If Apple’s former CEO had been more sentimental, we’d be referring to the company’s upcoming “Spaceship” headquarters as the Steve Jobs campus, according to an interesting tidbit in Stephen Fry’s Telegraph article about Jony Ive’s promotion.
While being given a tour of the rapidly advancing Apple Campus 2 site, Fry suggested it should be named after Jobs, who died in 2011 but was heavily involved with the early stages of planning.
“Oh, Steve made his views on that very clear,” said Tim Cook — hinting that the idea was discussed, but that Jobs wasn’t a massive fan of it.
It comes as very little surprise that someone as forward-looking as Jobs wouldn’t want Apple paying constant tribute to him after his death.
As Cook told the authors of this year’s Becoming Steve Jobs biography, “[Jobs] didn’t want us asking, ‘What would Steve do?’ He abhorred the way the Disney culture stagnated after Walt Disney’s death, and he was determined for that not to happen at Apple.”
Jobs wasn’t sentimental. Shortly after he returned to Apple in 1997, he gave the entire Apple historical archive — comprising records that management at Apple had kept since the mid-1980s — to Stanford University Libraries because he didn’t want the company to be fixated on the past.
The move was clearly a good one, because nobody could argue that Apple from 1997 onward was coasting on its 1980s reputation and failing to innovate in new areas.
With that being said, given what a remarkable feat the new Campus 2 building is set to be — alongside the fact that one of Jobs’ last public appearances was speaking to the Cupertino City Council about the campus’ creation — it would be kind of neat if Jobs’ legacy was paid homage to in some way with the (still unnamed) new campus.
What do you think?
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
6 responses to “Apple’s new ‘Spaceship’ HQ could have been called the Steve Jobs Campus”
I’d give him an office in the new complex. I think more than anything he’d want to be in the building working not outside looking in.
Steve Jobs Campus it is!
The Jobs Site.
Name the interior gardens after him, probably his favorite grounds of the whole complex, restoring him to his days on the apple orchards.
This would inspire creativity where people are likely to ponder, in the orchards.
I like this idea. Obviously if Steve’s family are opposed to the idea of any Steve Jobs mention for whatever reason I’d leave it, but giving people a quiet place to ponder ideas sounds a great legacy site. And a nice nod to the long walks Jobs took with people to talk over ideas.
Nope. Goes against everything he stood for. Throw out the things that aren’t useful and don’t get mired in hanging on to old glory. It’s as much an insult to his legacy as a tribute.