Cupertino Approves New Apple Spaceship HQ 172
mrspoonsi writes with news that Apple's plan to raze the old HP headquarters and replace it with some kind of space ship is moving forward. From the article: "A little over two years since Steve Jobs presented his case for it and after the occasional setback, the Cupertino City Council has finally given Apple full approval to go ahead with its futuristic campus. In exchange, Apple has agreed to fork over more money to the city in the form of a reduced sales tax rebate — going forward, Cupertino will only give back 35 percent sales tax instead of the 50 percent it had previously. Indeed, as soon as Apple gets its final permits some time today, it can begin demolishing the former HP headquarters and start building its own."
Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Under the new agreement, that rebate has been reduced to 35 percent, which based on 2012 tax revenues would mean the residents of Cupertino will pay Apple -- which recorded net sales of $156.5 billion during the last fiscal year, and has a cash hoard estimated at $100 billion -- only $4.4 million to stick around. It would have been $6.2 million under the old agreement. That's an extra $1.8 million for Cupertino, a city with only $51.4 million in projected general fund revenues this year, according to figures reported in the Los Angeles Times."
Really Apple Cupertino gave you a tax break when things where not going well for you. Now you are doing well you are still getting a 4.4 million dollar kickback! Come one and just pay your taxes. You would increase the general fund by around 8%.
AKA just do the right thing.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
this is truly perplexing.
what's the rationale behind giving them benefits? would they move away if they didn't? unlikely, really.
No they would not move away! (Score:5, Funny)
They are building a space ship so they can "fly away" if the city doesn't cooperate. Read the bloody article!
Re:No they would not move away! (Score:5, Insightful)
They are building a space ship so they can "fly away" if the city doesn't cooperate.
They don't need to fly. They can walk. The next city (Sunnyvale) is about 200 meters from their current headquarters. Both Santa Clara and San Jose are within three miles.
Apple is in a strong negotiating position. Personally, I think courts should strike down these special tax deals as a violation of the equal protection clause [wikipedia.org]. For the cities, it is a prisoner's dilemma anyway, and they would better off if the practice was made illegal.
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The city is always free to say "no" to a deal. The city is not entitled to the deal of their choice from every corporation. That has nothing to do with equal protection. Equal protection applies to how governments treats individuals and that they cannot discriminate on the basis of race, sex, age, sexual preference, etc. It says nothing that if a city wants to attract a business they can't offer one business a better deal than another. As long as the preference has nothing to do with the above criteria
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What are you smoking? There is no gun. Apple wants tax incentives to stay in Cupertino. Every business wants tax incentives. Every individual does. Based on Apple's size and the amount of tax revenue that will be offset by the construction, increase in tax base, etc, Cupertino has voted to allow Apple to get a tax break because they believe it is a better long term deal for the city. They can just say no and lose out on taxes. As is their choice. As is their right. That is not a gun. That is not a
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Don't pay your taxes and see what happens.
Again, what are you smoking? I live in a city. I pay taxes. If I don't like the amount I have to pay, I can file a protest. If I don't like it all, I can move. Equal Protection has nothing to do as to whether I pay taxes. Equal protection means that the city cannot treat me differently than any other individual on the basis mentioned previously.
Apple wants the city to take money at gun point from people that live in the city to give to Apply. That is morally wrong.
Again, what are you smoking? There is no "taking". Apple pays taxes like every corporation. If Apple didn't have the incentives, Apple would pay more. That
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You are very confused and seem to be thinking of the Civil Rights Act rather than the equal protection clause. Equal protection, like the name implies, provides equal protection. It doesn't as you claim, demand for unequal protection because of your race.
Please read up on Equal Protection Clause [wikipedia.org].
The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
One position you are missing is the disparate impact argument. Because Apple has convinced Cupertino to help their mostly white male employees at the expense of the citizens of Cupertino which are 63.3% Asian, as of the 2010 census, which is illegal.
What the hell are you talking about?
Forcing Asians at the threat of taking their homes and businesses to enrich a small group of white males is morally and legally wrong.
Again, what the hell are you talking about? Apple bought the land from HP and others in secret to avoid raising rates..
Us Asians in this town are very angry that we have to give money to the largest company in the world in order to be allowed to keep the homes we own.
Again, you are making absolutely no sense.
This city has already use a SWAT team to eject one Asian family that refused to pay. Example more Asian families to end-up homeless because of Apple.
