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My statement comes on the heels of 47 years and 5 generations in this industry.
Anyone impressed by this table has no idea what they're looking at.
So you have no idea what you are looking at. Thanks for letting us know that.
 
So plywood. It's nice plywood. Sorry, I mean the most elegantly and beautifully crafted layered sheets of pristine hardwood every created. Wood like you've never seen it before.

Of course! It's magical! Anything Apple uses is really made of unicorn dust. Everyone knows that.

This article reminds me of how the cylindrical Mac Pro case is made in the same way as extruded cooking pots, and the Apple Watch case is stamped out from rolled ingots in the same way as millions of inexpensive Chinese watches, but all it takes is for Jon Ive to speak about these common industrial mass production techniques in a flashy video, to make them suddenly seem special.
 
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"There are no visible seams because of 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 they are not solid wood tables, they are composite veneered, but seemingly the author(s) did not know that word (veneer).
 
I've been crammed into a 4' X 6' cube (believe it) and I've also had a luxurious 12' X 12' cube. Both places had some version of these 'encourage-accidental-organic-mingling' spaces come and go at times under various management, but the only thing that actually makes them work is when management actively promotes a culture encouraging folks to take advantage of such spaces and rewards effort and outcomes resulting from them. I've never seen that happen properly, but if anyone can do it I suppose it's probably Apple.
 
how is metric more accurate than imperial?
or the implication that you can manipulate figures in metric and not feet&inches? and that feet are only good for estimating?

I would only argue that using Fahrenheit is more accurate than Celsius in practice , but only because I've never heard anyone from a metric based system use decimal places to describe the ambient temperature in casual conversation.
 
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"There are no visible seams because of 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 they are not solid wood tables, they are composite veneered, but seemingly the author(s) did not know that word (veneer).
even then, they aren't using veneer.. it's more like glulam construction (laminating dimensional lumber as opposed to veneers)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glued_laminated_timber

but yeah, the author isn't too familiar with the processes he's attempting to describe.
 
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I would only argue that using Fahrenheit is more accurate than Celsius in practice , but only because I've never heard anyone from a metric based system use decimal places to describe the ambient temperature in casual conversation.
Casual conversation is not scientific conversation. In scientific conversation the agreed number of significant digits for each situation is strictly adhered too. The French when they invented the SI system did so for science, not general conversation.
 
I actually work in an open plan office. We all manage to concentrate and do our work - I'm sure Apple employees will be able to, as well. It helps if you enjoy what you do and want to work on it.
Considers how the space is managed. I have run into way too many people that are willing to talk to anyone without consideration for the work one is doing at the moment. I've turned down jobs over the fact that they all have is a hive of activity with no individual desk spaces.

The hard reality for the "open office" concept is it came out of necessity from the San Francisco rental market. Start-ups could not afford the square feet of a cubical per employee and ended up putting people around tables to save space. From that, it became trendy but not necessarily efficient -- specifically in creative environments. At times, collaborative efforts come down to agreeing with the lowest common denominator of the group for the sake of "diversity" than can stifle vision.

Again, while you have this hive around tables of employees without their individual space, it is hypocritical that managers and execs still keep their private offices. They don't eat their own dog food.
 
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"There are no visible seams because of 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 they are not solid wood tables, they are composite veneered, but seemingly the author(s) did not know that word (veneer).

Yep. Quoted from the website of the table maker:

"Arco duramas: a method for limiting the use of scarce solid wood by manufacturing table tops using a core of less rare wood to which an outer layer of solid wood is glued to the top and bottom."

Btw, their custom tables start at about Euro 3,000 for a six footer. 600 of these 18' puppies for Apple could be over five million dollars. Glad that the extra money we paid for our Apple products is going to such nice use.
 
