“Anticipation was higher than usual – and it always runs to feverish – when the press and other interested parties made their way to California’s Silicon Valley last September for the latest Apple keynote presentation,” Nick Compton writes for Wallpaper*. “The most titanic of the valley’s tech titans was due to unveil its most significant update to the iPhone since its launch, ten years previous. In that time the iPhone has upended industries and transformed how we do just about everything. The update was a big deal. But most of the golden ticket holders were as excited about where they were as what they were about to see.”
“This was the first up-close mass sighting of the most talked-about new building in the world, a $5bn, or so it’s said, Foster + Partners-designed loop of glass, aluminium, limestone and concrete and Apple’s new HQ,” Compton writes. “Drones have buzzed over this site during much of its construction, and of course there were renders. Still, nothing prepares you for its audacious mass. Or its sci-fi drama. It is, as was promised, a giant starship landed in Cupertino.”
“The keynote is taking place in the new Steve Jobs Theater, itself a small marvel of engineering, ingenuity and attention to detail. ‘If the overall project is a small town, then this is the town hall, and jewel,’ says Stefan Behling, a Foster + Partners partner and one of the lead architects on Apple Park,” Compton writes. “Behling’s excitement and pride in the theatre and its big brother are palpable and genuine. But he is quick to acknowledge that at every stage this was a collaborative project. ‘Everything in this theatre, every detail, everything you see around you, is a totally integrated collaboration with Jony Ive [Apple’s chief design officer] and his design studio. Over the last nine years, we have become almost one. We talk together all the time, sit and sketch. This is not a Foster + Partners building.’”
“In truth, there is little point speculating about what Apple will do next, or whether it will finally silence those who insist it needs to come up with another game-changing product. And less point asking Ive. I tried. Did the company lose something fundamental with the passing of Steve Jobs? Of course,” Compton writes. “And the completion of Apple Park at once memorialises Jobs and looks to embed the most positive parts of his terrible ambition, making them corporate muscle memory and learnt behaviour. Ive would be as fundamental a loss but he is still there, at the heart of the machine, still building, still making, still learning.”
Tons more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, the sooner they get in there and can focus on the core tasks at hand (Apple’s products and services), not office space, the better – for the company and for their customers.
As Apple CEO, Steve Jobs focused on two things – product design and marketing. He was a genius at both. His talents cannot be replaced with one person. In fact, his talents in either discipline cannot be replaced by one person. Jony Ive and Phil Schiller without Jobs cannot be expected to perform as if Jobs was still working with them.
A team of people – talented people who actually get it and who are all on the same page – is an absolute necessity for Apple’s success, but it creates a problem: Jobs was a single filter. A unified mind. The founder. A group of people simply cannot replicate that. This is not to say that they cannot do great work (we believe Apple does, and will continue, to do great work) just that Apple is fundamentally affected by the loss of Steve Jobs and has to figure out a new way to work. — MacDailyNews, April 8, 2014