Apple's 'Fanatical' Attention to Detail Revealed in Apple Campus 2 Report

[960design]

I follow someone on SC who works on the campus construction. It still looks far from completion unless they started ramping more people. If Apple wants that level of detail who cares they are paying to have things never done before.

Same thing at my house. I want a six foot iron gate between my separated garage and house. No less than five fence/gate companies have tried to sell me on something else. No, I do not want the crap left over in your garage. I want exactly what I showed you in the picture, from that manufacture. I do not care if it costs $30 more.

Do not get me started on windows ( the house kind, the software kind is an entirely different rant ).

 

[69Mustang]

"The rationale? If engineers had to adjust their gait while entering the building, they risked distraction from their work, according to a former construction manager."

This is one of the most inane - asinine, fatuous, vapid, and all the other synonyms for silly - things I've seen in a while. People have been walking through doors since cavemen installed them to keep out Saturday morning Jehovah's Witness disciples from disturbing cartoon time.

 

[NT1440]

"The rationale? If engineers had to adjust their gait while entering the building, they risked distraction from their work, according to a former construction manager."

This is one of the most inane - asinine, fatuous, vapid, and all the other synonyms for silly - things I've seen in a while. People have been walking through doors since cavemen installed them to keep out Saturday morning Jehovah's Witness disciples from disturbing cartoon time.

Which is why we shouldn't lend any credence to an anonymous quote. This is buzzfeed level clickbait nonsense.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Timeline of Apple Campus 2:
- 2006: Bought land
- 2011: Approved
- 2013: Broke Ground
- 2017: Still working on it... completely unused thus far.

We're talking about one freaking office building and 11 years after purchasing the land, they still aren't done. They're not even done designing the door handles. The amount this building will change the world is not at all. It's a pointless and vain project.

Timeline of Tesla Gigafactory 1:
- 2014: Bought Land & Approved
- 2015: Broke Ground
- 2016: Began using it (Planned to finish construction in 2020.)

It took them two years to go from buying the land to putting it to use. It's the worlds largest building by footprint, and second largest by volume. Next year, they plan on building more batteries in the one (unfinished) building than the entire world built in 2014. In 2020 (when it finishes), they plan to build more batteries in the one building it than will be built worldwide this year.

One of these companies can move and innovate. The other one takes their time on utterly pointless projects.

As Steve Jobs once said, Real Artists Ship. I think it's obvious to see which one Jobs would have called the real artist here.

 

[triton100]

Ok so at least you can see why people react the way they do when they read statements about taking 1.5 years to decide on a door handle but release products that have issues (e.g. Battery problems)

Based on your comments to other forum members people would be forgiven for thinking you blindly support Apple and they can do no wrong.

Good to know you think otherwise

I've been shot down on this forum for being an apple hater. Then shot down for being a blind Apple follower. Ha

I'm very open minded. In terms of healthy debate when something is good I call it. When something is bad I call it. Apple have annoyed the heck out of me. See many annoyed posts from me in the past. However it's slightly annoying when people denegrade a company for minutiae. The original op did not mention battery issues.

Re 'door handle-gate' I would take all info on this with a grain of salt. Things get taken out of context.

 

[citysnaps]

If only they had the same attention to detail for their own products. It's been months now that I cannot simply turn on Bluetooth on my iPhone without the need to redo it two or three times because it simply doesn't work the first time. There are many, many othere examples of obvious bugs that go unrepaired for far too long.

Maybe a trip to the Genius Bar is in order to get some assistance? BT works fine with my iPhone and iPad. It does require a certain amount of understanding on how other (i.e., some) devices receiving BT streams prioritize existing over new connections.

 

[vvs14]

"With phones, you can build to very, very minute tolerances," he said. "You would never design to that level of tolerance on a building. Your doors would jam."

I hope the construction engineers won this particular argument. If not, there are going to be a ton of pissed off employees either stuck in offices or unable to enter an office. All buildings have "wiggle room" because they behave like a living, breathing organism. Expansion, contraction, and shift are all parts of the "life" of a building. It's good to push boundaries, that's how we get progress. But sometimes, you gotta know which boundaries to push. That particular boundary ain't the one.

Maybe they want the doors to get jammed... So the employees get stuck inside their offices and are forced to work more...

 

[triton100]

The glass house comment was about your "Gotta love intelligent debate" comment when you include an erudite gem like this in your other quote: "... said wannabes soon follow suit with their copycat, I mean 'ideas' inspired by Apple."

The stylus and the mouse: The time to charge is immaterial to the topic of attention to detail. Both charging ports are inelegant and contrary to Apple's typical design aesthetic. Alternative solutions? Wireless charging similar to the Apple Watch and a port where the mouse's "tail" would be.

Ok. Let's agree to disagree.

 

[Swordylove]

"Magical"View attachment 687345

LMAO okay this takes the cake.

 

[macsmurf]

And people think Apple lost their way since Jobs

To be fair, they did design a building particularly well suited for going around in circles.

