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How far would you go to keep your company’s most prized products secret? Well, Apple is planning to open a new restaurant for its employees so they can wine and dine without members of the public over-hearing them talking about future projects and products.
Apple is famed for keeping its future products under wraps right up until the product is meant to be unveiled. To this end, they are planning to convent a two-storey building into a restaurant solely for its employees, which will be located several blocks from their headquaters in Cupertino.
The project has already been given the go-ahead by the local planning commission and should be ready sometime this year. Apart from there being a restaurant, the building with have ample space for parking with an underground carpark, there will also be meeting rooms and a courtyard.
Apple actually already owns a restaurant in Cupertino, called Caffe Mac, but it is also open to members of the public. This new restaurant facility will only be used by staff at Apple, who will be able to freely discuss current and future projects without the worry that they will end up on tech blogs or worse – in the hands of their competitors.
Dan Whisenhunt, Apple’s director of real estate facilities said: “We like to provide a level of security so that people and employees can feel comfortable talking about their business, their research and whatever project they’re engineering without fear of competition sort of overhearing their conversations.”
Over the year’s Apple’s secrets have been leaked online, mainly from the far-east, but in 2010, one unlucky Apple employee lost an iPhone 4 prototype in a bar in California.
Gizmodo did the right thing and returned the prototype to its rightful owner, but only after Apple unleashed its well paid army of lawyers. The two men who sold the prototype to Gizmodo avoided a jail sentence, but were given a year of probation and a hefty fine.
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