According to Tim Cook, Apple is working alongside Steve Jobs’ family to come up with an idea for the “right way” to pay tribute to him with Apple’s upcoming “spaceship campus.”
In an interview with Fortune, Cook confirmed that, “We will definitely honor [Steve] in the right kind of way,” with the new campus — whose opening has reportedly been delayed from 2016 until early 2017.
“We’re working with Laurene [Powell Jobs, Steve’s widow] and the family,” Cook says.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard rumors that the new Apple Campus — which was officially given the go-ahead in one of Jobs’ last public appearances, speaking to the Cupertino City Council — will pay homage to the company’s co-founder.
In a Telegraph article published last year, long-time Apple fan Stephen Fry suggested the building should be named after Jobs, prompting Tim Cook to note that, “Oh, Steve made his views on that very clear” — suggesting that Jobs wasn’t a big fan of the idea.
Jobs wasn’t particularly sentimental. Shortly after he returned to Apple in 1997, he gave the company’s entire historical archive — comprising records dating back to the mid-1980s — because he didn’t want the company to be fixated on the past. It would therefore be a bit ironic were this to become the Steve Jobs Campus, even if it would be a nice nod to Apple’s roots.
A Steve Jobs zen garden for thinking of new ideas, maybe?
Fortune‘s interview with Tim Cook also touches on a number of other topics, including the Apple Car (although Cook largely avoids the question), Apple Pay, and Apple’s approach to acquisitions.