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.'"
lol (Score:2, Funny)
>apple
>research
nice try
Re:lol (Score:5, Funny)
In unrelated news, many Samsung employees are now trying to find a new place to eat.
Xerox - "damn, why didnt we think of that" (Score:5, Insightful)
Adele Goldberg -- "actually, i did think of that, and told you guys, but you ignored me"
Consumer - "and that democratization of information between Xerox, Apple, and Microsoft brought technology to the masses and created the computer revolution of the 80s and 90s"
Apple CEO - "and we cant have that again, because the 80s and 90s were brutal for the entrenched interests. like Xerox"
Google - "no shit. thats why you shouldnt base your fucking business model on making information secret, when your entire history has been based on borrowing ideas from other people"
Re:Xerox - "damn, why didnt we think of that" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather have companies "stealing" information from each others (maybeee apple)
Rather than megacorporation systematically stockpiling private information from the whole planet population (Google Dark Empire of Doom)
Re:Xerox - "damn, why didnt we think of that" (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that all of google's algorithms that their business depends on are secret
Maybe google should release all their secrets as well?
ok so i did epic fail at the end (Score:2)
but i think im mostly kind of right.
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but i think im mostly kind of right.
and I think that youre mostly kind of wrong. Who wins?
Google keeps what makes it money secret. The rest is just about driving traffic towards Google to allow it to make money. Its not important to the bottom line so there is no need to keep it secret. This isn't so different to Apple placing Darwin and WebKit in the public domain.
Re:Xerox - "damn, why didnt we think of that" (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, considering the algorithm most important to them - PageRank - is described publicly in a patent [uspto.gov]. Not to mention that it doesn't even belong to Google, but to Stanford University (since it was developed by Page and Brin as a research project).
Re:Xerox - "damn, why didnt we think of that" (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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I hope (Score:5, Funny)
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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 empl
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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you'll find plenty of Google, Facebook, and other South Bay company employees living in San Francisco, but not Apple employees
You just haven't looked hard enough.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Funny)
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And it will be called "the Compound" when the feds storm it.
Sssh. don't tell them about cell phones or tablets (Score:5, Funny)
If they don't know those have microphones and cameras, they won't realize security is a waste of time.
or that you can hear everything just by the vibrations off of the windows.
be vewwy vewwy quiet, I'm hunting trilobytes.
Next up... (Score:5, Insightful)
employee dorms to prevent honey trap operations.
Re:Next up... (Score:4, Interesting)
How about (Score:2)
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employee dorms to prevent honey trap operations.
Apple-issued spouses to prevent honey pot operations.
Employees can talk without being overheard... (Score:5, Funny)
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No - that's what they'll open their first private "genius bar" for.
Whatever will they call it? (Score:2)
Cue the orchard jokes in 3...2...1....
Re:Whatever will they call it? (Score:5, Funny)
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It's quite close to the Apple offices, so you can tell the co-workers the restaurant is just Outback!
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And then they'll sue Applebees for using the name (I'll assume this is a joke, although I should probably check to see if this has actually happened)
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Applebee's
"iEat... at Applebee's!"
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iRestaurant [yelp.com]
A nearby (not so good) chinese restaurant just down the street with that name in cupertino closed last year.
Who knows, maybe they got a buyout deal that they couldn't refuse ;^)
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How about "Walled Garden"?
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Disturbingly apropos, both from the described purpose of the restaurant AND the company mindset in general....
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Next logical step (Score:2)
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limit people leaving prototypes in restaurants
Right, and start spending money on actual marketing campaigns? No way.
What's new? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've worked for big companies, and for startups. I have to say that on-campus dining facilities are pretty standard for big companies. We normally call them "cafeterias" but if you want to call it a restaurant knock yourself out.
Not to mention that Google's in-house chefs are a thing of legend. I really don't see what's news here.
Re:What's new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's new? (Score:5, Funny)
No big deal (Score:2)
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I hear prisons have cafeterias too, and the building is "secured" too boot!
Sounds like those visits to Foxcon taught them a thing or two.
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....)
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Cafe Macs is great, but yes, ridiculously crowded at noon -- better get there by 11:30 if you want a table.
And that BJ's has got to go -- bland food and below average beer for exorbitant prices in a dull setting
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You know, why Subway has not considered opening a franchised branch inside the Apple corporate campus is beyond me....
