Apple Expands Bay Area Presence With New 'Second Spaceship' Lease

[MacRumors]

Apple has acquired additional land in the Bay Area, inking a deal with Landbank Investments for an upcoming 770,000 square-foot campus at Central and Wolfe in Sunnyvale, California. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, Apple has leased the property for an undisclosed amount of money.

The upcoming campus is notable because current plans call for an amorphous design that eschews the traditional square office building. The space is advertised via the website "Not Another Box," which describes the curved structure as "the blending of art, science, and nature." It is not yet known if Apple's deal for the space will call for modifications on the planned design, however.

One caveat: It's unclear whether the project will be built according to that design, from architecture firm HOK, or if Apple and Landbank will want to modify it in some way. At this time there's no indication it will change substantially, and indeed Landbank has made the signature look a key selling point, with a website that highlights the out-of-the-box design. (That same website also features a quote from Walter Isaacson, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs's biographer.)

Construction of the Central and Wolfe campus was approved last year and will see nine existing buildings razed in favor of a new structure. The location is approximately five miles north of Apple's second campus in Cupertino and is near other Apple office buildings in the Sunnyvale area.

In recent years, Apple has been expanding rapidly in the Bay Area near its main Cupertino campus. In addition to its "Spaceship" campus that's already under construction, Apple has also purchased a large swathes of land in North San Jose and it has bought office space in San Francisco.

Article Link: Apple Expands Bay Area Presence With New 'Second Spaceship' Lease

 

[PowerBook-G5]

Interesting. I know someone who works for Apple and he said that by the time they finish the Spaceship and move people in to fill it, they'll need another building.

 

[Fushi]

Five miles *north*

 

[gigapocket1]

Wonder if the company is getting to big for its own good

 

[FactVsOpinion]

As if my feelings on the matter mean anything at all, I liked the idea of everybody being in one space--that is, in the spaceship building.

Apparently having cross-departmental, interdisciplinary collaboration is something Apple values, and one would think that keeping everybody together would serve that goal. Also Steve Jobs, when proposing the spaceship to the city of Cupertino, mentioned this particular benefit.

On the other hand, I suppose the company is simply growing too fast for even the spaceship campus to house everybody. Perhaps this should be regarded as a high quality problem rather than as a departure from the goal of having everybody together.

 

[jrlcopy]

Wonder if the company is getting to big for its own good

With the amount of billions it has it could probably stop making products and still be fine for decades.

That building looks way nicer than the spaceship.

 

[NickD73]

"Too big to fail."

Been saying it for months now: expect Apple stock to say hello to the $80s by this time next year.

2015 Macbook, Apple Watch, Music, Maps, Beats purchase, iPad Pro, iPhone 5c, Apple Pay. All relative failures which point to a lack of leadership. Apple the past year is just finally starting to miss the presence of Jobs, and I expect that affect to grow exponentially.

 

[mrow]

Apple has purchased additional land in the Bay Area, inking a deal with Landbank Investments for an upcoming 770,000 square-foot campus at Central and Wolfe in Sunnyvale, California. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, Apple has leased the property for an undisclosed amount of money.

Was it leased or purchased? Those two words don't mean the same thing...

 

[zoetmb]

Interesting. I know someone who works for Apple and he said that by the time they finish the Spaceship and move people in to fill it, they'll need another building.

Wonder if the company is getting to big for its own good

As if my feelings on the matter mean anything at all, I liked the idea of everybody being in one space--that is, in the spaceship building.

Apparently having cross-departmental, interdisciplinary collaboration is something Apple values, and one would think that keeping everybody together would serve that goal. Also Steve Jobs, when proposing the spaceship to the city of Cupertino, mentioned this particular benefit.

On the other hand, I suppose the company is simply growing too fast for even the spaceship campus to house everybody. Perhaps this should be regarded as a high quality problem rather than as a departure from the goal of having everybody together.

Apple said long ago that they were keeping the original campus after the spaceship opened, but supposedly getting rid of a lot of leased space around the area.

And Apple has opened or is about to open a number of facilities around the country. Some of those are server farms, but not all.

But one does have to wonder why they need so many people. What are they all doing? I bet there's a fair number dedicated to international sales and distribution, but it still seems like Apple thinks it needs to expand dramatically over the next ten years. But even with the addition of the Apple Watch and the updated Apple TV, there simply aren't that many products or product lines. And even if you believe that Apple is working on a car (or anything else we haven't thought of), it wouldn't be developed at any of the central facilities so that it could be kept secret.

 

[huggyb]

"Too big to fail."

