In the newest collection of drone videos capturing the ongoing construction of Apple's upcoming spaceship campus in Cupertino, California, noticeable progress has been made in the month since the last update, mainly in the surge of landscaping additions to the grounds. Apple has been working on the construction at its second campus for over two years, and was just completing the nearby parking structures and making headway into the main building one year ago.
Today, the end of the project is finally in sight, as important structural parts of the constructrion finish up and more focus is placed on additive elements, including solar panels. In Matthew Roberts' drone video, solar panel installation is estimated to be 50 percent complete, and "major landscape changes" have been seen on the site, with large trees sprouting up everywhere around the campus.
On the inside of the ring-shaped building, the garden, pond, and outdoor dining areas are being prepped for their final stages of construction. In the last few updates, the large water feature at the center of Apple Campus 2 received a lot of focus from workers, gaining an outline, large boulders, and its foundation over the last few months. This central area is also expected to include a few jogging and cycling trails, which are just a few amenities for employees coming to the campus, also including basketball and tennis courts.
In a second video, shared by Duncan Sinfield, it's mentioned that the Cupertino City Council have approved of the partial demolition of the nextdoor apartment complex, called The Hamptons. Apple wanted to buy all 342 units at The Hamptons to own the entire property, but negotiations ultimately failed to go through. Now, it's expected for the company to renovate the portion it does own and create "nearly 3x as many units" in the area.
Construction on Apple Campus 2 is expected to be completed by the end of 2016, with employees moving in towards the beginning of 2017. The campus will continue to be touched up as Apple employees get settled in, however, as landscaping projects are expected to be continued through at least the middle of next year.
Top Rated Comments
Gotta pay for the mother station without using some of that untaxed cash surplus.
Also, don't bother pushing the doorbell, it doesn't chime.
I've been buying Apple products since 1988. They've always been hellishly expensive but until of late I never felt ripped off. It was always designed for my needs and paid for by the the time effecencies it brought to my workflow. But I guess starting with the 9.7 Air Pro that changed and now the MBP which is stuck in 2012 with 16GB RAM limit -- a mediocre amount for a supposedly pro machine and decoupled of basic accessories like a power cord. I shutter to think of how Apple will dumb down and price up the next iMac revision.
On the one hand, we have Apple Campus 2.
On the other hand, we have Tesla Gigafactory 1 ('https://electrek.co/2016/10/30/tesla-gigafactory-stunning-new-360-image-progress-ahead-production/').
One seems to be a large, vain, and pointless structure.
The other is vital for allowing the company to scale up so they can have a real impact worldwide.
[doublepost=1477923816][/doublepost]I don't think the fault is in the size of Apple, but I think they've become too comfortable — highly-profitable products that people keep buying no matter the compromises made, and turning a deaf ear to the feedback of the "little guy", thinking they know better. Steve Jobs always said "your customers don't know what they want until you show them", but Apple has taken an opposite approach... cutting features that are useful to their customers. It's very frustrating. They are locked into a habitual cycle of product development.
Leadership needs to change, unfortunately, as evidenced by what has happened with Microsoft under new leadership.