Latest Apple headquarters drone video depicts carbon fiber auditorium roof, solar installations
While a company move-in date has not yet been established, the latest drone flight footage from the construction site shows a near-complete solar installation on several structures including the main headquarters, and depicts the largest carbon fiber roof in the world on the auditorium.
The underground auditorium was previously not enclosed all the way around, but is now nearly completely clad. The largest carbon fiber roof in the world has been uncovered, and is shown in the video.
Apple's main research and development building appears functionally complete from the exterior, with a full set of HVAC equipment installed for the first time. Significant progress on the Tantau Avenue research suite is shown as well.
The 20,000 car main parking structure appears to be complete with a full solar installation adorning the roof.
The main "spaceship" headquarters is completely covered in glass panels, and the solar assemblies on the roof also appears complete. Additionally, adjacent landscaping is being fleshed out
While a great deal of work remains on the entire campus, a large amount of work has been done on landscaping, and the area in the center of the "spaceship" since the last video in October, and this most recent one. the Structures in interior of donut underway, much work remains
In 2011, Steve Jobs announced the project to the world, saying over 12,000 employees would work in the 2.8-million-square-foot spaceship-styled structure. Edible landscaping, walking paths, and other "green" measures are being implemented during construction, to minimize the overall impact the facility makes on the environment.
Apple's related Phase 2 project adds additional workspace adjacent to the main headquarters, and includes a renewable energy-powered small data center.
A new micro-grid installed on the campus is reportedly capable of handling about 75 percent of the facility's power requirements during work hours, supplemented by Bloom Energy-provided fuel cells. Bloom Energy provided similar cells to Apple previously for use at the North Carolina data center.
The City of Cupertino recently announced delays for the Campus 2 project, indicating that main construction won't be done until the beginning of 2017, and that landscaping won't be finished until the second quarter of next year.
The underground auditorium was previously not enclosed all the way around, but is now nearly completely clad. The largest carbon fiber roof in the world has been uncovered, and is shown in the video.
Apple's main research and development building appears functionally complete from the exterior, with a full set of HVAC equipment installed for the first time. Significant progress on the Tantau Avenue research suite is shown as well.
The 20,000 car main parking structure appears to be complete with a full solar installation adorning the roof.
The main "spaceship" headquarters is completely covered in glass panels, and the solar assemblies on the roof also appears complete. Additionally, adjacent landscaping is being fleshed out
While a great deal of work remains on the entire campus, a large amount of work has been done on landscaping, and the area in the center of the "spaceship" since the last video in October, and this most recent one. the Structures in interior of donut underway, much work remains
In 2011, Steve Jobs announced the project to the world, saying over 12,000 employees would work in the 2.8-million-square-foot spaceship-styled structure. Edible landscaping, walking paths, and other "green" measures are being implemented during construction, to minimize the overall impact the facility makes on the environment.
Apple's related Phase 2 project adds additional workspace adjacent to the main headquarters, and includes a renewable energy-powered small data center.
A new micro-grid installed on the campus is reportedly capable of handling about 75 percent of the facility's power requirements during work hours, supplemented by Bloom Energy-provided fuel cells. Bloom Energy provided similar cells to Apple previously for use at the North Carolina data center.
The City of Cupertino recently announced delays for the Campus 2 project, indicating that main construction won't be done until the beginning of 2017, and that landscaping won't be finished until the second quarter of next year.
Comments
It kinda irks me how on other sites people whine and complain about how this is a waste of money and its taking resources away from Apple. This is why they aren't releasing anything, its way over budget, etc. This is complete and utter BS! This should be making Apple BETTER in the long haul. Its not taking any focus away from any team. Its not like the hardware team is sitting there designing something for the new campus, Apple has specific contractors and engineers for this. OS X isn't suffering because of this being built.
What it should do in the end is combine all of the software teams into one section of the building instead of spreading them out over a 2hr drive away sometimes. Put the hardware teams into another section where they can better collaborate on projects, and then since the software team is also in the same building, they can also include them for their important input instead of doing whatever it is they're doing now whether its FaceTime conferences or making team leads drive 1-2hrs to Cupertino and then drive 1-2hrs back, wasting half the day just driving.
I guess some people just don't get it. They want want want and don't care how it gets into their hands. They just want it and want it now. And it better be something they want when it comes out. Everyone knows how to run Apple better than Apple as always (even when Steve was there).
Too bad we can't see the inside. I'm sure the majority of the interior is already done.
Perovskite solar cell-ready? Oh no, they soldered these conventional ones to the roof!
Let's see what you can come up with.
