like Apple who just do stuff right, even if that means spending a bunch of time and cash to get it totally fit for purpose.
Bravo Steve & Co.
I personally think Jobs is building a giant 3-D transmutation circle. He’ll fill it with 13,000 people and then sacrifice them in an attempt to create a Philosopher’s Stone. If one believed all the press reports human alchemy is about the only option Jobs’ has left. *snicker*
There is nothing wrong with the Council doing a bit of haggling. They realise they are getting a “bargain” with the new campus, but it doesn’t hurt to ask for a sweetener.
No one has commented how Steve laid down the law at 11:30 in the video. “We would like to stay here in Cupertino and pay taxes. Thats number one. If we can’t, then we have to go somewhere like Mountain View and take our people with us. And over time sell the land…..”
Got to love the dumbasses in the background carrying on with silly antics: “oh look I’m on camera!”. These will be the same idiots who will demand to know why Council adopts tax-raising measures.
Odd that it resembles the footprint of a supercolider.
F an A!
Just… F an A!
I think that Apple’s proposed building is beautiful and look forward to its completion.
As a side note, what happened to the idea of telecommuting?