Context please. Apple bought the land from a number of different owners.
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No. Apple has demanded that the city use the force of guns to take money from other businesses to give to them.
[Citation Needed] That's a rather bold claim to make without any support.
Just see what happens if you don't pay your taxes.
So let me understand you correctly: So if you don't pay your taxes, you expect nothing to happen to you There are no consequences to not paying taxes. What world do you live in where there are no consequences?
Just this week I read about a group of cops in San Mateo (not far from Apple) breaking windows and pointing guns at children because the family objected the city's giving money to xtians to support hate.
[Citation Needed]. And it was Apple's fault that cops in San Mateo might have done something, how? Please show me how Apple was in any way involved with what San Mateo does.
Do you really support pointing guns at people to take money from them to give to Apple? In any moral person's view, that is robbery.
Do you personally blame Barack Obama for your healt
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what's the rationale behind giving them benefits? would they move away if they didn't? unlikely, really
Exactly. Where else in the USA could they possibly find a lower cost of living?
Oh yeah, pretty much everywhere. (Median home price? 1.4 mil [trulia.com])
Cost of living not really a big factor (Score:3)
Exactly. Where else in the USA could they possibly find a lower cost of living?
Not really a big consideration. As long as the employees can get to work the company doesn't really need to care much. The company gets tax benefits because if Apple moves out of Cupertino (which they easily could do) then Cupertino gets zero tax revenue and might even lose additional spillover revenues from restaurants, hotels, etc. Last time I checked some revenue is better than no revenue.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
Thats how corporate America works.
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they're not going to move cross country, but they could easily build their spaceship in sunnyvale or los altos or anywhere. PA and Menlo Park are pretty full-up right now. I couldn't see them in SF, and the whole city is going to burst from Twitter and others, there's no way they could absorb an Apple campus.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
A few observations:
The city is not paying Apple anything; it is actually increasing their tax burden from the formerly reduced state. Thus the article, which says "the residents of Cupertino will pay [Apple] only $4.4 million to stick around" is misleading and deliberately inflammatory.
The agreement was approved unanimously by the board. They think they are getting a good deal by having the world's largest corporation build a giant, permanent, iconic headquarters there and I agree. Any city in America would be happy to have them. Just think of all the tourists who are going to show up from around the world just to see this new building.
The city gets a lot of benefits from Apple employees living and working there aside from direct taxation, in terms of personal living expenses and a well-educated populace, as mentioned elsewhere in the article.
They can always renegotiate the tax breaks later if they really need the money.
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For Apple 4.4 million is nothing. Yes it is going to increase it's tax burden but it's tax burden is still less than many small companies in the city. Think of it this way. How valuable would the PR be for Apple if they said," when Apple was not doing well the city helped us with tax breaks, we are doing great now so we are giving them back to the city."
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what's the rationale behind giving them benefits?
Politics and business is the primary business of politics
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see, the city gets thousands of Apple employees moved in. Construction alone is expected to net the city almost $40 million. And then there are recurring property taxes for a property that will now be worth billions. The city also gets a shabby built-up area converted to something that is 80% landscaped and environmentally friendly.
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yeah, but they would have been paying benefits to apple regardless. what was the rationale behind that?
point being, it's not really that much money even, but it still is significant amount of money for the city. not for apple, but for the city. so little money that for apples spaceship plans it doesn't make much of difference even, so why the fuck give them a break?
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Even owner occupied residential is reassessed when you add square footage.
Commercial property was never exempt from reassessment.
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Prop 13 allows for reassessment in the cases of property transfer and completed construction. I think the $5 billion spaceship would count as completed construction.
Re: Wow. (Score:2)
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/01/us/government-incentives.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is Cupertino's largest taxpayer by far.
In fact, Apple SPECIFICALLY CHOSE the site for their new building - Cupertino had no land available otherwise (it was land from an old Sun/HP campus, IIRC). So Apple had a choice - it could build its new building in Cupertino, or it could put it somewhere else. Cupertino gives Apple a small tax break (they don't give Apple any money - Apple pays more than that amount in taxes to Cupertino annually) as a thank you for being loyal to Cupertino. And it's likely the board sees that the added revenue from employees being there (from construction and all that to the sheer number of extra employees) to more than make up for the loss (after all, those people need to eat, like to frequent bars, etc. and Apple is likely needing to purchase local service to maintain the building and grounds and all that).
