Apple Park
Apple today announced that Apple Park, the company’s new 175-acre campus, will be ready for employees to begin occupying in April. The process of moving more than 12,000 people will take over six months, and construction of the buildings and parklands is scheduled to continue through the summer.
Steve would have turned 62 this Friday, February 24. To honor his memory and his enduring influence on Apple and the world, the theater at Apple Park will be named the Steve Jobs Theater. Opening later this year, the entrance to the 1,000-seat auditorium is a 20-foot-tall glass cylinder, 165 feet in diameter, supporting a metallic carbon-fiber roof. The Steve Jobs Theater is situated atop a hill — one of the highest points within Apple Park — overlooking meadows and the main building.
Whilst the main campus building literally looks like an unclosed ring, I never expected it to be called Infinite Loop. It’s a dated reference to technology which doesn’t gel with the modern Apple’s image. Apple Park is a perfect choice of name; descriptive and meaningful without being too oblique.
Employees start moving in April but the Steve Jobs Theater, where Apple intends to do most of its media keynotes going forward, is listed as opening ‘later this year’. It’s not clear if that means later than today or later than April. With a spring media event likely in the offing, I’m sure Apple would love to host it at their new campus theatre. If they can’t make the spring event, then its first public use would be the fall event, as the sheer number of WWDC attendees means it has to be held at a convention centre in San Jose. The September 2017 event would be a fitting kickoff for the venue, as well. Radical new iPhone, radical new campus.