Apple Planning To Build Private Restaurant 234
First time accepted submitter a90Tj2P7 writes "Apple is building a 21,468 square foot private restaurant in Cupertino so employees can talk shop over lunch without being overheard. Apple's director of real estate facilities, Dan Wisenhunt, stated that: 'We like to provide a level of security so that people and employees can feel comfortable talking about their business, their research and whatever project they're engineering without fear of competition sort of overhearing their conversations.'"
Re:Next up... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I hope (Score:3, Interesting)
My guess is it'll be a mix of Japanese inspired cuisine (borderline overly-santized pretty food) and yippie (yuppie+hippie) food. I'm kidding about that, but really this sounds depressing to me. Apple employees are known for not being allowed to have lives -- you'll find plenty of Google, Facebook, and other South Bay company employees living in San Francisco, but not Apple employees -- and this is just part of that isolated lifestyle. I used to want to work there, but there are much better options for employers that give you that type of pedigree on your resume.
They've run out of space...and this is news? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple has a wonderful cafeteria and a seriously epic variety of food, they are just out of space (food stations are being set up outside etc...). Makes perfect sense for them to house a larger "restaurant" (aka cafeteria) so employees don't have to head out to the local BJ's. Why is this being spun as an OMG Apple is too wealthy and splurging. Yahoo and others have freaking DMV and hairstyling services for employees (okay maybe Yahoo is not the best example here....)
Re:Xerox - "damn, why didnt we think of that" (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that all of google's algorithms that their business depends on are secret
Maybe google should release all their secrets as well?
From a competition standpoint: It doesn't matter now. Google could release every secret in their search algorithm, and no competitor would be able to compete because it's the collected data that's important. Without the search data, the algorithm is near useless -- You'd be starting from scratch and they have how many years of a head start?
From a user standpoint -- I sure as hell hope they don't release their algorithms. Do you like link-bait and search spam clouding your search results? I don't. As long as they disclose what information they collect, then it's fine with me. Sure people can figure out how to game the system, but the algorithms can also be changed behind the scenes.
To those who argue the "security through obscurity is no security" fallacy: What about 256 bits of obscurity? What about 512 bits of obscurity? 1024? 2048? Our whole security infrastructure is built on obscurity, tiny obscure secrets of the 1's and 0's -- Individually: not secure; All chained together: Obscurity is Very Secure. If the secret key isn't "obscured" in PKI, it would have no security at all.
Private restaurant? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like self-aggrandization (Score:5, Interesting)
So you're saying that every other company in the consumer electronics biz has lousy marketing?
At some point it's gotta break for you apple haters. Apple is popular because they put out products people like. No more, no less.
If it was purely marketing, why hasn't anyone out done apple?
Or... (Score:2, Interesting)
Or the employees could just STFU in public, like those of every other corporation on the planet.
But maybe Apple's employees aren't presumed to be capable of discretion, seeing as they've repeatedly proven stupid enough to leave internal prototypes at random bars...
Re:Xerox - "damn, why didnt we think of that" (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)