Apple Maps Now Shows Apple Park 3D Models, Campus Walkways

[Bart Kela]

The visitor center building (store and caffe) must be located at 10600 N Tantau Ave.
I remember reading about a viewing area on the roof. It won't be in the main circle building.

An earlier MacRumors article dated from 2015 claimed that the visitor center building would be at 10700 N Tantau Ave, one building north of the one you mention.

Either way, it appears that the visitor center and cafe will be sequestered from the main ring building and campus by being on the east side of Tantau Avenue. That probably helps with security, liability, permitting, etc. The underground parking garage for the visitors center will likely have no access to the employee garage.

Unless you are a qualified guest of an Apple employee, vendor, business partner, etc., the general public will have no access to the ring building.

 

[MacSince1985]

Out of curiosity, I checked out the campus on Google Earth. The new building makes a much better use of the land.

 

[Bart Kela]

Aerial overhead photography can useful, but it also has its shortcomings.

Actually, it's rather hard to tell from Google Earth about land usage advantage since A.) you don't see the number of stories the building has, and B.) it doesn't indicate the size of the underground parking facilities (nor the capacity of the two above-ground parking garages on the southern perimeter).

The old HP complex was a typical Silicon Valley corporate campus (maybe one or two stories), plus ground level parking on wide swaths of asphalt.

What won't show up on aerial photography at all is the traffic impact on the higher-occupancy Apple Park complex.

There will be more people at Apple Park than the old HP campus, but the freeway isn't any wider nor are the bordering surface streets (North Wolfe Road, Homestead Road, Tantau Avenue). There is no rail-based mass transit (Caltrain, VTA Light Rail) and none of the three aforementioned streets are really great bicycle throughways.

North Tantau Avenue does not have its own freeway off-ramp so the bulk of the traffic will be from the North Wolfe exit (traffic from the north/San Francisco) and Lawrence Expressway (traffic from the south/San Jose).

There is a large hospital (Kaiser Permanente) at the corner of Homestead and Lawrence, so before a single Apple employee drives to the new Apple Park, there is already a fair amount of traffic on these streets.

There's a decidedly moribund shopping mall (Vallco Park) just south of I-280. If that ever picks up again, again that will drive more traffic to these freeway exits.

Best to stay away from this area during rush hour. It's gonna be a cluster.

The people who are really screwed are the apartment residents in the southwestern section. Unless you live there and work at Apple Park, it's going to hell on weekdays. Also, the apartment residents have lost easy access to the east. Pruneridge Avenue no longer bisects the Apple property, those residents will be forced to turn right onto North Wolfe and right again onto Homestead.

For sure, Apple is sticking a heck of a lot more people in the new development, but with that comes its own set of issues.

 

[palmerc]

I wonder how they'll map out the building.

Typically, in squarish buildings, it's like Battleship, where I may be at location 5P4, where the first digit is the floor number, and the P4 is an XY coordinate.

For me, it makes sense to have a system like a 360 degree, but do you use magnetic north (easy if you have a phone, but changes - ask a pilot) or true north?

Something like Floor Lettered Distance Radial, so 4S270 would be on the west side, a considerable distance from the center of the circle, on the 4th floor.

Rectangular coordinates wouldn't work so well, as there would be gaps in the coverage, and gridding out a circular building makes it harder to find something. I've seen stadia with their systems, but they seem to be more of a system that makes sense to them (i.e. circular alphabet and hundreds for the level.)

They would use radians not degrees

 

[smirking]

Whatever you think of Apple Maps, Apple Park coverage has been excellent.

I'm not sure about that. It led me around in a big circle.

 

[Smigit]

Typically, in squarish buildings, it's like Battleship, where I may be at location 5P4, where the first digit is the floor number, and the P4 is an XY coordinate.

For me, it makes sense to have a system like a 360 degree, but do you use magnetic north (easy if you have a phone, but changes - ask a pilot) or true north?

Something like Floor Lettered Distance Radial, so 4S270 would be on the west side, a considerable distance from the center of the circle, on the 4th floor.

Think you're over thinking it. How do people find their seat at a football stadium? Just use continuous numbers or a N/S/E/W arrangement (possibly with a sub number system). True or magnetic won't matter, people will go left or right based on what's approximately closer.

