Why Apple Chose Austin for Its Next Campus

AlphaAtlas

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Apple recently chose Austin, Texas as the location for a major new campus. Austin is a huge tech hub, with companies like Samsung, AMD, Intel, Cisco, Applied Micro and Apple itself already having a major presence in the city. But many are still wondering why Apple chose to expand outside of its home town so aggressively. The company has long declared that its devices are "designed in Cupertino," but with a huge portion of development moving to Austin, that may no longer be the case. But recently, the Wall Street Journal drilled into Apple's reasoning behind the decision. Among other things, Apple seemingly intends to pull machine learning and semiconductor engineering talent to Austin, which is essential if they want to maintain high margins on their iDevices.

Aside from the political goodwill, the job expansion outside Silicon Valley could help Apple diversify beyond the iPhone... Traditionally, gadget makers like Apple have bought chips made by other companies. But in the past decade, Apple has expanded its semiconductor efforts to include the Bluetooth chip that powers AirPods and graphics processors for the iPhone. Its efforts helped enable the facial-recognition technology that it introduced with last year’s iPhones, a feature that helped justify raising the starting price of the iPhone X by more than 50% to $999. "If you're doing chip design, that would be the place to be," Mr. Maire said of San Diego.
 
Part of the reason would be the extreme cost of living issues surrounding Cupertino. Even highly paid engineers have difficulty affording a house in that area. All of Silicon Valley companies are candidates for this type of move in the future. That will continue to be the case unless and until Silicon Valley housing costs decrease in a major way.
 
Part of the reason would be the extreme cost of living issues surrounding Cupertino. Even highly paid engineers have difficulty affording a house in that area. All of Silicon Valley companies are candidates for this type of move in the future. That will continue to be the case unless and until Silicon Valley housing costs decrease in a major way.

Price = Supply * Demand

You have a lot of people with a lot of money; housing prices are going to go up. That's how Capitalism works. The only real way to lower housing prices is the literally have people make less money, which I'm pretty sure isn't a sound economic strategy.
 
Part of the reason would be the extreme cost of living issues surrounding Cupertino. Even highly paid engineers have difficulty affording a house in that area. All of Silicon Valley companies are candidates for this type of move in the future. That will continue to be the case unless and until Silicon Valley housing costs decrease in a major way.

Always wondered how area's like that function. Surely there is a demand for gas station attendants, fast food workers, landscaping crews, etc. etc. Where do those people live?
 
Always wondered how area's like that function. Surely there is a demand for gas station attendants, fast food workers, landscaping crews, etc. etc. Where do those people live?
6 deep in a 2 bedroom place?
 
north austin where the campus is located is a little bit more upscale part of town. that sweaty-tanktop-tatooed-keep-weird austin aesthetic is not welcoming to most people moving from out of state. also like most of texas, besides bbq/burgers/texmex there is zero edible ethnic/specialty options. Don't tell me they have good ramen or indian. its total garbage compared to other large cities in or out of state.

and dont get me started one their 1 freeway running through the entire city. Not exaggerating they have only 1 freeway to get in and out, or you can take a toll road that avoids the whole thing. You can tell I was unimpressed with my stay in Austin.
 
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Apple, Samsung, Cisco..etc... their pay is on the low end in the bay area, most likely they couldn't hire anyone else in the bay with those salaries, so they have to move new campus somewhere else. Apple have been cheap out wages by doing this for awhile...
 
north austin where the campus is located is a little bit more upscale part of town. that sweaty-tanktop-tatooed-keep-weird austin aesthetic is not welcoming to most people moving from out of state. also like most of texas, besides bbq/burgers/texmex there is zero edible ethnic/specialty options. Don't tell me they have good ramen or indian. its total garbage compared to other large cities in or out of state.

and dont get me started one their 1 freeway running through the entire city. Not exaggerating they have only 1 freeway to get in and out, or you can take a toll road that avoids the whole thing. You can tell I was unimpressed with my stay in Austin.

That's all by design. Texas doesnt need anymore people moving in from the outside.
 
Austin seems like the perfect location for Apple, a lot of "hip" and "trendy" youth with decent educations that can be gobbled up for below average wages utilizing their branding, and they get to pay Texas level taxes rather than Cali level taxes. If they wanted the most skilled people and didn't mind paying for it while getting the sweet Texas tax deal they would go to Dallas.
 
Price = Supply * Demand

You have a lot of people with a lot of money; housing prices are going to go up. That's how Capitalism works. The only real way to lower housing prices is the literally have people make less money, which I'm pretty sure isn't a sound economic strategy.


Or they could make it easier to build more homes, expand freeways to handle more commuters, etc.
That would create more jobs and lower prices.

However, this is California, and they have better plans like building high rise luxury apartments (that most people don't want or can't afford) instead.
Combined with the NIMBY's and environmentalist stopping new projects, I double we will see any change.
 
Well I was going to say tax reasons, then remembered apple pays off the politicians directly so they don't pay taxes in Corruptifornia. If I ever got elected I'd make sure apple payed EVERY DIME OF THEIR BACK TAXES + INTEREST. Vote PeaKr, thankyou!
 
They chose Austin because every California minimum wage millionaire has moved to Austin and turned it into San Francisco. Its only the beginning of Texas turning into that god forsaken state California.
 
