Icicles Falling From Roof of New Chicago Apple Store Blamed on Faulty Heating System

Blair Kamin, writing for the Chicago Tribune:

Apple spokesman Nick Leahy on Friday said the building’s architects, London-based Foster + Partners, had designed the glass-walled store with winter in mind, but had been foiled by a technical malfunction.

“The roof has a warming system that’s built into it,” he said. “It needed some fine-tuning and it got re-programmed today. It’s hopefully a temporary problem.”

In addition, he said, the store was designed to drain water — not through conventional gutters, but through four internal support columns.

That makes a lot more sense than that Chicago winter weather wasn’t taken into consideration, but let’s see about that “hopefully”.

For months now, the famously secretive Cupertino, Calif.-based computer maker has refused to let architecture critics tour its spaceshiplike, ring-shaped new headquarters, also designed by Foster + Partners.

What, one wonders, does Apple have to hide?

Last week, Apple admitted to intentionally slowing down older iPhones without telling customers. This week, it apologized and cut $50 off its $79 price to install a new battery into old phones.

I have no idea what the battery/performance saga has to do with Apple’s secrecy regarding access to its new headquarters at Apple Park, but I do know this: this battery thing will be the gift that keeps on giving for years to come to lazy critics who want to make vague hand-wavy accusations that Apple’s culture of secrecy is based on the fact that the company has something unseemly to hide.

★ Wednesday, 3 January 2018