In fact, any large corporation wanting to put down roots can easily negotiate with the host city on benefits. I would expect Redmond to give Microsoft breaks in exchange for being in Redmond (though Microsoft's campus straddles the border, so there's a building that's actually odd because it has to be built to two different building codes as it straddles Redmond and a neighbouring city).
Likewise, Mountain View probably gives Google a few breaks as well.
And these cities are all known because of these big companies - anytime anyone mentions Redmond, well, up comes Microsoft. Cupertino has Apple, and Mountain View has Google.
Apple may not pull up its roots from Cupertino, but they can certainly decide to build in a neighboring city if they have to. The fact they're choosing Cupertino is really a preference for them - being nostalgic and all that. Hell, given all the difficulties Apple encountered, one may wonder if it was worth all that effort to build in Cupertino and not just build it nearby somewhere else.
Some tax revenue better than none (Score:3)
what's the rationale behind giving them benefits? would they move away if they didn't? unlikely, really.
Actually it would be relatively easy for Apple to relocate. They don't have to go across the country though they probably could if needed. They could just go to the next town over. The rationale is that some tax revenue is better than no tax revenue. Furthermore there is additional tax and income benefit to other local businesses like restaurants, hotels, etc.
WARN: There is another system (Score:4, Funny)
Here in the UK we cut out the middleman, and just buy these flying saucer tech headquarters directly from taxpayers' money:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters [wikipedia.org]
Then they spy on us.
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holy shit what kind of freaky building is that?? If you're business is surreptitious spying, wouldn't you want to keep it on the down low? that place looks like Dr Evil or SCEPTRE works there.
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fair enough. they are truly sister agencies. it would be cool if they were on exactly opposite sides of the globe, and there was a secret project to realign the magnetic poles so the magnetic axis passed through both buildings. ...profit!
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Here in the UK we cut out the middleman, and just buy these flying saucer tech headquarters directly from taxpayers' money:
You fools! You're supposed to get an extraterrestrial government to pay for flying saucers.
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More than that, the city is giving Apple less rebates going forward than they are now. Apple is now going to be paying more taxes.
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Thus you have an area that is subsidising a massively wealthy company by increased taxation on small businesses.
And individuals. But don't you know that everyone should bow and scrape before Apple for being so beneficent as to create all those jobs (some of them in the US)?
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Unfortunately, neither of you seem to know jack shit about Cupertino. They have one of (if not the) most enviable school systems in Silicon Valley, which in turn has driven property values through the roof, which in turn generates more money (in the form of property taxes) for the city.
So how do you think that happened?
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So how do you think that happened?
Hint: it's not because Apple is there.
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It may be the "right thing" to pay their taxes, but let's face it, they're just walking in Steve's tax-evading footsteps.
You know, the lease-a-new-car-every-6-months-so-he-never-has-to-get-license-plates Steve Jobs?
Or the "park in the handicap zones when you want to because you're big shit Steve Jobs" and the cops are unlikely to hassle you?
http://www.policymic.com/articles/7868/apple-icheat-how-the-world-s-biggest-company-also-became-the-most-unethical [policymic.com]
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Apple are able to choose to move to a different city
And you actually think they'd do that for a few bucks in taxes? Forget elsewhere in SV - everywhere there is expensive. So they'd jeopardize their enormous revenue stream by moving and losing many of their people, for the sake of a few bucks in taxes? I don't think so, but that's the kind of stuff that idiots and cronies on city councils believe in. Whenever companies threaten the "we'll hold our breath until we turn blue, and move our facilities if you don't give us a tax break" crap, it's almost always on
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple makes a huge profit margin and pays very little tax. There's no reason at all why society benefits from giving them a rebate they really don't need; in fact it hurts society by increasing tax on others. The only reason they can have a rebate is that they've got big enough they can threaten municipalities with oblivion if they leave which is a pretty shitty situation imo.
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The issue with this argument is that it sounds all well and good until you consider it for a few seconds. Apple gets a rebate now that it is a billion dollar company but if a new 'Apple' was starting out today they'd have to pay the full rate of tax.
The argument is still good because, as I stated, SV is expensive no matter what the tax breaks.
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No it's not, because cost of living is irrelevant. Large companies pull the same shit against cities everywhere, regardless of how expensive living there is. (For example, Atlanta has a low cost of living, but the Atlanta Braves are in the midst of moving out to the suburbs due to this kind of subsidy BS.) If this kind of behavior is wrong anywhere, then it's equally wrong everywhere.