 

[NT1440]

Timeline of Apple Campus 2:
- 2006: Bought land
- 2011: Approved
- 2013: Broke Ground
- 2017: Still working on it... completely unused thus far.

We're talking about one freaking office building and 11 years after purchasing the land, they still aren't done. They're not even done designing the door handles. The amount this building will change the world is not at all. It's a pointless and vain project.

Timeline of Tesla Gigafactory 1:
- 2014: Bought Land & Approved
- 2015: Broke Ground
- 2016: Began using it (Planned to finish construction in 2020.)

It took them two years to go from buying the land to putting it to use. It's the worlds largest building by footprint, and second largest by volume. Next year, they plan on building more batteries in the one (unfinished) building than the entire world built in 2014. In 2020 (when it finishes), they plan to build more batteries in the one building it than will be built worldwide this year.

One of these companies can move and innovate. The other one takes their time on utterly pointless projects.

As Steve Jobs once said, Real Artists Ship. I think it's obvious to see which one Jobs would have called the real artist here.

... A factory (we've seen the inside of it) that is a giant box of a building obviously is quicker to build, as the entire point of a factory layout is that internally it can be reconfigured in as little time as possible.

In other words, you're comparing Lego-style modular building, to crafting a a sculpture largely by hand. Two entirely different animals, and the point of your post is to just complain that Apple decided to build a building the way they wanted to under their own timeline.

What's it matter to you how long it takes to get the (ludicrously high) standards for the company HQ's done?

For comparison, Google's addition (Bay View) took roughly 3 years to do the physical construction. Apple's entirely new campus, which required literally inventing new techniques for things such as glass bending and installation, is on track for a 3/4 year complete build.

 

[Ramius]

Now we know why their products haven´t changed for five years. They spend nearly two years working on a door handle instead.

Also, that elevator panel with home buttons is already outdated as they will ditch it from their phones real soon.

 

[triton100]

- I sit down to get some work done with my Magic Mouse. Aw, snap - the battery is flat. I plug it in and get up and find another minute's displacement activity. Then I can sit down and get to work... except, it has only had a few minute's charge so the same thing happens tomorrow, or the day after.

- I sit down to get some work done with my Logitech MX Master. Aw, snap - the battery is flat. I grab the lead, plug it into the USB port and, because Logitech put some attention to detail into where the cable plugs in, get right on with work. After the minor inconvenience of working with, effectively, a wired mouse for an hour or so, the batteries are brim full, I can unplug and forget about charging and wires for a couple of weeks.

- I get organised, and when I've finished using my iPad and Pencil for the day decide to put them both on charge while I sleep. I get my iPad charger, plug it in, take my Pencil and, uh, oh, hold on.. fish out another Lightning power supply and find the fiddly little gender changer so I can plug it into the cable (why wasn't that built into the cap?) If only the iPad Pro had some sort of magnetic charge connector, so you could charge a keyboard or stylus at the same time... what? it does? but the Pencil doesn't use it? Even though the pencil and the Smart Connector were launched at the same time? So, surely, the Smart Keyboard comes with some sort of holder that charges the Pencil... no? Magical!

Note that we're talking about attention to detail here - not just does it work? If I buy a cheap'n'cheerful PC/Android/whatever device I expect it to work and be usable. If I buy a premium-priced Apple product (Apple who like to make $300 coffee-table books bragging about their design genius) I expect it to show attention to detail.



If I buy a MacBook Pro with soldered-in RAM, soldered-in SSD then, in "a few years" it'll be landfill because new machines will be out with more RAM, cheap 2TB SSDs or super-fast Optane (or NotInventedYet) storage, Thunderbolt 4 with DisplayPort 1.4 (no more kludgey virtual-MST for 5k displays), USB4.0 etc.

Until then, I've got a shedload of investment in old-fangled peripherals which I don't/can't replace right now - including a perfectly good Apple LED Cinema Display at work (not mine) with no currently available USB-C to MiniDisplayPort adapter* (let alone MagSafe to USB-C so I can use it to charge).

(* No, the no-name one from various suppliers on Amazon has numerous reviews saying it doesn't work. Apple's TB3-TB2 adapter doesn't support DisplayPort. The Hyper one is "not currently available" nor is the $280 OWC thunderbolt dock. Only solution seems to be a double-dongle - USB-C to DisplayPort to MiniDisplayPort - assuming that works. Yessir, that's attention to detail).

I guess everyone has their own work flows.

I charge my Magic Mouse overnight. Lasts around a month. Job done

iPad Pro and pencil. Charge the pencil for 30 seconds when switching it on. Good for a day. Done

 

[5105973]

"The rationale? If engineers had to adjust their gait while entering the building, they risked distraction from their work, according to a former construction manager."

This is one of the most inane - asinine, fatuous, vapid, and all the other synonyms for silly - things I've seen in a while. People have been walking through doors since cavemen installed them to keep out Saturday morning Jehovah's Witness disciples from disturbing cartoon time.

Oh thank heavens I finished my coffee before reading this post. I'm still chuckling.