Degrees sounds overkill and complicated.

I'm sure there will be maps or signs, and people learn their way around their workplaces as it is anyway. Many square buildings have awful systems that may as well be random.

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

They would use radians not degrees

I thought radians were used along the circumference. I meant a radial, which would be a point from the center of the circle to the circumference. I may have gotten my jargon messed up.

Radial - adj. of or arranged like rays or the radii of a circle; diverging in lines from a common center.
Radian - noun - a unit of angle, equal to an angle at the center of a circle whose arc is equal in length to the radius
I think I was misusing radials as a noun, instead of an adjective.

**EDIT**
Yeah... I never got Radians for engineering. I understand the use, as it is a direct relationship in the circle, but having been a Boy Scout, degrees makes sense for me.
[doublepost=1496144746][/doublepost]

Think you're over thinking it. How do people find their seat at a football stadium? Just use continuous numbers or a N/S/E/W arrangement (possibly with a sub number system). True or magnetic won't matter, people will go left or right based on what's approximately closer.

Degrees sounds overkill and complicated.

I'm sure there will be maps or signs, and people learn their way around their workplaces as it is anyway. Many square buildings have awful systems that may as well be random.

I understand what you mean (overthinking... honey, is that you???), but I happen (at the moment) to work in the world's largest building (by volume), and having an exact place to find people, or conference rooms is critical. If someone says, "I'm in conference room 511P6 in the factory," anyone that has the basic (it's the same across the corporation) understanding can know that it's on the 5th floor (the 5 in 511), in XY coordinate P6.

I was just hoping to have a consistency and commonality between round buildings. This way, when Apple has another round building, the mapping is consistent.

As for the football (American or Worldwide) stadia, those get kind of goofy. I've been in those where there are numbers for the sections, letters, and other variations...

 

[Bart Kela]

As for the football (American or Worldwide) stadia, those get kind of goofy. I've been in those where there are numbers for the sections, letters, and other variations...

Actually, the two pro football stadiums you show have very sensible seat numbering systems. Both begin with 100 and the section numbers increase going clockwise. Furthermore, the first digit indicates the level, with the 100s being field level and the 300s/500s being the top level.

Thus for the Seahawks, section 309 overlooks sections 209 and 109. Same principle with the Ravens stadium: 500 overlooks 200 and 100.

If you regularly attend a particular stadium, you have a good idea of where you're sitting based on the section number. For me, I like section 209 at AT&T Park. It's club level above the visitors' dugout and during day games, it's in the shade if you're not sitting in the first 5-6 rows at first pitch (1 pm).

Your decision to use Cal's Memorial Stadium as an example is an odd one. The stadium doesn't have tiered levels which is why the seating chart is just radial letters.

A better college stadium example would be Stanford Stadium, which does have two levels, and a numerical numbering system very similar to the Seahawks. Stanford Stadium section 101 is field level in the upper right corner where the players' entrance is, with numbers incrementing clockwise again; upper level section 201 overlooks 101.

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

Actually, the two pro football stadiums you show have very sensible seat numbering systems. Both begin with 100 and the section numbers increase going clockwise. Furthermore, the first digit indicates the level, with the 100s being field level and the 300s/500s being the top level.

Thus for the Seahawks, section 309 overlooks sections 209 and 109. Same principle with the Ravens stadium: 500 overlooks 200 and 100.

If you regularly attend a particular stadium, you have a good idea of where you're sitting based on the section number. For me, I like section 209 at AT&T Park. It's club level above the visitors' dugout and during day games, it's in the shade if you're not sitting in the first 5-6 rows at first pitch (1 pm).

Your decision to use Cal's Memorial Stadium as an example is an odd one. The stadium doesn't have tiered levels which is why the seating chart is just radial letters.

A better college stadium example would be Stanford Stadium, which does have two levels, and a numerical numbering system very similar to the Seahawks. Stanford Stadium section 101 is field level in the upper right corner where the players' entrance is, with numbers incrementing clockwise again; upper level section 201 overlooks 101.