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No it's not, because cost of living is irrelevant.
First, CoL is relevant because it usually means higher salaries (I could get a raise by moving to SV, even without leaving my current employer). Second, cost of business is affected by leasing or land costs, which vary wildly by location. CoL also tends to ripple through all sorts of services and whatnot that businesses require (everything from cleaning services to ordering takeout for a late night).
Atlanta has a low cost of living, but the Atlanta Braves are in the midst of moving out to the suburbs due to this kind of subsidy BS.
What kind of subsidies are you talking about? Baseball stadiums are notorious for subsidies that go way beyon
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That is exactly why our whol economic system cabn never distribute wealth fairly. If you're loaded you get the "because I'm rich" discount but if you're not, you pay full price.
a few hundred meters for $80 million? YES! (Score:3)
Might they move a few hundred meters across city lines to save $4 million X 20 years = $80 million. Yes!
This is very visible where I live, in Bryan / College Station, Texas. A large portion of both cities is within a mile of the border between them. Driving through the area, it's obvious which city has traditionally been friendly to businesses and which hasn't. The College Station side has new towers being built a couple hundred feet from the empty, decaying buildings in Bryan. A few years ago Bryan f
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You're talking about two cities right next to each other, where apparently there's no shortage of land or office space (else College Station would fill up and you'd then get more stuff in Bryan). I'll also guess that that area is not someplace like SV or Manhattan where businesses flock for reasons much more important to them than cost (else there'd be nothing in SV or Manhattan).
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But Apple doesn't have to stay anywhere near SV or the state at all. They could move their HQ to a different state like Boeing did.
Boeing moved their headquarters for political reasons - by an astounding coincidence they wound up in the congressional district of someone who had a lot of influence on their business. Chicago is also not a place you'd move for low cost. Lastly, they moved some offices - not the airplane design and manufacturing business.
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It won't be easy to move but if taxes is the only reason, they can move elsewhere.
But taxes aren't the only reason. They almost never are, despite the bleating. Do you really think Apple is stupid enough to lose most of the design teams in they have in SV?
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Please explain how that applies to Apple.
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Actually, no. Money attracts more money. The bigger the pile the easier it attracts money out of the smaller piles around you and the harder it is for them to attract money from your pile. Absent government interference and active warfare, the natural end result is one person with all the money and the rest with none.
Note that in practice, as it approached that condition the 'no active warfare' condition would be broken by villagers with torches and pitchforks.
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Where did you pull that from?
I can't find one true thing in your post.
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You must not be terribly observant. Just look at TFA itself. Do you think a middle or lower class individual has enough money that a city will grant them a tax rebate just to get them to stay? Casinos comp the whales, not the people playing penny slots. Restaurants offer the wealthy repeat customer the complementary fine wine. The people who save for a year to eat there get the table by the kitchen door.
You never hear uttered the phrase 'it takes money to make money'?
Surprising.
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I give up - real post or parody? Oh, what's the difference, we statists love stealing and make no bones about it.
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In other words, the city should punish Apple more for creating jobs.
Alternatively, Apple should punish the city for giving them a good place to do business? No business is located in SV for its low costs.
50% sales tax is outrageous by the way.
Parody, or do you have a problem with reading/math?
Steve Jobs talking about the campus (Score:5, Informative)
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You say, "spaceship campus"; I see, "walled garden"... No really, Look again.
give me, if not Pastafarians, at least Raelians (Score:2)
Shouldn't they all already have put on their purple Nikes and drank their poisoned Kool-Aid and burned the place down when their Master ascended?
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Apple has JUMPED THE SHARK (Score:4, Insightful)
Sign that a company is jumping or is about to jump the shark: Build a huge lavish HQ.
Although, Google didn't mind when SGI did it.. they got a great deal on the real estate.
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If it's mostly glass and steel it's probably not as expensive as you think it is. I work for a fortune 200 company and we just completed a new HQ campus. It looks dramatically more expensive then it really cost to build and makes perfect financial sense given trying to lease the amount of space we needed house all the employees.
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If it's mostly glass and steel it's probably not as expensive as you think it is. I work for a fortune 200 company and we just completed a new HQ campus. It looks dramatically more expensive then it really cost to build and makes perfect financial sense given trying to lease the amount of space we needed house all the employees.