Anyway, I admire their dedication to a certain aesthetic. However, I worry that they argued with experienced structural engineers and contractors to achieve it, for it's almost a certainty that whoever was being such a priss about the "specifications" is neither a structural engineer nor a contractor in the building trade.

Speaking of this aesthetic, as lovely as it is, and as much as I love architecture that incorporates a courtyard and would dearly love to see the finished building in person, my mind can't help but go in this direction whenever I see pictures of the new Apple HQ

 

[69Mustang]

Which is why we shouldn't lend any credence to an anonymous quote. This is buzzfeed level clickbait nonsense.

Then what you seem to be saying is everything in the article should be discounted as click bait since there's only one attributable quote in it's entirety.

 

[vvs14]

So this is what the 100k+ employees are doing!

Yes... They work on their usual stuff from 8 am to 12 pm. Then they have lunch. Then they put on the yellow construction helmet and start working on the building construction.

 

[monstruo]

Gosh! Now, we get it why apple products are so lacklustre. Everyone is so caught up with the campus!

 

[Glideslope]

Perhaps Jony and Newson have been overseeing more than realized. Sounds like their OCD. Would explain the lack of Hardware Movement over the past 2 years?

 

[NT1440]

Then what you seem to be saying is everything in the article should be discounted as click bait since there's only one attributable quote in it's entirety.

No, what I'm explicitly saying is the unsourced clearly-meant-to-illicit-the-exact-kind-of-response-you-posted quote should be disregarded without anything else to back it up.

That little quote is what we call a "narrative-shaper" which people like you that already have a bone to pick will latch onto and write about online (as you did) so that some other clickbait "news" source can post headlines like "You'll never believe the insane demands Apple has made...click here for more" once a certain amount of buzz has been generated online.

^That is how "click" based news works online these days.

 

[norbinhouston]

Huge buildings like these are very complex to begin with. Sometimes, a singular vision is needed to keep everything in order. I'm afraid Apple doesn't have that. Its more design by committee now.

 

[big-ted]

No thanks.

Go on, be brave and join the rest of the planet

 

[NT1440]

Huge buildings like these are very complex to begin with. Sometimes, a singular vision is needed to keep everything in order. I'm afraid Apple doesn't have that. Its more design by committee now.

So which is it? Is Cook and Ive's control over the design process dictatorial as everyone here always complains about "thinness" or is it a committee designing these things?

 

[bobenhaus]

I hate to go to the wrong person or location and had to walk all the way around to get to the correct location. lol

 

[69Mustang]

No, what I'm explicitly saying is the unsourced clearly-meant-to-illicit-the-exact-kind-of-response-you-posted quote should be disregarded without anything else to back it up.

That little quote is what we call a "narrative-shaper" which people like you that already have a bone to pick will latch onto and write about online (as you did) so that some other clickbait "news" source can post headlines like "You'll never believe the insane demands Apple has made...click here for more" once a certain amount of buzz has been generated online.

^That is how "click" based news works online these days.

So which part of the article should believed? The no vents or pipes reflected? 30 pages on special wood? Super tight tolerances? Flat doorways? Door handle anecdote?
The narrative was already shaped: fanatical attention to detail. It's even in the title of the article. What I commented on was one of the supporting pieces of evidence of the fanatical attention to detail. The vents/pipes, the wood, the tolerances, the doorways, and door handles are all pieces of evidence to support the narrative of fanatical attention to detail. Nothing else in the article has anything to back it up either. So I ask again, should everything be discounted as click bait?

 

[LizKat]

f only they had the same attention to detail for their own products.

I came here to post this exact sentence.

I laughed out loud when I hit these two remarks, since I came here to post, after reading this interesting piece, that I realized why the stuff I've got from Apple since the 80s "just works" for this human being. In particular I've had great experiences with the phones and the laptops. And the work Apple has brought to us in the way of human interface with computers over the decades is just astounding. I'm not surprised if there are armies of obsessed designers, engineers, developers and QA mavens behind the scenes. They deserve a working environment that complements their own dedication if you ask me.

I'll never forget booting my 512k for the first time on the kitchen table, wrappings and box strewn around me, and seeing that smiling Mac face. That thing still works and I still remember awe over MacPaint.

Long may Apple keep obsessing over details. It's why the iPhone (an SE at the moment) and their laptops (MBPs now) are still my choice over more inexpensive options. And for the moments when something's gone awry, the experiences I've had with customer service using AppleCare and now AppleCare+ make those products more than worth the cost. Living in the boondocks means I've experienced amazingly short turnarounds for shipped-in diagnosis and repair with no more effort than point, click, pop the thing into a box Apple sent me, call the courier and sign for the thing when it comes back.

Above all I appreciate Apple's willingness to collect input on its stuff from end users, everything from public beta to provision for formal feedback. I'm not suprised about that really, but I'm grateful.

[ now if Apple would just obsess over letting iTunes do all that it used to provide for those with an obsession for editing multiple playlists at once -- and yes, I have definitely put that into feedback ]