Latest Apple Park drone video shows completed Steve Jobs Theater ahead of Sept. 12 event
Exactly one week ahead of Apple's Sept. 12 special event, drone pilot Duncan Sinfield takes to the skies to offer one last look at Apple Park before the company is expected to hold its first ever product unveiling at the campus's Steve Jobs Theater.
Construction is steadily progressing at Apple Park in Cupertino, with landscaping changes being surprisingly noticeable considering Sinfield's latest flyover comes less than two weeks after his last highlight reel hit YouTube late last month.
This week's video shows a nearly complete main "spaceship" structure, with no sign of scaffolding or machinery on the building's exterior. Desks can be seen in some windows, as well as seating in common areas and the central cafeteria. Landscaping work is also nearly finished inside the main ring. It appears contractors have in the last week removed the protective shielding from a small pond that will sit among a grove of local fruit trees in the ring's courtyard.
Standing on a man-made hill near the circular office building is the Steve Jobs Theater, where Apple plans to hold next week's special event. As seen in the clip, construction crews have largely vacated the area, leaving employees to mill in and around the enclosed glass foyer. Inside, underneath the massive carbon fiber canopy, a wide open space is flanked by two curved staircases leading down into the 1,000-seat theater below.
Apple is slated to unveil a slew of new devices at the Steve Jobs Theater next week, including a flagship "iPhone 8," an LTE Apple Watch and fifth-generation Apple TV with 4K HDR capabilities.
AppleInsider will be at Apple Park on Tuesday, Sept. 12, with live coverage of the event.
Construction is steadily progressing at Apple Park in Cupertino, with landscaping changes being surprisingly noticeable considering Sinfield's latest flyover comes less than two weeks after his last highlight reel hit YouTube late last month.
This week's video shows a nearly complete main "spaceship" structure, with no sign of scaffolding or machinery on the building's exterior. Desks can be seen in some windows, as well as seating in common areas and the central cafeteria. Landscaping work is also nearly finished inside the main ring. It appears contractors have in the last week removed the protective shielding from a small pond that will sit among a grove of local fruit trees in the ring's courtyard.
Standing on a man-made hill near the circular office building is the Steve Jobs Theater, where Apple plans to hold next week's special event. As seen in the clip, construction crews have largely vacated the area, leaving employees to mill in and around the enclosed glass foyer. Inside, underneath the massive carbon fiber canopy, a wide open space is flanked by two curved staircases leading down into the 1,000-seat theater below.
Apple is slated to unveil a slew of new devices at the Steve Jobs Theater next week, including a flagship "iPhone 8," an LTE Apple Watch and fifth-generation Apple TV with 4K HDR capabilities.
AppleInsider will be at Apple Park on Tuesday, Sept. 12, with live coverage of the event.
Comments
Considering California is 163,696 sq miles, that's a foolish statement. A geographic location has to be relatively small for its entire area to be "shit." Today Cupertino has a PM of 2.5 and AQI of 54, which only gets it a moderate rating. So far, for 2017, it's never gotten below moderate and has had a Good rating 97.33% of the time.
Now consider that over 50% of CA is protected land and you have a lot nature perseveres cleaning the air than in many other heavily industrialized states. Of course, we have forest fires that will add pollutants in certain areas from time to time, but what do you expect—pave over the entire Sierra Nevadas?
Having said that I wonder how this works out inside and in every day life. If it would function as a museum I'd say any day. As offices I'm curious. People are generally messy compared to the cleanliness of the architecture (and sometimes beyond comparison), also psychologically they tend to give their working space a "home"like touch. I'm curious whether this "entropy" has been considered/fits into the concept, or whether Jony will patrol the offices saying "you're using it wrong" to staff daring to put up a picture frame on the desk, or putting a post it up against a wall
They aren't required to make it one or the other, and it's clearly going to be the primary lobby before the event, but I suspect downstairs may be too. The temporary storage area is probably where the tables or cases with products will be stored and then set up during the show so the media can see it immediately afterwards.
Perhaps controlling the light downstairs is the better option, and taking items up those two elevators may be be cumbersome since they aren't the large service elevators that located behind the stage. In fact, their circle design makes me assume they are glass. Also not the locations of the bathrooms with their dual access from the exhibit space and the auditorium, with what I assume will be an easy method for blocking access back into the exhibit area while not removing sufficient exit points in case of an emergency.
The wildfires also have a lot to do with it, almost 1/4 of the years are now public health hazards with smoky air. Yes, global warming is real and it's killing the air, water, environment, everything. Just a few days ago SF had the hottest temperature ever on record at over 100 degrees. It's getting worse every year.
But I digress, the Steve Jobs theatre is beautiful. Albeit.. much more tiny than the Macworld presentations I was used to at Moscone (and Javits.. and before that, Boston).
edit: nevermind.. the poster above attached a map that appears to be underground, interesting, will be fun to watch on Tuesday.
The size of the roof probably doesn't matter as much as the way that it is attached to the rest of the building. They are probably using some sort of expansion joint system if they deem that the roof would expand that much. But if the thermal expansion of the roof isn't that much, they might have a more conventional method of securing the roof to the structure.
I'm not even convinced that the roof needs to be tightly sealed to the structure. It's not a space that will be used every day, plus the theater is underground and hot air rises. It actually might be better off having some gaps between the roof and the structure to let some of the hot air escape naturally.
In fact, Apple could simply set up the barricade/fence where the dotted line is in the floor plans. That would allow Apple employees in the midst of setup to access the area freely as well as the storage area in the back as well as the meeting rooms ("whisper suites") while still allowing free access by guests to use the twin elevators and restrooms.
From an event management perspective, someone clearly put some thought into the site design. Not so dumb.
So how do trucks get out of the inner landscaped area now? Drive through the cafeteria? (Take the apart and carry out???)
Seriously though, four things:
1 thanks for the schematics soli.
2 glass lifts!
3 this will become real popular with sci fi movie makers
4 there seems to a shortage of the 'bollards of peace' in front of all that glass.
Wildfires have absolutely nothing to do with global warming, they have occurred since the arrival of plant life on the planet. Further a temperature of 100 degrees is nothing considering where SF is located, a simple shift in the wind would bring in much heat from the deserts. You say it is getting worse every year but local issues don't prove a theory right or wrong. The fact is where I live the summers have been rather mild compared to what we might have seen a couple of decades ago.
I only mention this because people seem to freak out every time something unusual happens. At the very moment we have people blaming the hurricane in Texas on global warming forgetting completely that we have had almost a decade of very minor storm before the Texas event. If one want to use high temperatures or major storms as evidence of global warming then they really need to consider perspective. It is a question of what has happened over realistic time frames not the events of one day that will tell use what is happening with the climate.
I know others have said it before, but I'd love for Apple to release a documentary on the brainstorming, design/engineering/planning, and construction. Then put it on iTunes. I'd love to know how they engineered the natural cooling + renewable energy budget and planning.