“Inside the original Macintosh computer, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs inscribed the signatures of his team, revealing his deep concern for even the hidden features of his products,” Julia Love reports for Reuters. “His last work – Apple Inc’s sprawling new headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. – will be a fitting tribute: a futuristic campus built with astonishing attention to detail. From the arrangement of electrical wiring to the finish of a hidden pipe, no aspect of the 2.8 million-square-foot main building has been too small to attract scrutiny.”
“Apple has not revealed the total price tag, but former project managers estimate it at about $5 billion – a figure CEO Tim Cook did not dispute in a 2015 TV interview,” Love reports. “When completed, the campus will house up to 14,200 employees, according to the 2013 project description. The main building – which boasts the world’s largest piece of curved glass – will be surrounded by a lush canopy of thousands of trees.”
“But what was most striking to those who worked on the project was Apple managers’ insistence on treating the construction of the vast complex the same way they approach the design of pocket-sized electronics. Apple’s in-house construction team enforced many rules: No vents or pipes could be reflected in the glass. Guidelines for the special wood used frequently throughout the building ran to some 30 pages,” Love reports. “Tolerances, the distance materials may deviate from desired measurements, were a particular focus. On many projects, the standard is 1/8 of an inch at best; Apple often demanded far less, even for hidden surfaces.”
“When Apple tapped general contractors Holder Construction and Rudolph & Sletten to finish the main building in 2015, one of the first orders of business was finalizing a door handle for conference rooms and offices. After months of back and forth, construction workers presented their work to a manager from Apple’s in-house team, who turned the sample over and over in his hands. Finally, he said he felt a faint bump,” Love reports. “The construction team double-checked the measurements, unable to find any imperfections – down to the nanometer. Still, Apple insisted on another version. The construction manager who was so intimately involved in the door handle did not see its completion. Down to his last day, Apple was still fiddling with the design – after a year and a half of debate.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Would that they were so focused on Apple TV’s Siri Remote or a new Mac Pro or… Sigh.
The thing is a colossal distraction.
Just finally get the hell in there, so you can get back to focusing on what really matters, Apple.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “David E.” for the heads up.]