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Yep. Quoted from the website of the table maker:

"Arco duramas: a method for limiting the use of scarce solid wood by manufacturing table tops using a core of less rare wood to which an outer layer of solid wood is glued to the top and bottom."
that's for their line of tables looking like :
http://www.arco.nl/en/slim-bench-en.html

Arco-Slim_Bench-Bertjan_Pot-LowRes-1714527742685697937cec1a5.jpg


it's obviously veneer over a core (as in-- face grain where there should be end grain is the dead giveaway)..
oak isn't 'scarce solid wood' (such as the rosewood shown above).. no need to veneer it if the client has the $$$ to pay for solid.

in the original article by design milk (link in post#1 of this thread), there are pictures showing the underside of these tables for apple.. you can see it's solid oak throughout.
 
Casual conversation is not scientific conversation. In scientific conversation the agreed number of significant digits for each situation is strictly adhered too. The French when they invented the SI system did so for science, not general conversation.

I realize that - the meter isn't based on the circumFrance [sic] of the earth for nothing. That's why I qualified my statement 'in practice', but I guess I should have said 'outside the lab'.
 
I realize that - the meter isn't based on the circumFrance [sic] of the earth for nothing. That's why I qualified my statement 'in practice', but I guess I should have said 'outside the lab'.
You should have said "in practice in the USA". Because outside the USA and a few other select countries, no one even says anything in fahrenheit.

I get your point. But outside the USA and a few other select countries it's just not said at all.
 
One size fits all tables ≠ Think Different. Maybe the savior of the company will bring a saw. I hope that there is and will always be a satellite campus somewhere whose tables aren't standardized and whose patterns of thought don't try to conform to the shape of the tables. When you build a Pentagon scale building, you get Pentagon scale thinking. "Wait, did we forget to invite....(insert bureaucratic Apple unit of the near term present or future)" Architecture and design tend to shape thinking. Innovation is incredibly difficult. Huawei, Xiaomi and others will in the short term win the "pace" game because Apple has yet to set a pace and drumbeat like Intel's tick tock that exhausts the competition. Apple needs to find a way to win the intermediate and longer term game. I'm looking for iPad Pro 2, A10, and iOS 10. Go Apple.
 
You should have said "in practice in the USA". Because outside the USA and a few other select countries, no one even says anything in fahrenheit.

I get your point. But outside the USA and a few other select countries it's just not said at all.

if following what @sarge said back to the original statement about metric being more precise than imperial, then you'll see countries etc is irrelevant.. the statement was about one system vs the other in practical uses.

ultimately, 'precision' has nothing to do with any given unit as each unit can be divided up indefinitely.. they are equally precise.. precision is more about the application.. say you have a cnc machine that's accurate to 1000th inch.. well, it's going to be equally accurate and produce the same variances if the numbers fed to it are in a metric unit.. it's not going to be more precise if fed instructions using a different base unit.. the cuts will be equally straight etc.

---
what sarge was saying is that in practical uses, the fahrenheit scale offers more commonly used divisions than celsius.. or- in fahrenheit, the range between freezing and boiling points is 180 different numbers that a human would use.. with celsius , there are only 100 numbers that will be used.. so, assuming the same quality thermometer is being used, an american will report the current temperature to a more accurate degree than someone using celsius.

this same type of argument can be given for feet&inches vs meters.. in practical human use, imperial offers better divisions or, more usable/common numbers than metric..

tape measures are generally showing 1/16" divisions (~1.6mm).. this is a very comfortable to see and usually precise enough scale to work with on most projects.. with mm, there are too many crammed in there to read as quickly/comfortably as you can with inches..
that said, when a carpenter needs more precision, we drop down to 32nds (~.8mm).. this is probably around the smallest increments we can comfortably work with without magnification.. 32nds are more precise than millimeters but, in practical use, you can't divide a mm up any smaller and do any work with it.. like- have you ever seen a tape measure that shows .5mm increments? probably not but that's what it would take in order to make metric rulers more precise than imperial..

ever buy drill bits? in imperial, you're getting them in 1/64" increments (~.4mm).. in metric, you're getting them in .5mm increments.. again, the imperial units are giving more size options throughout a given range.


