*shorter
And, as much as beauty in the eye of the beholder and all that, I don’t think one person in ten would vote for that over the proposed new build.
They’re quoting 500m2 being returned to open space, and one less story on the building in that spot. So… it actually will. Which is a good thing.
Kudos to Toorak Ted on subsuming the position of anti-corporate development little-guy battler. That’s some seriously good manouvering. Congratulations to all who’ve taken him at face value from waking up from their 8 year coma.
Yep. Jobian.
You’re getting a little weird about this.
I’m telling you as a friend.
Overpriced proprietary USB cables.
3 Likes
Yes,
Some just can’t see the trees for the Apples.
I prefer it.
ytb6ttedhjt6
1 Like
Yes, but you’re a contrarian to the bone. Don’t try and deny it!
1 Like
I prefer ‘provocateur’ 
dailyreview.com.au
An Apple store in Melbourne’s Fed Square trashes civic values
By Esther Anatolitis January 7, 2018
8-11 minutes
“It’s as bad as Jeff Kennett,” a property developer tells me. “No – actually, it’s worse.”
On the eve of the Christmas break, the Victorian Government announced that Apple would be opening a shop in Federation Square – not as another tenant, but by demolishing an existing multi-tenanted building, and replacing it with a bespoke structure whose sole purpose is to project a visually dominant brand presence over one of Australia’s most significant public spaces.
It’s a decision that’s been met with shock across the nation. And on Friday it emerged that this decision was made despite passionate objections by several key members of Daniel Andrews’ front bench – including planning minister Richard Wynne and Creative Industries Minister Martin Foley, who will rightly be fearing the political consequences in their inner-city seats come this November’s election.
The decision neglects the procurement process and public consultation period required of major urban planning determinations, disrupts several other key tenants across the site, and undermines the Civic and Cultural Charter that is FedSquare’s founding and guiding document. So how is FedSquare different from any other public space – and what has now been jeopardised?
Any community gathering or public event presented at FedSquare becomes coopted as cultural cred for Apple.
The Charter lays out the primacy of the site’s cultural purposes, allowing only those commercial uses that have “an identifiable synergy” with its cultural program. It sets out the objectives, key outcomes, implementation requirements and operating principles for FedSquare as a place for creativity and innovation. In his book on FedSquare’s first decade, Monash University’s Seamus O’Hanlon puts it very clearly: the Charter “mandates if there is a conflict between public and commercial use, the public will always win.”
This sets a sophisticated set of civic responsibilities for any government, as enacted through its onsite management body. And yet, rather than take the Charter seriously as a key state asset, it’s being trashed in favour of a brand awareness project.
So what will this mean for public space? Any community gathering or public event presented at FedSquare becomes an ad for Apple. Any political gathering, planned or otherwise, becomes coopted as cultural cred for Apple. Any artistic programming, whether produced by FedSquare or by Melbourne’s leading festivals and creatives, becomes colour and movement for Apple.
A lot has been said about the relocation of the Koori Heritage Trust to make way for Apple – a relocation that its leadership is ok with, just as FedSquare architect Don Bates is ok with Apple moving in – but little has been said about the consequences of that relocation for FedSquare’s other key cultural institutions, ACMI and SBS.
To accommodate the Koori Heritage Trust, SBS is being forced to halve its footprint and constrain its operations in ways that have unknown and unplanned consequences. Staff have now been told that their two floors will be merged into one floor, losing specialised tv and multitrack recording studios, as well as executive, sales and marketing offices. All within a very busy year that includes a major tech upgrade – and a World Cup. It’s long been an open secret in broadcast circles that shutting down SBS’s Melbourne operations would be an easy way to cut costs. Exactly how the Apple shop plays into that Sydney-centric agenda is impossible to determine; certainly, undermining media capacity in Australia’s most culturally diverse city is irreversible.
The consequences for ACMI are also poor. Even in the most commercially-driven of shopping centres, as a leading arts figure put it to me recently, management would never agree to opening a David Jones onsite without letting a Myer know – indeed, their contracts would preclude it. An Apple store that aims to present free daily programming in “photography, music creation, app development, visual arts, and more,” presented by “the world’s top creators and high profile talent [on] how they use technology in their creative process” conflicts directly with ACMI’s mission “to connect makers, thinkers, viewers and players” in ways that foster new thinking across “the themes that underpin screen culture.” And with plans to introduce their own massive-scale public screen programming on more façades – plans they unveiled at my Digital Publics symposia a couple of years ago – FedSquare management are actively eroding the impact of ACMI’s expertise on the state’s key creative industries site.
