And those systems work sooo well... Nothing like a bit of fresh air to perk up a tired office worker at say 3 pm.

Have you ever heard of a break? It's where you actually get up and walk outside for some fresh air.

No doubt

But a constant temperature does make you drowsy even if it is comfortable. I agree with your point, but it still lacks a human element.

The guy who said to take a break and get some fresh air, fair enough, not arguing with that.

No, we pronounce it "pentagon".

And the people who work at the Pentagon hate the design -- going to opposite ends of the building is a pain (or at least was, it's been a couple of decades since I've read anything about it).

Surely they won't make that same mistake at Apple. They'll have a way to easily cut across. Right?

Ive never known anyone who's enjoyed working at the Pentagon. I worked there on Temporary Duty for a week once. Alot of times you have to run files back and forth between offices, which can seriously suck if one office is on the E ring and the other one is on the A ring. Going to opposite ends of the building is still a pain, and half the doors on the courtyard Enlistedmen don't tend to dare to use. There's no policy that says we can't (to my knowledge anyway, they dont tell TDY alot) but Its like high heresy to cut across the courtyard. Wont save you much time either way.

I wondered how long ...

... it would take for someone to say it.

>> Unlikely the architects would have wanted to have opening windows because it screws up the aircon....

Indeed, I expect a large space like this will come with highly specified environmental controls - not just temperature controlled, but maintained with filtered, temperature and humidity controlled air. Anything else would be a terrible place to work.

Opening windows work in small room, but when you get to larger rooms then you have the problem that for people away from the windows to get any air, those near the windows get "an excessive amount" of air - typically they get frozen in UK climates.

All quite probable - except "The architects wanted the windows to open". So it's Jobsian control freakery, then, not design, typical Apple.

"Unlikely the architects would have wanted to have opening windows because it screws up the aircon...."

Really? In quite a few modern buildings you get notices about not opening windows because it might mess with the supposedly tuned air-conditioning, even though in everyone's experience, the air-conditioning manages to have everyone either too hot or too cold, the automatic blinds/shades take on a life of their own, opening, closing, rolling up or down at the slightest provocation before finally giving up working after a fraction of their supposed lifespan, and the janitor is either permanently away or unable to get someone in to fix all of this.

A lot of architects that manage to put up this kind of vanity project are often drifting away from practical concerns in favour of aesthetics, as if the practical business (what architecture should actually be driven by) might dirty the nice pictures in the coffee-table book that is their portfolio. So, for example, you had the laughable situation where the toilets in one brand-spanking-new opera house were continuously out of paper because the architects and their interior design pals didn't want to ruin the look by having anywhere to put the TP.

In the end, the TP gets piled on the floor and ruins the look, anyway, but I guess the avatars in the mock-ups don't need to use the toilet. In the mind of the delicate architectural genius, toilets probably have no place in an opera house, anyway.

The first thing my mum and a few others noticed

When the local council posted their plans for their new community-centre/theatre was "Um... where are the toilets?" Seriously! The architects had forgotten to put any toilets in a building supposed to hold a couple of hundred people!

Well, to start off with...

1. What has he got against Windows? You forgot the boom-tish after the question mark.

2. Windows is ugly (no rounded windows, for example), not very user-friendly and something that made him cringe. He would never have let it through. Compare the Macintosh graphical-interface from 1985 with that of Windows 1995 and you will see the difference.

3. SJ hates the notion of people tinkering with his appliances. He was the very antithesis of Woz, who built computers that one could expand, tinker with and so on. This is one of the reasons that he didn't dislike SCSI too much. Easy to attach and detach. No screwdrivers necessary. Often no drivers even necessary (or they came the mac). The outside of the box is for users and the inside of the box is for trained Apple-authorised personnel.