Surprised they had not done this earlier (Score:3)
Also, they should seriously consider the idea of having multiple kitchens in it, and allow new chefs that come up with new concepts test it out there and then fund them for other restaurants if it is liked.
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many of the reasons for building in-house cafes was to allow those kinds of discussions to occur. Yet, many conversations occur outside in other restaurants.
Perhaps this is about positioning to make conversations in an outside restaurant a firing offense.
Naming lawsuit ensues (Score:2)
Just like the mob! (Score:2)
n/t
Sounds Familiar (Score:2)
'We like to provide a level of security so that people and employees can feel comfortable...'
Sounds like a pronouncement from the Department of Homeland Security.
Slashdot (Score:2)
Slashdot. News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
I wouldn't eat there anyway. (Score:2)
I work for a company that has an on-site restaurant/cafeteria... The food is fine and is subsidized by the company... But most people don't eat there because, really, there's only a subset of my co-workers that I feel like talking to at lunch. The rest, I don't really want to socialize with. On the one or two occasions where I've eaten at the cafeteria, there's always someone that sits down and wants to talk to me that frankly, I would rather not talk to... So we go out for lunch every day, somewhere diff
Private restaurant? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Private restaurant? (Score:4, Informative)
So does Apple, to this day.
Blame Cnet for the embellishment. Maybe they thought the headline "Apple builds cafeteria" wouldn't draw so many page hits? Couldn't possibly be that!
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Back'in my day we called these things Cafeterias.
Back in my day, "employees" were a subset of "people;" not a distinct group of non-persons:
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 [...]"
Next Apple sues other chefs and restaurants (Score:2)
For copyright infringing recipes...
Apple sues pirate chefs for replicating Apple's copyrighted recipes.
Next Apple sues grandmothers for piracy for baking Apple trademarked chocolate chip cookies :P
US Secret Service Plans to Build Own Strip Club (Score:3)
Problem [wsj.com] solved, declares DHS Chief Janet Napolitano.
so would lunch there be mandatory? (Score:2)
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Not surprise, indeed kind of surprised it's 1: not already the case,
It is already the case [yelp.com]. It's just a longer walk from, say, Bandley 3 [javworld.com], although you can walk to Caffe Macs from Bandley 3.
2: it would raise any interest external to the enterprise concerned,
It's Apple - if somebody replaces a toilet tank in IL1 [javworld.com], somebody will think it's one of the most significant world events of the day.
The Menu (Score:3, Funny)
1. Walled Garden Salad
2. Beleaguered Sea Bass
3. ThaiPad
So how did this conversation go? (Score:3)
Manager: We're building a fancy new cafeteria, just like Google and a lot of other Si Valley companies.
Assistant: Very good sir. Shall I alert the media?
That's not security (Score:2)
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...
prior art (Score:2)
OMFG LOL (Score:3)
The Apple Restaurant #1 seller is simply a whopper in a new wrapper that will only cost you 14.99 + tax + applecare with no pickles or onions to spare you any chance of heartburn, and any modifications must be approved by the CEO, but may be revoked later
Have it your way!
If anybody says "that's just a cafeteria"... (Score:2)
...they're right.
Srsly. As a whole bunch of posts have said, plenty of companies have in-house cafeterias, and this is Apple's second one [maclife.com].
Maybe it'll save some employees the disappointment of finding out that the Little Mustard Seed [patch.com] isn't a sandwich shop....
LEGAL NOTIVE (Score:2)
It appears that your company is running an onsite food preparation & service facility, disguised as a so-called "staff canteen", in flagrant breach of our patents.
You owe us 28 squazillion dollars.
Signed [crossed out with a crayon] Steve [/crossed out with a crayon] [written in with a crayon] Tim [/written in with a crayon]
Re:House passes CISPA (Score:4, Funny)
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if this wasn't a election year, he would pass it.
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All you have to do is recognize an apple security badge one time and suddenly you'll be able to recognize apple employees at large since most people do not put their badges away. It always easy to tell who works at Qualcomm, fellow employees at SCEA, etc, while eating at the local food court over here.
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Pretty sure it's not hard to start a restaurant that beats a bunch of mega-chain sandwich shops and burrito joints. And seriously, you consider the above options "variety"? You need to seriously expand your lunch selection.
Jeez, even the Google cafeteria has 10x the "variety" of those places, and Apple passed Google in absurd cash flow a while ago...