Been saying it for months now: expect Apple stock to say hello to the $80s by this time next year.

2015 Macbook, Apple Watch, Music, Maps, Beats purchase, iPad Pro, iPhone 5c, Apple Pay. All relative failures which point to a lack of leadership. Apple the past year is just finally starting to miss the presence of Jobs, and I expect that affect to grow exponentially.

Kinda like Google, and Facebook?

 

[foobarbaz]

"Too big to fail."

Been saying it for months now: expect Apple stock to say hello to the $80s by this time next year.

I don't think you know what "too big to fail" means ...

 

[Rocketman]

The fact they are leasing it rather than buying it, means either there is a shell company or they are so desperate to be in close proximity to their other workers they are wiling to go for a long term high cost obligation.

Build a cube on the San Jose property and make all parking offsite via monorail. Massive new cubic footage for whatever project we are not talking about next.

Rocketman

 

[Michael Scrip]

But one does have to wonder why they need so many people. What are they all doing?

there simply aren't that many products or product lines.

I once read a story that said Apple has 1,000 people working on chips. If that's true... imagine what other components or other little projects they can put people on.

You're right... Apple doesn't have a huge product line... but that doesn't mean their employees are just sitting around idle.

Apple isn't just a hardware designer like an HTC, for example. Apple makes everything from the hardware, to the software, to the interconnecting systems and services, to support... etc. That takes a lot of people.

A company like HTC doesn't need all that. They get the operating system from Google... the processors from Qualcomm... and other things from a dozen other companies.

Apple, on the other hand, designs most of their stuff themselves. And that obviously takes lots of people.

Tim Cook once remarked that you could fit all of Apple's products on one table.

But that doesn't mean they are doing less work as a result. Apple actually does TONS of work designing individual components... as well as the total package.

Look at what Apple has achieved with the A9 chip. I'm glad they put a ton of their own people and a ton of resources into designing the A9 instead of using an off-the-shelf chip from Qualcomm like everyone else uses.

But Apple couldn't do that without a lot of talented people.

So... to answer your question... what are all those people working on?

Everything

 

[Crzyrio]

"Too big to fail."

Been saying it for months now: expect Apple stock to say hello to the $80s by this time next year.

2015 Macbook, Apple Watch, Music, Maps, Beats purchase, iPad Pro, iPhone 5c, Apple Pay. All relative failures which point to a lack of leadership. Apple the past year is just finally starting to miss the presence of Jobs, and I expect that affect to grow exponentially.

Failures relative to what?

The bolded are very far from failures.

 

[NickD73]

I don't think you know what "too big to fail" means ...

I'm mocking the idea.

 

[unplugme71]

Wonder if the company is getting to big for its own good

Agreed

 

[unplugme71]

Apple. Go ahead and hire more people because I have the following issues that need to be resolved


Can't download apps on AT&T network

Phone randomly shuts off

Volume is low even if I have it set to max. It's not until I get a text the volume corrects itself

Changing orientation keyboard gets stuck

Sometimes I can't ignore autocorrect suggestions

App Store shows white screen until I force quit and reopen

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

MacRumors user MO: find a negative way of looking at anything Apple.

 

[Kajje]

According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, Apple has leased the property for an undisclosed amount of money.

That's exactly the same what we pay for our office!

 

[Capt Crunch]

As if my feelings on the matter mean anything at all, I liked the idea of everybody being in one space--that is, in the spaceship building.

Apparently having cross-departmental, interdisciplinary collaboration is something Apple values, and one would think that keeping everybody together would serve that goal. Also Steve Jobs, when proposing the spaceship to the city of Cupertino, mentioned this particular benefit.

On the other hand, I suppose the company is simply growing too fast for even the spaceship campus to house everybody. Perhaps this should be regarded as a high quality problem rather than as a departure from the goal of having everybody together.

One thing to note is that there is a ton of other company "stuff" that goes on. Apple's supply chain, for example, is huge, and not very tied to product development, which is what we most closely associate with Apple. The guy who buys the rack mount servers used for iCloud will never need to have a meeting with a product engineer. I agree that you probably want the software and hardware engineers in the same office, which is something that Tim Cook specifically made happen, but there are plenty of other people, just as crucial to the business, who can be located somewhere else.

 

[commodorepet]

Isn't that location where one of the offices for the secret vehicle project was supposed to be? Difficult to work on new stuff if the building is being torn down around you...

 

[RobertMartens]

Five miles *north*

It is actually exactly 3 miles due north on the same road, Wolfe Road