mpantone

randominternetperson said:

I wonder what's so "historic" about that barn.

A quick Internet search led me to several articles that explain it:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/12/29/apple-to-keep-century-old-historic-barn-on-campus-2-grounds
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/12/29/apple-campus-2-historic-barn/
http://www.mercurynews.com/2014/12/26/apple-to-save-historic-barn-on-site-of-new-cupertino-campus

Basically, it's a barn that has been on the property for a century. Steve wanted to keep it to pay tribute to the area's rich agricultural history.

randominternetperson said:

Anyone know what the giant tower machine with "Gartner" branding is at the 3:18 mark in the video.  Surely it's not the Gartner of IT advisory services fame/infamy.  But what's it for?

Gartner KG is a German-based transportation company. They are assisting in the transportation and installation of the curved glass panels that were manufactured by sedak GmbH & Co. KG (a.k.a. Seele), based in Bavaria, Germany.

robotstorm said:

mpantone said:

Soli said:

• Will they use sod or seed for the grass? Seems like they'll need a few football fields of sod or a dump truck of seed.

My guess it'll be sod, but not until about November. California is headed into their dry season.

You could sod now, but you'd have to irrigate a lot.

Seeding makes zero sense in late April/early May for the SF Bay Area.

Why not use ground cover like ivy or vinca instead of grass? Then they wouldn't need a team of people mowing & maintaining it all the time. 

Sure, there are other ground covers like ice plant or the two you mentioned. However, you can sit on grass. One of the stated goals of Apple Park is to be an environment that is conducive to nurturing inspiration and collaboration. It's less comfortable to sit in ivy or ice plant.

There are different varieties of grass, some are more drought tolerant than others, it doesn't need to be Kentucky Blue or some other water-loving, high-maintenance variety.

paul turner said:

Cubicles: arghhhhhhhh 
Cubicle "if you put a human being inside a cage, what kind of behavoir do you really think you are going to get?"

The monotonous atmosphere: Jennifer Eiber, who spent nearly a decade working in a cubicle before leaving her corporate jobs to become a freelance writer, said it's hard to be creative in that type of setting.

"There's nothing that sucks the soul out of your life's work then repeatedly sitting in the exact same environment day after day," Eiber said. "It's a challenge to whip up ideas when staring at the same windowless, no-natural-light box every day."

As far as I know, some of history's greatest geniuses often created their best works in relatively stable environments: Da Vinci, Einstein, Beethoven, Mozart, Picasso, Rembrandt, James Joyce, etc. This is even more the case for ancient times, since mobility was extremely limited.

There are tons of Pulitzer Prize-winning authors who wrote in the same place for years/decades.

So I'd say that it really depends on the person. 

And my conclusion is that no generalization can be applied to history's greatest creators. 

flootist said:

Very much agreed. It's still science fiction, don't look for fully-autonomous cars anytime soon. 

You are wrong. Singapore has driverless taxis.

This technology is already rolling out in other places in the world. California and the USA is not the leader.

In the same way, California is still fumbling about trying to get High Speed Rail going and quite a few Internet commenters seem to think this is some groundbreaking project. Nope, Japan started 120mph bullet train service in 1965, over five decades ago.