What I can assure you is that with ~$200bn in the bank account, this a drop in the bucket, and has not affected any remote work decision.
It was also built to draw in new talent, but in a pandemic it's probably not the attractor they hoped it would be. I doubt Cook is losing sleep over it, but the pandemic definitely messed with his long term plans (like most everyone else, of course).
Was it? I mean, clearly Apple needed more office space while they're ramping up hiring, but do potential employees really care about that building?
Some funny bits from Wikipedia
> The use of special wood as a construction material was reported to be the subject of a 30-page guideline.
> The design of door handles was reported to be the subject of a one and a half year debate, involving several revisions before the Apple management gave its approval.
> Cook said 10% to 15% of Apple employees have gone back to the office and he hopes the majority of staff can return to the company’s new campus in Silicon Valley sometime next year. The CEO said he goes into the office at different points during the week and he noted that remote work is “not like being together physically.” Working in the office sparks creativity such as during impromptu meetings, he added.
Overall it's a balanced article that shows Cook both acknowledging WFH benefits and reiterating the perceived advantages of the office.
No they didn't, and that's the problem. It's not a "straw argument".
Cook, in an interview, said something that included both a pro-remote statement and a pro-office statement. The AppleInsider article included both of these statements. Bloomberg, OTOH, only included the pro-remote statement in their article.
It's lying by omission.
Seems to me that Tim Cook is pro office, while appreciating the alternative approach where possible
There's too many tests that can only be done hands-on and require expensive and delicate instruments. Too many issues that can come up with engineers using different physical prototype hardware and different instruments, misunderstanding communication about what is being measured where, misinterpreting results. And too much time overhead in shipping things around the country constantly.
Both articles, despite your insinutation of different narratives, contain the same quote "I don't believe that we'll return to the way we were, because we found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually,"
The actual quote is:
>"In all candor, it's not like being together physically, and so I can't wait for everybody to be able to come back into the office. I don't believe that we'll return to the way we were, because we found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually," Cook said. "But things like creativity and the serendipity that you talk about, these things, you depend on people kind of running into each other over the course of a day. We have designed our entire office such that there are common areas where people congregate and talk about different things, and you can't schedule those things."
And both articles do not contain this same quote. The Bloomberg article only contains a fragment of that quote, which seems to be specifically cherry picked to further a narrative.
Meanwhile, Apple has one of the world's best 3D office spaces for experiencing and designing the future of augmented-reality workspaces. Would Apple spend years of R&D on ultra-precise location sensing (Ultra Wideband, WiFi6) and 3D-imaging (Lidar, FaceID) to surrender the future of digital workspaces to VR and Zoom?