Yes, keep moving to Texas and stay out of Florida. We have enough from snow birds up north moving to Florida and bringing with them the same thinking that made them move in the first place.
 
Yes, keep moving to Texas and stay out of Florida. We have enough from snow birds up north moving to Florida and bringing with them the same thinking that made them move in the first place.

Take their money out of FL and see how it goes. Already has an abysmal education system. Most of FL is a shithole.

Don't worry, people will be fleeing it starting sometime in the next 20-50 years due to rising sea levels, worse hurricanes, and the expansion of tropical mosquito-borne diseases.
 
Apple can move to Texas, but keep the Cali crazies in Cali.

California is a shithole, and we don't need sanctimonious asswipes ruining one state only to flee to another and ruin that state, like a plague of locusts...
 
Take their money out of FL and see how it goes. Already has an abysmal education system. Most of FL is a shithole.

Don't worry, people will be fleeing it starting sometime in the next 20-50 years due to rising sea levels, worse hurricanes, and the expansion of tropical mosquito-borne diseases.
Yes, keep thinking that way and past the word around. Thanks
 
Price = Supply * Demand

You have a lot of people with a lot of money; housing prices are going to go up. That's how Capitalism works. The only real way to lower housing prices is the literally have people make less money, which I'm pretty sure isn't a sound economic strategy.

Except the problem is the people that have moved in and are the ones driving up prices don't work here. They are rich Chinese and Indian people seeking to move their assets out of the country while giving their children (or grandchildren) the best education possible.
 
Exhibit A

714f8pbRc-L._UY606_.jpg
 
Take their money out of FL and see how it goes. Already has an abysmal education system. Most of FL is a shithole.

Don't worry, people will be fleeing it starting sometime in the next 20-50 years due to rising sea levels, worse hurricanes, and the expansion of tropical mosquito-borne diseases.

Wasn't that what Al Gore said about New York City 20 years ago? If his measuring stick actually recorded that 8 food sea level rise since then, I will start advertising myself as the next John Holmes :p
 
Or they could make it easier to build more homes, expand freeways to handle more commuters, etc.
That would create more jobs and lower prices.

However, this is California, and they have better plans like building high rise luxury apartments (that most people don't want or can't afford) instead.
Combined with the NIMBY's and environmentalist stopping new projects, I double we will see any change.

Because CAPITALISM; those high rise luxury apartments bring in more profit, so there's really no incentive for developers to build affordable housing.

Or are you endorsing the California State Government to preempt the free market and directly compete with and undercut housing developers?
 
Except the problem is the people that have moved in and are the ones driving up prices don't work here. They are rich Chinese and Indian people seeking to move their assets out of the country while giving their children (or grandchildren) the best education possible.

And? That's Capitalism in a nutshell; housing is generally seen as a good investment by overseas investors.
 
That's all by design. Texas doesnt need anymore people moving in from the outside.

Goddam right we don't, especially those Kalifornia blue wave turds in the punch bowl. I no more want them coming into my state (native born) and not assimilating (which is literally the truth, they want to make their new state just like that POS they came from) anymore than I want immigrants waving the flag of their FORMER country.

Assimilate or stay the fuck out.

Seriously.
 
California is a shithole, and we don't need sanctimonious asswipes ruining one state only to flee to another and ruin that state, like a plague of locusts...

No kidding. Southern Nevada has gone pot with all the Californians too :(
 
Because CAPITALISM; those high rise luxury apartments bring in more profit, so there's really no incentive for developers to build affordable housing.

Or are you endorsing the California State Government to preempt the free market and directly compete with and undercut housing developers?

It's not CAPITALISM. It's corrupt corporativism.

Large corporations pay off the politicians/bureaucrat.
The politicians/bureaucrat only allow select projects to go forward if they meet proper criteria, such as the proper political correctness and donation levels.

If we have a true free market, companies would be building what people want to buy, not what the political class wants then to buy.
 
Price = Supply * Demand

You have a lot of people with a lot of money; housing prices are going to go up. That's how Capitalism works. The only real way to lower housing prices is the literally have people make less money, which I'm pretty sure isn't a sound economic strategy.

Or build more houses.. People don't realize how far out of their way people in places like that go to prevent new and especially new affordable housing to be built.
 
Or they could make it easier to build more homes, expand freeways to handle more commuters, etc.
That would create more jobs and lower prices.

However, this is California, and they have better plans like building high rise luxury apartments (that most people don't want or can't afford) instead.
Combined with the NIMBY's and environmentalist stopping new projects, I double we will see any change.
The city is already 5-8y behind on any traffic improvement projects, when they finally get around to doing something they'll be 10-15y behind.
The unexpected growth rate is just too astronomical for them to really get ahead of in a timely manner because of the bureaucratic BS IMO.

Or build more houses.. People don't realize how far out of their way people in places like that go to prevent new and especially new affordable housing to be built.
It not that they're trying to prevent it, the difficulty is that it takes time to build houses and/or apartments.
Where you can build new easily is potentially a 45+ minute commute (Hutto, Leander, Pflugerville on the other side of 130, and the like) which is abhorrent for many texans, but many are relegating the distance because they are cheaper there.
I assure you all of the home developers/builders are working to get them built as fast as possible while the market is booming and the demand is there.
Even the rent here is upwards of 1400-1500$ for a 2-2 apartment in a non-downtown area (it was under $1000 in 2012).
 
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