------
and hey, i get it.. people are like 'metric is so much better because it's easy and understandable since it's base 10' ..but guess what, base10 is really limited or, introduces more complications than a lot of you all are making it out to be..

here's a sweet little read pointing out the advantages of a base-12 system or even a base-16 system over base10:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5977095/why-we-should-switch-to-a-base-12-counting-system

idk, pretty sure some of what's mentioned in the above article is why imperial is staying around longer than many think it should.. who knows, maybe it's the base-tenners of the world that need to rethink their measuring scales?

(or- maybe it's the whole lot of us who need to rethink our counting system.. which is simply the way it is because we have 10 fingers ;) ..otherwise, 10s aren't some sort of ultimate mathematical numbers.. counting by twelves is better- probably the best.)
 
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There are no visible seams because of the company's innovative manufacturing technique, which essentially peels away continuous single thin sheets of wood, which is then layered into a table top.
That's plywood.
 
Few people. As in. The 2 people complaining in this thread.
Ha ha. Just winding you up. I don't really care tbh. Just rather bemused (and amused).


hey hey...some USA people. many expats like myself have come to embrace metric. It really is much better I find. Mildly good news is at least science is more standardized to use metric even in the US.
True. I'm mainly referring to those in the States who don't and won't travel even if they could afford it; "Why would I want to go anywhere else?!".
 
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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.
If you're being sarcastic you need to let us know because if you're aren't, you're in too deep. It's just a table. We have a nice wooden table in our office kitchen that I like a lot but I wouldn't call it new, reinvented, somehow, a metaphor for our company's attention to detail. Whenever you see an article like this, ask yourself what your reaction would be if it was about Samsung
 
You do realize that these are just set up in common work areas. They aren't supposed to be for ALL the employees....
You would still have your safe space....

Yea but often that's how it starts. They're "optional" until management comes and says "Lets make everything open!" (It happened to us hence my cynicism.)

Now I can't get 5 minutes of quiet (literally, not figuratively) at work and management wonders why productivity is down. Its too hard to concentrate on problem solving.
 
One size fits all tables ≠ Think Different. Maybe the savior of the company will bring a saw. I hope that there is and will always be a satellite campus somewhere whose tables aren't standardized and whose patterns of thought don't try to conform to the shape of the tables. When you build a Pentagon scale building, you get Pentagon scale thinking. "Wait, did we forget to invite....(insert bureaucratic Apple unit of the near term present or future)" Architecture and design tend to shape thinking. Innovation is incredibly difficult. Huawei, Xiaomi and others will in the short term win the "pace" game because Apple has yet to set a pace and drumbeat like Intel's tick tock that exhausts the competition. Apple needs to find a way to win the intermediate and longer term game. I'm looking for iPad Pro 2, A10, and iOS 10. Go Apple.

I see you can write, so I'm wondering where the reading comprehension is. This article makes it clear these tables are made for certain collaborative areas of the campus. How people are making the leap to "OMGZ apple is forcing an open floor plan that I didn't like on everyone in the new building!!!11!!!11" is beyond me.

As for the pace comment, go ahead and tell me that Qualcomm isn't scared ******** as how quickly Apple is pushing the performance and efficiency game forward in the SoC field.
 
in the original article by design milk (link in post#1 of this thread), there are pictures showing the underside of these tables for apple.. you can see it's solid oak throughout.

You're right, I should've read the entire Milk article (my iPad mini kept doing the "web page reloaded" thing and I gave up, so I finally went there on a desktop).

Here's the upside down table before it goes into the CNC machine:

pod-table-before.jpg


And then after:

pod-table-after.jpg


However, that's the border, not the table top itself.

As for the top, the article says, "There are no visible seams because of the company’s innovative manufacturing technique, which essentially peels away continuous single thin sheets of wood, which is then layered into a table top."

Which to me, now sounds very much like what someone else here said, glulam (glued laminated timber), which would also help the table span 18 feet.

Whatcha think?
 
All that money for that ridiculous looking campus so they can collaborate in pods and come up with...nothing.

Nothing is the new Apple where innovation is considered overrated and everyone should just buy the iWatch anyway (oops i mean the 'Apple Watch' since they were too freaking cheap to even buy the rights to the name iWatch with all their billions).
 
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