| | | Its a spectacular building no doubt about it.
But I have a lot of reservations about it... as well as about a lot of what seems to be Apple now.
POSITIVES
Its a good advertisement
I will attract a certain type of person who thinks all tech is good. And those are the types that tend to be tech fanatics.
NEGATIVES
It takes management's eyes off the ball. Weird buildings require many more "adjustments" to get them to work.
It further separates the tech community from the rest of normal America and normal everyone else.
5 Billion is a lot of money, even for Apple. Assuming they get it in for estimated costs.
I wonder if that separation isn't a bigger deal than people understand. When you live in security buildings, party and spend your leisure time climbing mountains using hight tech equipment with other techies, and work with techies you tend to see the world thought googleglass.
You don't hear complaints, or get any kind of realistic feedback or understand what normal people need. I see it in my work which is for a fairly wide variety of people from lower middle class families to the richest people in the world. San Diego has a lot of tech, but not like the Valley. A large segment of the upper middle classes do not have a clue about people who don't drive new cars and live in squeaky clean suburbs.
Just musings on my part... but I do see it as a concern. It goes hand in hand with my disillusionment with Ive. I first had high hopes for him as I see Apple as a design company more than a tech company, but as time went on my opinion of him has slowly soured. I'm not talking about fashion design. I'm not absolutely solid this is what's wrong with Apple on this but I have a growing suspicion they don't understand their client base anymore... they live in a different world, a very nice world where the outer world rarely intrudes.
The article written by the former Apple Store employee was further grist for the mill in that I see the store employees taking the brunt of complaints which never filter up to the management. I've seen that at two corporations I worked for... one was fabulously successful for a time, the other was run by some of the smartest techies I've ever encountered. Stuff that should have been obvious, never filtered up, both are out of business now.
Remember when Sears was thought of as a company that sold quality stuff?
At completion in 1973, it surpassed the World Trade Center towers in New York to become the tallest building in the world, a title it held for nearly 25 years. |
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