Apple to spend $304M on new Austin, Tex., campus, creating 3600 new jobs - Page 2

Yup, Austin is a good city. I'll give you that much. Texas is very big and Texas stereotypes don't apply everywhere.

I just think it's funny that California is being attacked for the very qualities that made it Apple's birthplace.

HAH!

Sir, you have officially made my day with that quote. Long live the South

I'm from Georgia, but I currently live in Los Angeles. As a small business owner, from my point of view, a key problem with California is the state has made it almost prohibitively costly to run a business here. Everything is more expensive. Taxes are high, business fees are high, the taxes make day-to-day expenses high (gas among them). And yet the state is broke. So they start looking for other revenue streams and things like police ticketing rises, fees get higher - more ways to get blood from the stone.

Frankly, I'm looking to relocate to a different state, and (by anecdotal evidence I admit) I see a lot of others doing the same and for the same reasons. Especially in this age its gotten a lot easier to run a business from just about anywhere, so less expensive places start to look a lot more viable.

Not sure I'm any the wiser sorry lol. You mentioned income taxes but what about corporate taxes. I presume Apple pays company tax to the US government as a percentage of their profits? Do they also pay company tax to the state where the subsidiary is located?

Actually, California is not super liberal and never was. It's the state that had Nixon, Reagan, and Arnold for governors. It's the state of Proposition 13, limiting property taxes to trivial amounts, which is the main cause of its fiscal troubles.

What is liberal is LA, the San Francisco area, and the Valley, and this is entirely related to the talent ecosystem found there.

Mark Zuckerberg would not have moved to Texas to develop Facebook unless he was high on crack, and probably not even then. All the low cost, union free, guns & prayer "advantages" from Texas would not have made up for his inability to get the talent and connections he needed to develop. New companies do appear and prosper in California. It's just that they are not companies that find competitiveness in low-cost labor or the ability to pollute freely.

$21 million is peanuts. Apple and so many other IT companies have billions invested in Austin. Accounting and other Support divisions are down in Austin.

If they didn't have the Accounting/ Finance and Support down there I'm sure Apple would have been looking around for another place to expand.

California is Apple's birthplace because Paul Jobs decided to buy a home there.

"Expanding customer service support"

They need it.

In seriousness, I'm glad that Apple is investing in my alma mater city.

Austin is a FANTASTIC city to invest. Plenty of highly motivated work force, a true college "town" plus many connections to the people in power.

The people are very laid back and welcoming to outsiders.

True southern hospitality.

Lots of people should come and visit.

Guaranteed you'll have a great time.

Also, lots of beautiful and intelligent women in the city. Married a local gal.

Apple already has a large customer service hub in the city.

How does a thread about Apple building a facility in Texas turn into a political discussion?

And because of the schooling that Steve Jobs received there. And because of the associations Jobs fell into with people like Steve Wozniak. And because they received funding from people who thought they had something valuable. And because HP was there. And because the Homebrew Computer Club was there. And because Stanford was there. And because Xerox PARC was there. And because the culture there was more than football and guns. So all those things played a role and in spite of Steve Jobs' particular genius, I believe one can make a case that Apple would not have happened, at least not in the form that it did happen, if Apple had not been located in that area of California.

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. And could you take about 10 million other migrants with you?


This is only of consequence to people whose world view is reality based.


Texas is the ideal place for those.

Yes. Because if Steve had been born in Texas there would probably be no Apple computer.

You must be new here.

You are right. Just like people would not have happened if the Earth didn't form in the habitable zone around the sun. Good luck makes things happen.

sell off his assets and give the money back to his shareholders?

With Apple picking up the real estate pieces :-)

Here in Austin (yes I live here) we don't really recognize East Texas as part of our ecosystem. Come to think of it, we don't really recognize Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, or El Paso either.

When someone asks me where I live I never say "Texas". "Austin" is all that's normally needed. (or "ATX" if they are young/hip)

I answered that. Here's my original post:

There's no such thing as a company tax in the U.S. There is a corporate income tax at the Federal level and in most states at the state level (Delaware is an exception with no corporate income taxes so many companies choose to incorporate there). This tax is often graduated (that is, the first $X of income is taxed at one rate and then as the income goes higher, the rate goes higher).

For the Federal corporate income tax, it doesn't matter what state it's in.

For the State corporate income tax, the income is taxed wherever that entity is incorporated. Apple Inc is incorporated in California, so the corporation's income is taxed in CA. However, there may be subsidiaries in different states. If so, then each subsidiary would be taxed on its income in that state. It is not uncommon for companies to have a separate subsidiary in each state in which they operate, but I have no idea whether Apple does that or not.

