“For a company that is celebrated for its stylish design, Apple Inc.’s expanded Central Texas campus on West Parmer Lane has a pretty utilitarian look about it, at least from the outside,” Kirk Ladendorf reports for The Austin American-Statesman. “The California-based computer company is building on a 39-acre site adjacent to its present Austin operations, which employ more than 3,000 people in its Americas Operations Center.”
“The Austin center is being built as Apple starts on its new headquarters complex in California, which has a celebrated circular ‘spaceship’ design,” Ladendorf reports. “The Austin center has a far less futuristic look, but it will have a walking trail around the complex.”
“The fast-growing electronics giant has had to give up some details about its Austin project in return for the the estimated $35 million in state and local tax incentives it will recent for the Austin expansion, which was known locally as ‘Project Hudson,'” Ladendorf reports. “The company has said it plans to spend $282 million on new buildings and equipment in Austin over the next decade. That is expected to include seven new office buildings with a combined 1 million or more square feet of space. Those buildings will house an estimated 3,600 new workers needed to support Apple’s continued growth. The average wage for those new jobs will be $54,000 a year in the first year of the expansion and will expand to $73,500 in year 10.”
Read more in the full article here or here.
Related articles:
Apple breaks ground on 39-acre, 1-million-square-foot Austin, Texas campus – December 19, 2012
Apple buys 3 parcels of land in Austin, Texas for campus expansion – July 18, 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
Bring it on home Apple!
Can the USA compete with the world in this manufacturing arena? I suspect that the Mac Pro will either have low margins or a high price (or both). Bad decision from an economic point of view but perhaps a great decision from a USA optics point of view.
I read an article about the manufacturing video of the new mac pro, an analysis of how it was done and the conclusion was that most of it is automated, and the assembly line where human hands were doing final assembly was bottom delivery system, to deliver the partially finished product below table level up to table level to the worker. They noted particularly that this kind of delivery system is done first of all to save space and that it is much more efficient, secondly that it is very conducive to machine assembly, so that in the future when apple gets the robotics to do what the human hands are that they will be able to integrate them very easily.
So, as few US workers as can be involved, the more economical it will be?
An alternative would be to import third world workers, help them obtain green cards, erect a company village for them to inhabit, pay them minimum wages, and reassign them as maintenance and domestic workers when production lines are idle.
Perhaps if U.S. workers accepted such terms, manufacturing across all industries would repatriate. I rather think that is the fly in the ointment.
The big picture is that the developing nations (especially China) need to join the rest of the world and the best role for the developed nations is to help educate and train them in business and ethics to avoid a terrible war and the huge costs in money and lives associated with a war. Sharing work with them is a good start.
Apple is showing signs of becoming a “high-end niche player” and missing its chance to take a big share of the expected immense market for lower-cost smartphones.
They continue to miss the whole idea of what Apple is doing with its products.
missing its chance to take a big share of the expected immense market for lower-cost smartphones.
Fine with me! It’s all yours ScamScum ad nauseam. It’s the best you can do.
I wouldn’t mind in the least if Apple was considered to be a “high-end niche player” from here on out. I very much like that Apple differentiates themselves from the noise of those manufacturers that make lower cost smartphone products.
DELIBERATELY “missing its chance to take a big share of the expected immense market for lower-cost smartphones.”
As in, they are not utter imbeciles in the art of business: which is about identifying the source of PROFITS and then going there and STAYING.
Unlike, utter imbeciles in the art of business analysis: which is about identifying corporate strategies and goals from tea leaves and squiggly entrails instead of from publicly available mission statements and SEC filings.
Hi Hannah! Snapz Pro X v2.5.4 is out! Spread the word!
Version 2.5.4:
– Fixed an issue that caused Snapz to quit after taking a screenshot on 10.9
– Fixed a memory allocation issue in the XPC
– Image capture should now be faster
– Improved compatibility with OS X 10.9 “Mavericks”
Other bug fixes and enhancements
Sorry to post in the wrong thread, but WordPress is doing Sit&Spin when I try to go back through the post archives.
Thank you, Derek. You’re a gentleman and a scholar.
I’m happy that Andrew is still supporting Snapz Pro X. Although there are other screen-capture solutions out there, this is the best I’ve found for whipping up illustrative tutorials and software guides for Mac end users, who conspicuously don’t read manuals. They’re conditioned not to.
I demand quality in my products. I say, thank you Apple for making extremely high quality hardware. I am more than glad to pay a premium for hardware of Apple’s caliber. Let the Walmart crowd enjoy their mediocre wares, that’s not me. Besides, if you live in a country where the carriers offer subsidies, the iPhone is very affordable.
