Most of the time, when people think Apple (News - Alert), they think about the line of portable hardware that comes out almost relentlessly from the company. Some, however, think about the massive "spaceship" style campus that Apple was planning to build, and is still actually planning to build, but now, according to recent reports, won't materialize until 2016.
What's behind the holdup, according to reports from Bloomberg (News - Alert), is that Apple is having some trouble with the design of its massive ring-shaped headquarters building and is righting around some of the issues. Some of the changes are comparatively mild, like canceled plans to install a footbridge over a creek on the property and the addition of a building for utility equipment. Others will likely prove welcome, like the addition of extra parking spaces. Some, meanwhile, are even more unusual, with plans to move a 1,000 seat auditorium because it was too close to a road, and a modification to a construction plan such that Apple won't have to truck away dirt moved in the construction process.
Some parts of the plan, however, remain quite intact, with a 2.8 million square foot operation housing over 14,000 employees, which is actually up from some of the original numbers that projected just 12,000 employees, and even some more recent numbers which put the number at around 13,000. The campus itself looks to have roughly one tree for every two employees, measuring in at 7,000 total trees.
Those interested in seeing the new plans will be able to do so after Thanksgiving, which in turn will reportedly give Cupertino the time to get in the necessary server loadout to accommodate the massive surge in web traffic offering such plans online would likely produce.
There's no denying that Apple's "spaceship campus" is going to be a spectacle beyond most any application of the term. The massive ring in the midst of trees--with trees occupying the center of the ring as well--speaks to a level of ecological awareness that Greenpeace itself would long to possess. Yet at the same time, this is likely to be a campus of such technological proficiency that it would astonish the mind; it must, if for no other reason than what it produces. The greatest technological innovations don't come out of a wheat field or a mountain pass, or even out of a forest, but rather out of that big gleaming ring in the midst of all that greenery.
Apple's "spaceship campus" will be impressive when and if--it actually gets completed, and the more details that emerge around this facility, the more impressive the picture gets.