Does your HQ have straight walls and 90 degree corners? Because this thing is round as can be. There might be some savings in having 1 round wall section be the same as all the other round wall sections, but building curves are dramatically more expensive than noncurved walls.
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Re:Apple has JUMPED THE SHARK (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the ticket price for the building is about $5 billion, it may rise as the project goes ahead -- there's lots of custom curved glass panels and such involved. With 14,000 workers expected to use the building that works out at about 350,000 dollars each. Office space in Cupertino leases at about $35/sq. ft./year so for the proposed upfront cost they could lease 500 square feet for each employee for twenty years and not have to pay for the structural maintenance, landscaping etc.
It's a pretty way to use up money, I suppose.
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True. But the lowered cost of leasing comes with the increased costs of having employees scattered all over hell and back.
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A conventional Todos-Santos style glass brick would cost half the price or less of the current design, be easier to heat and cool, use less ground footprint and it would be more convenient to get around in with elevators, walkways etc. even with the same floor space per drone.
It's amazing what you can do with other people's money though, isn't it?
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1) They are spending money locally instead of banking it off shore. (expect the new CEO to ruin Apple in the same vein of other corps; "investing" money in casino games instead of the real economy.)
2) You can't just put money into things and expect faster results or new inventions - like it was a linear correlation.
3) Free advertizing to promote themselves; the whole innovator image thing helps them. That isn't cheap; and it lasts longer than an ad campaign. Plus it may help attract and retain the kind of e
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Fire season is over. The mudslides put them out. (stolen from Carson).
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Jobs said.... "There is not a straight piece of glass in this building. It's all curved. We've used our experience making retail buildings all over the world now, and we know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use. And, we want to make the glass specifically for this building here. We can make it curve all the way around the building ...It's pretty cool."
Excerpted from an International Business Times [ibtimes.com] report on the new building. Ka-ching!
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Edifice Complex (Score:2)
One of Parkinson's Laws is that the demise of a corporation follows not long after construction of headquarters.
It's called having an edifice complex.
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Sign that a company is jumping or is about to jump the shark: Build a huge lavish HQ.
I get that Apple is sitting on Scrooge McDuck levels of cash and building the new HQ isn't that big of a deal for them.
What astonishes me is that they have all this cash and they don't seem to be inventing anything new or creating any new markets. That's the bigger sign of distress at the company.
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Isn't this what people have been saying about Apple for the last 30+ years or so?
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Isn't this what people have been saying about Apple for the last 30+ years or so?
People who haven't noticed the iPod or iPhone, I guess. The iPhone was launched, what, seven years ago?
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People nowadays expect Apple to 'invent' something revolutionary every goddamn year and say stuff like "they don't seem to be inventing anything new or creating any new markets". My point is, they weren't that busy with it before either. And they very rarely invent in the proper sense of the word, even though they do innovate.
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And the iPod was launched, what, six or seven years before the iPhone?
At a time when Apple was struggling to make a profit, much less being the largest capitalized company in the world.
And we all remember the reaction to it here...
Hey, I bought one - I had firewire devices everywhere.
The law of large numbers (Score:2)
What astonishes me is that they have all this cash and they don't seem to be inventing anything new or creating any new markets. That's the bigger sign of distress at the company.
No new markets? For crying out loud the iPad was released just 3 years ago. That for all practical purposes created the tablet market as we know it today. It's absurd that anyone should really expect Apple to create completely new multi-billion dollar businesses from scratch every year or they are somehow in danger of going out of business. I'm pretty sure you have no idea how difficult it is to productively invest a cash hoard the size of the one Apple has. It's virtually impossible.
When you get to th
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I'm pretty sure you have no idea how difficult it is to productively invest a cash hoard the size of the one Apple has. It's virtually impossible.
Which is why they should be using the money for R&D to bring new products to market - that's where the ROI always is in technology.
What business do you think Apple should do that is going to generate $14 billion in the next year?
The only way to grow at that kind of rate is to create new businesses. So, one should expect that Apple would be doing just that, as
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As opposed to........... ? Which other consumer product company that invents something new ever year?
Lots of companies do, but the point is that Apple is as large as a hundred smaller consumer products companies, and they haven't really done anything very unique in about seven years. If people want to make an argument that the iPad isn't just a big iPhone, fine (it is, but fine), but by their size alone, they should have several new and interesting products each year - unless their size itself is a hindran
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I note the lack of any specific examples. As I expected.