But I think you're going way too far in dismissing all criticism of Apple's inability to get things done. Here's a nice analysis piece on the difficult issue facing Apple right now:
http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/11/27/13706776/apple-functional-divisional
While I don't want Apple to become GE, I also think that it is vitally important for Apple to figure out how to do more things at once. They're better at that now today than they were in 2007, but they need to improve even more. It's not an easy problem to solve, but pretending there's no problem guarantees no solution will be found.
Letting core assets of Apple languish and die off because they refuse to commit resources to serve their own customers (I refer to the pro market, specifically) is just unbelievably shortsighted.
Is this Apple's next HQ?
I think there are two big problems facing Apple:
1. Bottlenecks. If Jony Ive is trying to act like SJ and personally sign off on every product that goes out the door, then that's a huge bottleneck that limits the number of products Apple can sell. That might be what forced apple to cancel product lines that are good of the ecosystem, even if they are small (displays; TimeCapsule).
2. Lack of focus on customer needs. If Jony Ive is ignoring data on what Pro customers want in order to make Macs that meet his personal aesthetic preferences, then that contributes to Apple replacing the big honking Mac Pro tower that met the needs of a diverse group of pros with the little cylinder that meets the needs of a much narrower group of people but looks pretty.
Maybe Apple needs more of a matrix management structure, where there are orthogonal, overlapping lines of responsibility.
But whatever they come up with, they need to come up with something. Their current organization is having problems.
The advantage of the circular design it that they could have Wi-Fi towers in the center, reaching the entire circumference, and easily upgrade that as new tech comes out, instead of having hotspots physically wired into the building.
Some examples from the captions:
I know it's against the rules to point out simple typos and grammatical errors in forum comments, but what about the content that this entire discussion is about? I think it's important that we highlight when people are lazy in this world, and this video is an example, even though I'm very grateful for someone taking the time to create it. I just wish they spent an extra 5 minutes making sure it was done to a higher standard. Or am I just being picky to expect better?
Furthermore, Apple development over the last few years, with the possible exception of the Apple Watch, has been highly iterative. I often wonder what all those employees aside from those who fill the distribution channels are actually doing. I've seen all kinds of numbers about how many people Apple employs, but one from early 2016 claims 120,000 (I presume that's worldwide and includes retail).
Not that I ever truly believed Apple was really building a car, but that project seems pretty much dead. The Apple Watch certainly hasn't taken over the world. The iPhone obviously does very well, but when was the last time Apple added something to it that made a substantive difference? The OLED strip on the new MBPs is original and interesting, but everything else about the machine is iterative and it's way overpriced as well as being completely non-upgradable and pretty much non-repairable. And now Apple seems out of the monitor business and out of the router business and maybe out of the Mac mini and Pro tower business. Aside from minor upgrades, they seem to have abandoned the pro applications. Every time they touch the consumer applications, they seem to make them worse. They seem to constantly make small changes that are incredibly annoying, like a recent change to Safari so it no longer displays the size of images as it used to. In iOS, a recent upgrade to iTunes now orders Songs by artist instead of alphabetical by song title. What the fuck is the point of that? What idiot made that decision and who let them? Why do they constantly break things that were working?
I don't believe Watch sales are great, otherwise Apple would break them out. Pad sales seem slow. So really - what the hell is everyone working on, especially since they can't seem to advance the art until Intel gets their act together. While the word is that once the new building is complete, Apple is keeping the other campus (although supposedly getting rid of all the leased space around Cupertino), that probably means a substantial increase in head count.
So if a year from move-in, this results in a constantly flowing line of great new products, then everything will be fine. But if it means just more iteration of the existing product line, I think Apple will really have blown it and the very expensive new building would have been a waste (except as a giant tax deduction). I sincerely hope that will all that headcount, space and R&D facilities that Apple has a bunch of very big things up its sleeve that we haven't even thought of yet. I've always thought that 15 years from now, Apple would be an AI and Robotics company, but people usually think I'm nuts when I say that. But something must be going on, otherwise they're building an empty monument to a company that while still is very successful financially, has lost its mojo. And Apple cannot survive as a one product (iPhone) company.
Apple's other big Achilles heal is its arrogance. While I agree with the Jobs mantra that customers don't necessarily know what they want, Apple doesn't seem to listen to its customers at all. Apple may know better when it comes to UX and UI (although I think that's been inferior to the past in recent years), but customers understand their own workflow far better than Apple does. And this business of prioritizing form over function has to end and it won't until Ive decides to leave. Ive is like the anorexic girl who never thinks she's thin enough. I've been with Apple products since Apple's beginning, but I'm seriously thinking of buying a Windows laptop as my next machine. As much as I hate Windows, I simply can't see paying what it will cost me for a new topped out MBP when there are alternatives at half the price with pretty much the same components inside.