Somebody misinterpreted the news as a "move" of Apple to Texas and used this to attack California for being liberal.

I plead guilty to being unable to let that pass without reply. Sorry.

You are right, a long-haired India-travelling Zen Budhist LSD-using vegetarian hippie college dropout like Jobs would have done real well in Texas. Either he would have grown up as a totally different person, or he would have left as soon as he could, hopefully before being incarcerated or shot.

Austin is more like the west coast than like the rest of Texas... Where young people go to retire, haha.

It isn't spending givernment money when it is given in the form of tax credits or rebates. If Apple chooses to build this elsewhere and then the tax revenue will not come to Texas at all. What Texas is really saying is we'll take less of your money if you come here.

Yeah, and then others attacked Texas for being conservative.

Both views are really not very insightful. Silicon Valley has advantages and disadvantages for businesses like Apple and so does Austin. None of them has all that much to do with state-level and national-level politics, or with the eternal "conservative" vs. "liberal" narratives, attacks, and defenses. Whether the governor is Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown or Rick "Pointy Boots" Perry, they are not stupid, they will do what they need to to attract one of the top (if not THE top) corporations in America to open new facilities in their state. And, both areas have good talent and a good climate for fostering that talent.

So quit the stupid political debates and get back to Apple the company. Please.

Well "the west coast" is a pretty big place. When I compare Austin to other places, I say it's like Boulder or the Portland/Beaverton axis. College town, state capitol, liberal/progressive, highly educated and young population, high tech bent. No wonder they nickname Austin "Silicon Gulch" and Portland/Beaverton "Silicon Forest".

I meant it in the exact way you are describing. I thought it was "Silicon Hills"?

I've heard it both ways. "Silicon Hills" is probably more accurate since Austin on the west side is hilly (gateway to the Texas Hill Country). Barton Creek is certainly gulch-like in many spots along the hike/bike trail, but that's a much smaller feature topographically speaking than the hills.

Glad you brought that up, (finally, someone!) because the psychedelic culture around Palo Alto and Stanford had everything to do with the early conceptions of the PERSONAL computer, just as much as the engineering reservoir of all the companies like Xerox and HP that were resistant to the PERSONAL computer.

It wasn't the liberal consciousness so much as the liberated consciousness that conceived of the idea of mind amplification through personal electronic technology. Liberated by LSD, primarily, along with a lot of pot. Another government innovation-support program, because the CIA was the first supplier of acid to the crucial innovators like Ken Kesey and Stuart Brand. Then Steve got some later trickle down, and the rest is history, and our living present.

What the Dormouse Said by Markoff is the best source that I know of on the personal computer revolution from the psychotropic point of view. It's all in there, and you left-brain right-wing nuts had better deal with it. California is owed a huge debt by the world, just like we owe something to Athens and Genoa and so on.

By the way, Steve Jobs might have been able to live in Austin, out of all of Texas, because it was as liberated as Palo Alto back in the day, so I'm told. But he wouldn't have been able to draw on the "straight" engineering culture around Stanford.

Edit: And it was the psychedelic consciousness that gave rise to the other meme complex that so defines California, which the left-brain right-wing nuts love to hate, namely global environmental awareness. This was most typified in the 60s by Stuart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, which Steve quotes in his commencement speech: stay hungry, stay foolish. A completely psychedelic idea, and it defines Apple more than many people realize.

I didn't mention anything about Steve living in Texas.

This made me laugh. Thank you.

You typically build things close to were the potential work force somewhat already exists not in nowheresville where nothing exists.

I lived in Texas my whole life and pretty much disagree with everything you said. I moved to California to change jobs a year ago and find it to be full of narrow minded, belligerent people irrationally afraid of plastic shopping bags. Oh yeah, and it's full of shitty Asian women drivers. I've been subjected to a smog cloud hanging above my city, panhandlers constantly asking me for a handout, and visual overload thanks to signs that constantly remind me that anything I eat, drink, touch, smell, or taste is known to the state of California (though apparently nobody else) to cause cancer. Maybe. At least it did in a lab rat somewhere. All made possible by the best state government that money can buy. Which is impressive, considering California has the highest (and most repressive) state income taxes in the country and still manages to come up more than a few dollars short every year.