If not for Apple, the current highest quality offerings are still far from the quality and design of the iPhone. Also, there is a much larger, better choice of apps for iPhone. iPhone apps don’t need to be designed for the lowest denominator of say an Android phone.
Because of a standard OS and consistent screen resolutions, apps are designed to fit the iPhone perfectly and are optimized for the hardware, something not tenable by the other manufacturers because of lack of standards.
Now that’s a stimulus plan I like. Go Apple.
Will this slow down the Rocket Dockets?
“For a company that is celebrated for its stylish design, Apple Inc.’s expanded Central Texas campus on West Parmer Lane has a pretty utilitarian look about it, at least from the outside,” Do you really expect a factory to be stylish? Factories are just that, factories. If factories were made to look cool, then the Rust Belt region would be doing so good, but no, it is riddled with a bunch of empty factories and broken lives. Chicago may be doing well, but the rest of the Midwest is a broken wasteland thanks to the Democrats. Democrat Jennifer Granholm certainly made Michigan a great state…look at all those jobs in Flint and Detroit! And Detroit’s Democratic mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has successfully brought in new business from many sectors into the city! What a joke! It seems like the only good places are either the coastal areas, or the Gulf Coast, including most of Texas. The Democrats love to screw with the working class in the Midwest.
Meanwhile, the current rendition of the Republicans love to screw with everyone, except the 1%.
Shot By Both Sides.
Wow. And here all the other ‘in the know’ folks say we are now the snaggle toothed, Wal-Mart’n, gun-totin’ Bible thumping’ George Bush walkin’ Tea Party extremist who hate roads and schools.
Or maybe you just say stuff you don’t really believe?
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-23-2013/charles-krauthammer
More on topic, that Parmer Lane campus, surrounded by a walking trail, had better include an easily accessible clinic for snakebite treatment. (Issuing snakebite kits for employee self-treatment is a bad idea.)
Yeah, it sucks.
Snakes are not a primary source of danger in the U.S. The bites from native poisonous species (coral snake, copperhead, rattlesnake, and water moccasin) will generally not kill an adult, even untreated, unless the person has a severe allergy. Additionally, the most toxic native snake, the coral snake, is not aggressive at all and has short and relatively blunt teeth that may not even pierce the skin, especially through clothing. Most snakes will run from an encounter with a human being if given half a chance. Most people get bitten when they step on a snake, so watch your step when you are in terrain that is likely to harbor snakes.
I wanted to set the record straight because far too many people want to kill any and every snake on sight. That is a foolish fear-based reaction that has serious consequences on the ecosystem unless you prefer mice and other such creatures to multiply unchecked.
There are a few more aggressive and highly toxic snakes in other parts of the world (the black mamba comes to mind) that are lethal to human beings. We are very fortunate in the U.S. not to have to face those types of reptiles on a daily basis. Even so, avoidance is always the best policy. Please do not go out of your way to kill snakes.
I have always admired your wide-ranging knowledge of life factors and their relative importance, KingMel. It serves a valuable purpose, as most people are informed by information picked up on the fly, unfortunately.
Whilst true that fatal snakebites are uncommon, the mortality rate depends on geography. In the large state of Texas — which hosts all four of the poisonous species you list — it’s on the order of two per day. That Apple campus should include a clinic, because self-treatment risks accelerated toxin absorption.
Normally, snakes should not be exterminated. They control rodents and perform other valuable services in the maintenance of the ecosystem they are part of. That being said, I have to disclose that I participated in the killing of one diamondback that had gotten a bit too presumptuous in its appropriation of my yard, even hissing at me more than once.
Here’s the rule in the South.
If it is a pit-viper, kill it.
If you have kids, and you see a copperhead, cotton mouth, or any rattler nearby, kill it.
If you are at an elderly relative’s and see a poisonous snake,
kill it.
Same goes for black widows, brown recluse, and scorpions.
Also wasp nest (especially those red bastards).
This message has been brought to you by: Reality.
Yeah, KingMel and I are the bleeding-heart environmentalist liberals of the reptile and arachnid worlds, living in an idealistic, academic world of ideas as opposed to brutal reality. Didn’t I just tell you I killed a poisonous snake? Only as a last resort, admittedly. I suppose priorities are different in Texas, as you indicate. I do respect where you’re coming from, even though my upbringing was different. I didn’t encounter many snakes growing up in Virginia. Which is kind of the South, in kind of an academic way.
Sorry, I thought I was replying to Mel.
Looks like I hit(pushed) the wrong button(s)
(And yes, Mel IS fairly liberal, just don’t tell him….)