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by swombat 5483 days ago
An architect friend of mine commented: "they always ask for free wifi".

He also said that it's amazing salesmanship on Steve Jobs' part to have pitched this and basically given nothing to the council. Most councils manage to squeeze all sorts of concessions from even large multinationals (e.g. banks in the UK). Steve gave them, basically, nothing - not even free wifi.

If they'd been more savvy they could probably have had their free wifi and Apple store - it's cheaper to Apple than relocating 10k employees to another city and drawing all the plans again from scratch. Steve may be known for holding grudges, but he's also a relatively rational businessman.
1 comments
hugh3 5483 days ago
If they'd been more savvy they could probably have had their free wifi and Apple store - it's cheaper to Apple than relocating 10k employees to another city and drawing all the plans again from scratch. Steve may be known for holding grudges, but he's also a relatively rational businessman.

Yes and no. You don't necessarily want to play chicken with Steve Jobs' ego. Cupertino is lucky to have Apple -- Cupertino knows it, and Apple knows it. If they start giving him a hard time getting his building approved then he's not going to knock down Infinite Loop, but he could well start entertaining offers from neighbouring cities which would no doubt fall over themselves to get the second Appleplex.

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panacea 5483 days ago
Speaking of his ego. He must be pissed that he couldn't get that small patch of real estate in the lower left corner. The neighbours have made a powerful enemy ;]
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jarek 5483 days ago
If you take a closer look at the area, you can see they'll actually houses rather than office parks. They actually appear impressively dense by California standards. It's a lot harder to buy people's houses than a corporation's floors.
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henryl 5483 days ago
It's the Hamptons Apartment complex. I currently live here.
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hugh3 5483 days ago
Ooh, looking forward to your backyard becoming an enormous donut-shaped construction site?
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furyg3 5483 days ago
Hopefully he owns his apartment, and is looking forward to the value of his house tripling...
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panacea 5483 days ago
You're right (well they look like pretty nice apartment complexes) Streetview: http://goo.gl/3Qdhs

Property prices just went waaay up there. Cash in and sell/lease to Apple employees, I'd imagine.

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bvhnw 5483 days ago
Not to mention the new apricot trees.
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