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Pretty sure it's not hard to start a restaurant that beats a bunch of mega-chain sandwich shops and burrito joints. And seriously, you consider the above options "variety"? You need to seriously expand your lunch selection.
Jeez, even the Google cafeteria has 10x the "variety" of those places, and Apple passed Google in absurd cash flow a while ago...
Google's cafeterias have more variety than any one of those megachains, but the point was that employees have a choice between thousands of nearby restaurants that collectively have far more variety than a central cafeteria. Furthermore, in terms of quality I think Google's cafeterias are on par with a place like subway and well behind halfway decent places like Panera and Chipotle, not to mention the really good local restaurants.
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Only a slashtard is arrogant enough to call Apple arrogant for calling it a private restaurant when the only source to use that term was friggin' CNet. It's an addition to the Apple campus containing a cafeteria, lounge, and meeting rooms.
Re:Cafeteria (Score:5, Informative)
Um no. The author of the article called it a private restaurant. No one from Apple called it that. The author also says that's the commission calls it but they might have used "dining facility". From the article the author also says:
The facility will have two stories, meetings rooms, lounge areas, conference rooms, storage lockers, an underground parking lot, and, yes, even restrooms.
It doesn't sound like it's just a restaurant or cafeteria but a building annex of some sort.
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Only shoehornjob would be arrogant enough to call his cock "shoehorn? more like boot horn!"
At least, that's what some website said that he said, so it must be true. No need to check sources or anything, I'll just attribute it to him being an arrogant douche.
DISCLAIMER: This post might contain sarcasm. YMMV.
(Note, Apple's own description is "dining facility" and "cafeteria with meeting rooms").
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I've heard of this place where you can go to talk shop without fear of being overheard. They call it a cafeteria. Only Apple is arrogant enough to call it a private restaurant.
Except most cafeterias are on campus. Hell, most of them are inside the actual buildings.
This one isn't.
It's a private restaurant that's "several blocks" away. Located next to a hotel. Which is why employees need to "take the company shuttles to the cafeteria." (And these quotes are from one of those Apple-astroturfing links!)
So, in this case, cafeteria probably isn't accurate. When most people say "cafeteria" they think "inside the campus." This isn't. It really is a special private Apple restaurant.
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After it happened repeatedly, didn't everyone come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a publicity stunt?
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Have a source for that? I don't recall that.
Re:Sounds like self-aggrandization (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, yes. Blind loyalty and marketing. This explains why approaching 50% of their customers have never owned an Apple product before. Why they have the largest digital music download store, the best selling digital music player, the best selling cell phone, the highest customer satisfaction rating, and the best profit margins in the industry.
Whatever kool-aid you're drinking is working.
Re:Sounds like self-aggrandization (Score:5, Insightful)
"Doing it better" in business means more profitably or at least with better margins. Which company is "doing it better than Apple"?
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?
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So your explanation is that Apple has a dominate position because they have a dominate position. That makes perfect sense, unless there was some point in the past when Apple was near failure, had virtually no capital, and a negligible market share in all their market segments. But if that was ever the case I guess we can just say "magic" got them to where they are, so we don't have to admit anyone ever wanted to buy an Apple product on its merits.
Re:Sounds like self-aggrandization (Score:4, Insightful)
You've listed one of the very important parts to producing a successful product and/or service, yes. Well done.
Putting Apple's success *entirely* on "marketing and blind loyalty" is one of the biggest reasons Apple does so well while others flounder. It's very easy to dismiss their success out of hand without understanding what it is they do so well.
If it really is "so easy" and that "any company could do what they do" (as the original AC post claimed) then... why aren't they? The goal of a company is to make money. If what Apple is doing is so easy then surely there should be lots of companies rolling in cash?
I'm honestly curious. If it's all 100% marketing, why isn't anyone else doing it? Surely other companies can hire marketing people too, right?
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1. Apple's marketing people are the best in the consumer electronics industry.
2. Their top management always knew that they were a CONSUMER electronics company. Not a computer company that also made some accessories. Not a technology company or a software company, although they were really good at those things too.
Apple's phone doesn't employ much more advanced tech than high-end Android phones.
Apple's music store doesn't employ any technology that its competitors don't have.
There's nothing unusually co
Re:Sounds like self-aggrandization (Score:5, Insightful)
They never got there first. There were other computers, tablets, other music players, other music stores, other phones with music. You're talking out your ass.