Yeah... the stadiums I picked were mostly random, but there were some really weird ones in there. By weird, I mean, there were no apparent general sense to them, like A-Z going clockwise, and numbers for the seating.

However, one thing needs to be noted. Office spaces have people grouped to do work, while a stadium is generally focused towards the center event happening. I thought of my scheme to be grouped to have a person walking in, or parking and trying to figure out how to quickly find out first, where they were in relation to the building, where they are in reference to other buildings, and finding a place within the building.

For me, this is a great thought experiment, and you all have helped out on this!

 

[palmerc]

I thought radians were used along the circumference. I meant a radial, which would be a point from the center of the circle to the circumference. I may have gotten my jargon messed up.

Radial - adj. of or arranged like rays or the radii of a circle; diverging in lines from a common center.
Radian - noun - a unit of angle, equal to an angle at the center of a circle whose arc is equal in length to the radius
I think I was misusing radials as a noun, instead of an adjective.

**EDIT**
Yeah... I never got Radians for engineering. I understand the use, as it is a direct relationship in the circle, but having been a Boy Scout, degrees makes sense for me.
[doublepost=1496144746][/doublepost]
I understand what you mean (overthinking... honey, is that you???), but I happen (at the moment) to work in the world's largest building (by volume), and having an exact place to find people, or conference rooms is critical. If someone says, "I'm in conference room 511P6 in the factory," anyone that has the basic (it's the same across the corporation) understanding can know that it's on the 5th floor (the 5 in 511), in XY coordinate P6.

I was just hoping to have a consistency and commonality between round buildings. This way, when Apple has another round building, the mapping is consistent.

As for the football (American or Worldwide) stadia, those get kind of goofy. I've been in those where there are numbers for the sections, letters, and other variations...

You could used normalised coordinates so each room would have Rho (meters) and Theta (radians) so you can identify any point.

 

[Bart Kela]

Apple will probably include some sort of locator function in an employee-only iOS app that's tied to iBeacons.

I'm sure there would be signage as well, like in an airport terminal or train station.

The first couple of weeks, I figure some people will accidentally walk into the wrong cubicle, but those are growing pains associated with any sort of move, not just Apple Park. I tend to bump into walls in a new place when I'm trying to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.



Different venues have different seating chart systems based on what works for the venue. Having three digit numerical sections works well in multi-level facility. It's really not that different as having apartment or hotel rooms with the room number's first digit indicating the floor number. In many places, the odd number rooms would be in one wing, the even number rooms would be in the other wing, so rooms 411 and 413 might be neighbors on the same floor.

In some concert venues, the seat rows are alphabetical and the seats themselves are numerical. At at least one symphony hall, orchestra seat A101 is first row, center seat. In another venue, seat A01 might be the seat closest to one of the side aisles.

There are plenty of location naming systems, no one best way to do things for every venue.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

This is a fun thought experiment. My first thought was, "This would have been one of Steve's first thoughts, the solution passionately engineered and finely wrought." Once that scheme is revealed, there'll be a fair amount of, "Wow, why didn't I think of that!"

Personally, I don't see any kind of special challenge to working with circular rather than rectilinear coordinates. Consider the "issues" of numbering/identifying buildings arranged on a grid, or, say, a pentagon. What's the difference between identifying the buildings surrounding a central square vs. a central circle? If one uses compass points, north is still north. If the numbering/naming does not include a geographic point of reference, a view of the sun, a church spire, or other external landmark may be necessary (The sun is shining through that window, it's afternoon, so that must be west).

One advantage of a ring vs. a rectangle? The curvature of the circumferential hallways is enough of a clue to tell you whether you're moving clockwise or counterclockwise. It's a bit harder to know direction of travel in a rectangular building. If you know that numbering ascends in a clockwise manner from north, know what the highest number is (whether 360 or 1200, or 10,000), and there's a prefix or suffix to identify floor/level, you'll have a very good idea of where you are. For that matter, they could use binary or hex - that's no more arbitrary than 12 or 360 (but perhaps more confusing to invaders, which might be a good thing in a secretive organization).

Frame of reference is always necessary and always arbitrary, but once you know the point(s) of reference, everything tends to fall into place.