Apple Campus 2 to Feature Custom Designed 18-Foot Tables Inside 'Collaborative Pods'

[BeanieMan]

"the company's innovative manufacturing technique, which essentially peels away continuous single thin sheets of wood, which is then layered into a table top"

SO... it's plywood? (image search "rotary cut plywood")

 

[BruceEBonus]

Just when Samsung thought they were getting the upper hand in furniture design wars ... Apple turned the tables on them. 18 feet of them in fact. Who wants curved edges anyway? Tongue and groove all the way!
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But the tables at Samsung's headquarters are expandable to 36'.

Not quite. Samsung tables are actually 18'i. Interpolated to 36' using extra bits of MDF wood to fill in spaces between joints. It's an optical illusion basically. The old interpolated wood trick. We just never learn!

 

[rekhyt]

Accidental meetings between people not allowed to talk about what they're working on.

Yeah that was my question as well. How does Apple maintain secrecy under this open plan environment?

my wife works at Apple the pods where people who next to each other text instead of talk to each other - everything is politically correct there....

Didn't know Cupertino was in Canada.

 

[macduke]

Ohhhh, and with a unibody 18-karat gold chasis with diamond cut chamfered edges and sapphire display. Jony's iMac Edition!

That will be 17 million dollars, sir. Cash or charge?

 

[noveneerhere]

It sounds like the tables are made from layers of thick veneer.

It looks like it is. Only the top layer looks to be one solid piece...

 

[Denmac1]

So what's next, an article about the innovative Apple designed toilets they're installing in the john?

They will have iMacs that you can pull down and use 'Handoff' to keep up the work flow.

 

[AppleScruff1]

I wonder if this thread will get as many replies as the paper bag thread?

 

[macfacts]

Carving out a table from a tree is a lot of wasted wood. Not environmentally friendly.

 

[JamesPDX]

I HATE this kind of setup. I'm a software developer and this kind of setup is hell for us. It is so hard to concentrate and problem solve at work because its non-stop noise and chatter and distractions.

This kind of setup can work in some cases, but its not for everyone. Not everyone works the same and I simply can't think when all I hear is noise.

Don't forget the stench people eating everywhere, all the time. -Those food cart meals that smell like dogshirt covered with burning hair.

 

[CFreymarc]

Accidental meetings between people not allowed to talk about what they're working on.

You are mostly taking about the R&D building that is on the new campus but not part of the donut. Most of the donut is intended for collaborative work. The R&D building is said to be much more secure to the point of following protocols very similar to secret DOD projects.
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I HATE this kind of setup. I'm a software developer and this kind of setup is hell for us. It is so hard to concentrate and problem solve at work because its non-stop noise and chatter and distractions.

I know people that have quit over not having any space you can call your own in an office environment. I have called overuse of the collaborative space a "hive" where everyone is busy, but so many are running into each other, productivity goes down. Interesting these places with a lot of collaborative spaces, the manager and executives still have their walled offices.

 

[RogerWilco]

From the "fairytale forests of Germany" -- did someone at MR write that, or did Apple PR dictate the story. Either way it's over the top.

 

[CFreymarc]

Carving out a table from a tree is a lot of wasted wood. Not environmentally friendly.

Lots of trees to go around. None of the wood used in these projects are from endangered arbor species.

 

[JamesPDX]

They still have actual R&D? Not just T&L? -Thinner & Lighter. (i.e., Top Secret lifestyle products?)
Just kidding. Give us a Mac Pro and a new Mini that's not a toy.

 

[CFreymarc]

From the "fairytale forests of Germany" -- did someone at MR write that, or did Apple PR dictate the story. Either way it's over the top.

The recent Hansel & Gretel movie came to mine. Be interesting if any of the trees they harvested were rejected after finding bullets embedded in them from seventy years ago.

 

[DotCom2]

It's opulence in another format.
I wonder what better use all this money is taking could be used for? JS

 

[Sean O'Hayer]

my wife works at Apple the pods where people who next to each other text instead of talk to each other - everything is politically correct there....

LOL... TRS... I can't stop looking at your damn avatar... err... Avatar... yeah... the eyes...

 

[Datalinks]

what is the gym going to look like?

 

[Canada420]

This table is a great item to have for a company like Apple. It's analogous to what Apple does with it's products and its vision on product development...

Taking a simple item that everyone already uses [and takes for granted] and making it better. By building it with such care and attention to details, with the best materials available, that it makes the product seem like it's new, reinvented somehow, and when you use an Apple product it makes you feel like you've never used one before.

So this table is perfect. Kudos to the person who picked it out for this new campus.

 

[autrefois]

No wonder they're upselling & gauging customers with 16GB flagship iPhones and iMac's with 5400RPM harddrives.

Here we go again. Do you really think the person who decides to gouge customers with 16GB iPhones or puts laughably outdated 5400RPM hard drives in Macs sold in 2016 is the same person that decides to waste billions of dollars and who knows how many resources on building a spaceship campus with 500 custom-built 18-foot tables?

Give Apple some credit. They are paying LOTS of executives hundreds of thousands of dollars or more each to make these ridiculous decisions. But at least they're rich and Apple is making money, which is all that matters at the end of the day, right?

 

[Bigsk8r]

feet and pounds... Ugh.

5.40m x 1.22m, 299.3kg.

There are those countries that use the metric system, and countries that have landed on the moon.

 

[MRrainer]

Metric system.

Ugh.

18 feet x 4 feet, 660 pounds. Freedom units for the win.

You do realize that it's probably the non-SI units that are rounded, right?

 

[Nunyabinez]

These extra large Pod Island Tables by Arco are constructed from continuous sheets of solid Spesshart white oak sourced from the fairytale forests of Germany.

I'll bet they use these tables to make the "magical" products. ;-)

 

[MRrainer]

Committed to environmental program: gets rid of plastic bags for paper.

Builds 100% solar powered new office: gets solid white oak desks 18ftx4ft x 500.

Makes sense.

Grey energy usage on plastic (even more so on steel, concrete) would be much higher.
So, as bad as it looks, it's actually a very sane decision, from an ecological point of view.
Wood grows constantly - and much, much faster than fossil oil (that is used in plastics)...

 

[69650]

Personally I find round tables are better for collaborative meetings.

 

[coolfactor]

A million dollar order.

Four feet wide, a single piece of wood? I guess they'll be taking a tree, slicing it and then forming it flat, because I don't know of that many managed forests that would have trees four feet wide.

 

[Thunderhawks]

It's all fun and games until somebody carves their initials into that wood or writes:

Kilroy was here!