Point being, everyone's experience is different. Your milage may vary. And yes, I know narrow-minded, belligerent people in Texas, just like I know nice, polite people in California. I've also been subjected to shitty Asian women drivers in Houston and Dallas. California has an amazing wine industry. Texas has Shiner Bock (no one likes you, Lone Star...). California has miles of beautiful coastline. Texas has miles of flat land that gives you a spectacular view of the sunrise, sunset and stars. Texas has the Lone Star on its flag, California has a bear on its flag! Texas has Whataburger, California has In-N-Out. California has Apple. Texas has Apple. Seems like both places are pretty bitchin' to me.

I'm just curious. What about it makes it so unbearable? What has happened to you that you have to just leave? I've lived here 45 years and I still think it's a great place to live. I've changed careers and went from one field to another without much effort or hit to my bottom line.

Also, can you show me a list of all these companies fleeing the state and the reasons for it? I'm just curious.

crofl

heard of Intel, IBM, AMD for processors? a lot of their designs right here in Austin

Dell of course was founded here

Texas Instruments and Samsung and Motorola (Freescale) also have huge presences here. National Instruments is here, MCC is here.

Software development? Are ya kiddin? Austin alone has Tivoli (now part of IBM), Origin Systems, IBM itself, Sybase, Trilogy, Winternals, Pervasive, Vignette, Motive, Denali, United Devices, BMC, NCsoft, ....... and new startups all the time.

But your point was that Apple was born in California because Steve happened to be there by chance, meaning that it could have been created anywhere else Steve would have grown up.

My point is that this is flat wrong. Every company, every human group of whatever nature, is a function of a time, a place, and a culture. Apple especially had to happen in California, and the company is well aware of this.

Those companies are precisely my point. Lots of smart semiconductor engineers in Texas. But what happened? TI treated every product it created as a commodity and quickly collapsed prices. Remember when they manufactured watches? Dell is the same way. Compaq was doing badly and got bought. All the software you mention is enterprise software, and nothing is slower moving in terms of innovation than the enterprise.

I did not say, would never say, that Texan professionals are dumb. I am saying the culture there is more rigid and thus at a disadvantage to California's when it comes to creating the sorts of breakthrough products Apple does.

Cisco Systems does switch dev, Intel, Oracle (formerly Sun), AT&T Labs, Netspeed (DSL pioneers now owned by Cisco), Tipping Point (now part of HP), NetQOS (now part of CA)

And to say Compaq didn't innovate? Rod and his friends changed the course of the PC - little guy going up against the Big Blue giant. I like it that Origin systems is Enterprise too. Look, just cause we all played Wing Commander at work doesn't mean it's Enterprise software.

Yeah, California isn't really into that Enterprise stuff. HP, Oracle, Sun, Cisco, 3Com, NetApp, BEA, Amdahl, Veritas, Tibco, VeriSign, VMware, IBM..... really not that important.

Yep, not much innovation in the enterprise. Slow moving. No competition. Not much profit and revenue to be had. IBM+HP+Oracle+EMC = about $600B of market cap. And beating each others' brains in every day. IBM with the most patents worldwide for many years now. Oh and cloud computing's not coming on strong... salesforce.com another Enterprise CA company.

Look, for chrisssake, Apple is a unique entity, literally unprecedented in the technology business world's history. You can't make generalizations like you are doing without looking dumb.

Also, and I don't know why I didn't think of this before, saying "Texas has an authoritarian culture" just proves that you know zip about Texas. The last thing any Texan from anywhere in Texas' history would claim is that they bow to authority. Texas is the home of the cowboy way, and the independent Texas Republic.

I did not say or imply Steve could have created Apple anywhere he grew up. You are criticizing your own hidden meanings.

But you implied that Apple being in California was an accident, whether you meant to or not.

Not true, not an accident. Alonso is right about that.

Steve Jobs met Steve Wozniak when fellow Homestead High School student, Bill Fernandez, introduced them to each other. In my opinion Steve Jobs would not have met Woz and there would have been no Apple at all if Paul Jobs had not bought a home where he did. Meeting Woz at a certain moment in history, just before the personal computer revolution, gave Steve Jobs the world-wide recognition and finances to fully utilize his talents to build companies like Apple, NeXT and Pixar.

Right, luck and circumstance and Woz and all. But what attracted Paul Jobs to California? And what was it about Woz and Jobs that made THEM among the few chief architects of the personal computer? They and others around them MADE the personal computer revolution happen, it didn't just happen. And let's not forget the government contracts that made Silicon Valley a viable venture in the early days.