Apple has excellent marketing, yes. Microsoft spends tons on marketing too, but theirs sucks.
What Apple did was to make tech delightful. Simple and elegant. They ditched floppies first. They made it really easy to buy music and put it on a portable device and make playlists without a tutorial. They did something unprecedented when they made the iPhone-- at home activation. I was waiting in line on release day (for the mother-in-law) a hundred people or so from the from the front, yet I walked out with two iPhones 45 minutes after they opened the doors. (then I wisely waited two days before attempting to activate). For the first time, using a web browser on a phone was fun instead of a disappointment.
Look at the consumer section of Dell's on-line store. Look at Apple's on-line store. Now which one is more scary to a non-technical person looking for a personal laptop? Do they want the Intel Core i3, the 2nd Gen Intel Core i3, the 2nd Gen Intel Core i5, the... Do they want IKEA laptop covers? Or do they instead want something that "Handles daily tasks with ease" but is rated 3/5 stars.
The Jukebox 6000, and its successor the Jukebox Studio (see below), used standard USB 1.1 technology, transferring data at a maximum rate of 1 MB per second. These models transfer data at a comparably slow rate compared with succeeding Archos devices using the USB 2.0 standard.
Regarding the popular predecessor to the iPod line, the Archos Jukebox, Wikipedia has this to say:
This device was released Saturday, December 9, 2000 and discontinued as of Friday, May 16, 2003. It weighs 350 g.
The Jukebox is historically notable for shipping with a user interface and operating system so unfriendly and bug-ridden as to inspire Björn Stenberg and other programmers to begin to develop a superior, free and open-source replacement operating system. This project became Rockbox.[citation needed]
Apple isn't so much about making "new categories of consumer product" as they are about finding broken categories of overly complex and unsatisfactory products and re-imagining them as delightful products. I've supported family on Windows and on Macs.. once they get Macs, they don't call me even 1/10th as much for support issues.
Re:Sounds like self-aggrandization (Score:5, Funny)
Wild guess, are you around 13 years old?
Chatter between member of different teams at Apple (Score:2)
I doubt that "so our employees can talk shop without the competition overhearing us" is their #1 reason.
Your skepticism is appropriate. Apple doesn't only worry about chatter between employees and non-employees. They also worry about chatter between members of different teams within Apple. Employees working on Macs may not know anything more about that new iPhone being developed than the public.
Its been a while since my last visit to Apple but I recall signs on the wall at the cafeteria on Apple's main campus that warned employees not to chat about their work due to fears of being overheard. Again, this is
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I recall signs on the wall at the cafeteria on Apple's main campus that warned employees not to chat about their work
I worked there for three and a half years as an employee, and I've been back twice as a consultant, and I've never seen any such signs.
I definitely recall a sign/poster warning about chatting about unannounced projects/products where somewhere nearby can overhear you. It was 1998 or '99.
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You're clearly not trusted enough to enter the real top-secret inner party canteen.
I've said too much. Don't be surprised if perpenso suddenly stops posti
@!. . &
no carrier
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Any other company could do what they do.
You'd think that they would, then. It seems to be profitable.
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If that's true, that any other company can do what they do, then why is every single phone manufacturer besides Apple and Samsung struggling? (i.e. Motorola, HTC, LG, Sony-Ericson, Nokia, and RIM?)
Why is the PC manufacturer that sells the most computers thinking about getting rid of their PC division?
I've heard of this before... (Score:5, Funny)
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I did a summer internship at Apple in the late 80s and I'm sure things have changed quite a bit since then, but still one thing I thought was pretty clever of them as out-in-the-open evil schemes go was that they made it very very easy for employees to have no life outside of work. There was *tons* of social stuff built into work (happy hour every Friday afternoon, off-site stuff like going to a ball game or an amusement park with your group during work hours), and there were showers in the building and sl
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They do have one. I'm guessing Apple is running out of space and would like to add an annex and not some nefarious plot. But their mothership new HQ hasn't been built yet. From the article:
The facility will have two stories, meetings rooms, lounge areas, conference rooms, storage lockers, an underground parking lot, and, yes, even restrooms.
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I'm betting they'll take cheap diner food, put it on fancy plates, and charge 3x more for it. Amirite?
No, you're not, if its anything like Caffe Macs [maclife.com].
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Note to canteen manager: the phrase "eat your own dog food" is used in a metaphorical sense.