OK, if I have to tell you what the tech market looks like, here's a few off the top of my head:
Occulus Rift
Raspberry Pi
Steam Machine
Lytro
Sol Tablet
Wilocity
PicoP
Fitbit
CubeX
Zigbee
Nest
If you put all of those companies together, their combined market cap probably doesn't even meet 5% of Apple's. Why isn't Apple taking 10% of its cash and inventing like mad?
Back in the day, Apple had the Advanced Technology Group that would pioneer such brand-new things an
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You can't cherry pick a bunch of successful one trick ponies, with smallish markets, and then ask why multinational hasn't got a stable of such ponies. It doesn't work like that.
Which basically describes the mp3 player market before the iPod. Productizing these sorts of formerly-niche products is what Apple is really good at.
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Sign that a company is jumping or is about to jump the shark: Build a huge lavish HQ.
Although, Google didn't mind when SGI did it.. they got a great deal on the real estate.
Apple actually has revenue and cash in the bank.
What do you say about a small company like LinkedIn putting up brand new buildings instead of just moving into existing vacant buildings in the area.
nothing new (Score:5, Funny)
It is the pentagon, but thinner and with rounded corners.
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It looks more like GCHQ, the UK equivalent of the NSA.
Beautiful, but somewhat disappointing (Score:2)
The actual design of the building is beautiful and marvelous.
But I have to say that the entire design of the campus is a little disappointing. The buildings on campus are completely isolated from the rest of the city of Cupertino. The campus will be separated by a new security wall/fence surrounding the perimeter that will prevent all unauthorized entry, and most of the buildings will be hidden behind substantial landscaping. The plan also demolishes a city street that will disturb local automotive and b
does that mean commuting on Homestead... (Score:2)
...will be really bad? Other day southbound 280 in Cupertino area had couple accidents so I took Homestead and it was worse. I imagine Stevens Creek was terrible as well. I heard Apple has 10,000 employees scattered about in numerous buildings throughout Cupertino but here they will be gathered in one location. Agg, traffic in that area may be so bad cars will not work, faster to walk.
But then I remember back in 20th century when HP was ran by Bill and Dave, and those buildings slated for the chute had th
It's a moonshot (Score:2)
If the building comes out as expected, it will be a landmark like the Empire State Building (or the (collapsed) World Trade Center (before it collapsed)).
Yes, it could all be had cheaper - but OTOH, it's still better than paying out huge bonuses to the execs or buying more corporate jets. There are a thousand ways to waste money. This way, at least the public gets something in return.
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The beginning of the end? (Score:2)
Many corporations who built a big new headquarters were gone within 5 years. Let's hope at that this does not happen to Apple.
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The voters of Cupertino think so? Not sure how else on would determine worth. I've lived in the bay area since 1995. Cupertino has gone from a nice suburb to a VERY wealthy suburb in that time. There's also tourism of all things. I'm not kidding. Tourists actually come to Cupertino just to stand in front of the sign at the Apple campus (the current one) and have their picture taken. Oh and there's an apple store there. Open to the public. On the apple campus. I would assume the sales tax collected
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The city I live in, Mountain View, has given Google all sorts of incentives. It's hard to argue with success.
On the contrary, it's easy to argue the counterfactual. If Mountain View hadn't given Google tax breaks, would Google have moved to an inexpensive part of SV? Where is that exactly? Or would they have left SV altogether? There are many reasons companies have facilities in SV, but low cost isn't one of them. All the tax breaks in the world wouldn't make SV a cheap place to do business. If cost saving was their main interest, they'd move no matter what.
Here in the NY area I see the same thing in Manhattan all
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Is it really worth it?
To Apple shareholders? Probably not, but that's what companies with too much money do. They get away with it because it's a small part of their income, even if it doesn't do anything but satisfy some egos.
Walmart is an interesting contrast. Whatever mixed feelings you may have about them, it's interesting to see Walmart's world headquarters. It's a one story brick building that they bought cheap many years ago, and makes most factories look ostentatious. Yet sales reps from all over the world travel to cosm
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That is interesting. Yea Yea Sealand I a know....
But Apple certainly does have the financial resources it would take to build their own island in international waters, floating or fixed to the sea floor in some way.
What is stopping them from 'building' their own country?
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If you don't understand that you are not a geek.