Steve Jobs Theater given closeup in latest Apple Park drone footage
One of the last sets of drone footage while Apple Park is still under construction highlights the ever-growing landscaping taking place, and a close-up of the uncovered Steve Jobs Theater.
The interior of the "spaceship" greenery looks to be near complete. A large portion of the heavy equipment has been removed from the site, with only one crane remaining out of the eight seen in previous videos.
Some of the climate controls appear to be functional, with fans spinning. While some reports claim that there are workers in Apple Park now, nothing other than functional climate control systems suggests that.
On Feb. 22, Apple officially named the "spaceship" campus under construction. The entire facility is now called "Apple Park," with the 20-foot tall and 165 foot in diameter glass auditorium honoring one of the founders of the company and named the "Steve Jobs Theater."
Before the massive construction effort started, the area was Hewlett Packard's land, and was essentially completely paved over. Apple's demand for trees is reportedly putting pressure on the local market, forcing contractors to source from outside California. The final tree count is expected to approach 9,000, with apple, apricot, cherry, and persimmon trees dotting the landscape.
An environmentally-friendly design was paramount to Jobs's vision, and Apple's related Phase 2 project adds additional workspace adjacent to the main headquarters, and includes a small data center powered by on-site the on-site solar farm, fuel cells, and other sources of renewable energy.
A new micro-grid installed on the campus is reportedly capable of delivering 17 megawatts of power from solar alone, and handling about 75 percent of the facility's power requirements. The solar installation is supplemented by Bloom Energy-provided fuel cells, similar to those installed at the North Carolina data center.
The interior of the "spaceship" greenery looks to be near complete. A large portion of the heavy equipment has been removed from the site, with only one crane remaining out of the eight seen in previous videos.
Some of the climate controls appear to be functional, with fans spinning. While some reports claim that there are workers in Apple Park now, nothing other than functional climate control systems suggests that.
On Feb. 22, Apple officially named the "spaceship" campus under construction. The entire facility is now called "Apple Park," with the 20-foot tall and 165 foot in diameter glass auditorium honoring one of the founders of the company and named the "Steve Jobs Theater."
Before the massive construction effort started, the area was Hewlett Packard's land, and was essentially completely paved over. Apple's demand for trees is reportedly putting pressure on the local market, forcing contractors to source from outside California. The final tree count is expected to approach 9,000, with apple, apricot, cherry, and persimmon trees dotting the landscape.
An environmentally-friendly design was paramount to Jobs's vision, and Apple's related Phase 2 project adds additional workspace adjacent to the main headquarters, and includes a small data center powered by on-site the on-site solar farm, fuel cells, and other sources of renewable energy.
A new micro-grid installed on the campus is reportedly capable of delivering 17 megawatts of power from solar alone, and handling about 75 percent of the facility's power requirements. The solar installation is supplemented by Bloom Energy-provided fuel cells, similar to those installed at the North Carolina data center.
Comments
1. Shoot some video.
Most, if not all of these drone videos look like they're taken early on Sunday mornings, judging by the traffic on adjoining streets. Unless someone who lives nearby can state that there are thousands of cars there during workdays or someone who works at Apple can unequivocally state that people have indeed moved in, I'm inclined to believe that no one is working there yet. It's hard for me to believe that once employees start moving in that it wouldn't become both obvious and public. I predicted many times that the building(s) wouldn't be occupied until late this year when people predicted early 2018 move-in. And once move-in starts, I predict it will take several months for everyone to move in, based on my experience with corporate moves. At one company I worked for, it took many weeks to move just 500 employees. Although people move with far less paper than workers of years ago and many will probably just walk in with a laptop, programmers will have reference books, marketing will have all kinds of materials and a fair number will have MacPros and/or multiple monitors to move. It will take some time. There's only so many moving trucks that Apple will be able to harness at one time and most corporate moves happen over weekends.
Note that in the spaceship, there still appears to be items placed against the windows to cover them and hide the interior from view. I find it hard to believe those are anything but temporary. When those come down, we'll know people are working there. Also when we see security or receptionists in the main lobby. I think they can open even if the interior courtyard isn't complete, although if I was an employee who had to attend a meeting 180 degrees away from me, I'd probably be pissed. That's going to be a long walk - I estimate it as almost 10 blocks (based on a building diameter of 1600 feet). But even when it's open, walking directly across the courtyard would be over 6 blocks each way. Well...there might be a lot of lost productivity, but everyone should be in pretty good physical shape for all that walking.
There's no reason why Apple can't release the iPhone in late Sept, early Oct. It looks like they are making significant progress on the theatre and the walking paths leading up to it. Less than a month go, all of the walking paths leading up to the theatre were just dirt.
I guess if anything, people will complain of the late announcement, but this also buys Apple a couple more weeks to get more inventory stocked up before shipping.
You seriously would want to sit in a cubical all day? Seriously!!!
2) Is the ring surrounding the Steve Jobs Theater made of WOPC?
You need some human blinkers.
Those are very different things. It will take a long time to move thousands of people for every department. The R&D building—which is part of Apple Park—already has people in it, and I think it's a certainty that security and IT have been working in the "spaceship" building for all of this year, if not longer, to get the networking, servers, security doors, and all the testing done so that other teams, like accounting and marketing can eventually move in. IOW: There's a lot of overlap between Apple employees working onsite and construction taking place for such a massive project.
We have no idea what challenges and goals (i.e.: reasons) Apple may have that could push up or push back a release. We've seen the iPhone move from a Summer to an Autumn release, as well as many recent projects get announced in Autumn and not released until Winter. We simply can't know.