Apple imagines its flagship stores as town squares, performing a cultural role that’s elevated by the presence of prestigious institutions such as ACMI, the NGV and SBS.
Disclosure. As well as being a former SBS staffer, a former ACMI board member, and a former curator of design programming at FedSquare, my connection to the site predates its opening. At the turn of the millennium I was at the Bauhaus, working with an international team of diverse practitioners on cultural and commercial precincts that would address new C21st challenges through the design of new public and private spaces. FedSquare was hailed as a leader: exploding civic potential through new forms of cultural, social and commercial collaboration against the seemingly unsolvable problem of gifting to Melbourne at long last a town square that actually worked. We studied that potential closely, identifying it as a milestone in civic practice. Such a decision was unimaginable to our thinking and our expectations of FedSquare’s future.
Shopping malls that are closed to traffic are the natural home of the multinational flagship store – and Melbourne’s Bourke St Mall is home to several. Zara refitted several stories of existing building stock to create their massive presence. H&M occupied the old GPO, while the Emporium demolished the historically significant but rather run-down Lonsdale House to build their shopping centre.
Atop the Walk Arcade, which runs from the Bourke St Mall to Lt Collins, lie several stories of unused commercial floorspace that have remained vacant for years. Many years. They need work – probably about as much work as demolishing FedSquare’s Yarra Building – but Apple weren’t interested in that.
Rather than share a neighbourhood with other retailers, Apple imagines its flagship stores as town squares, performing a cultural role that’s elevated by the presence of prestigious institutions such as ACMI, the NGV and SBS. That readily coopted status comes precisely from their non-commercial focus: they each embody cultural values that cannot be bought or sold. To be located among prestigious neighbours whose values define the Australian culture, whose share price will never plummet, and who will likely never move out, is quite the tantalising prospect for any shop.
To all this, the public response has been swift – and organised. Several petitions have emerged that call on Premier Daniel Andrews to rethink the decision. Change.org is hosting several of these, each with thousands of signatures and fiery discussions on the nature of public space and the acceptable conditions in which it is contested. One Melburnian is calling for the retail presence to be held instead by Bunnings – because its weekend snags are a “quintessentially Australian experience.” This hilariously astute response says a lot about public expectations of public space.
So what’s the solution? We need to move well beyond profit to rethink what makes for success at FedSquare – and, thankfully, the Charter already outlines a helpful scope for that rethink. A management authority operating to a not-for-profit structure and reporting to the Minister for Creative Industries is vital to ensuring that smart thinking can drive civic and cultural innovation at this important place. Also essential is a culturally diverse board with strategic expertise encompassing planning or architecture, retail, media, arts and culture, and civic or public space practice. This is a rare opportunity for FedSquare management and its programming team to foster a long-term commitment to long-term goals and values by creating a culture of staff retention, as well as retaining key festivals by respecting their needs and championing their success. Restoring constructive relationships with key cultural tenants is essential, actively learning from their expertise, as well as collaborating meaningfully with external institutions.
Instead of making FedSquare a Christmas gift to one single business, let’s rethink Victoria’s civic and cultural responsibility to create a public space of enduring public value.
After all, even Jeff Kennett thinks it’s a bad idea.
Esther Anatolitis is Executive Director of the National Association for the Visual Arts
1 Like
Great company this … Why wouldn’t you give them a large part of the most prominent area in Melbourne … 
Consumers Are Suing Apple For Slowing Down Their iPhones. Did Apple Break The Law?
Omri Ben-Shahar
4-6 minutes
Apple Land is in turmoil. Apple admitted that its recent software updates deliberately slowed down the performance of old iPhones. The reason, Apple says, was to prevent “unexpected shutdowns” that old phones with weaker batteries might otherwise occasionally suffer. When the news broke, Apple quickly apologized for the slowdown and offered its customers discounted replacement batteries. But consumers are not appeased, and within hours class actions have been filed against Apple.
Open source
iOS upgrades cause old iPhones to slow down
It appears that this slowdown practice might not be a one-time glitch, but a longstanding “planned obsolescence” tactic allegedly employed by Apple to prompt consumers to replace their devices earlier than otherwise necessary, to coincide with the launch of (and increase the demand for) new iPhone models. People rush to replace the slowed-down phones, not realizing that they only need to replace the battery, or, better yet, choose not to install the software update. These options were obscured (until now), resulting in surges of unnecessary purchases.
There are many problematic angles with this tactic, and in posting an apology Apple recognizes that its customers rightly feel duped. But is it illegal to accelerate the obsolescence of the phones? Has Apple violated any law, or breached its contract with consumers?
The language of the contract to which consumers click “I Agree” when installing the iPhone’s updated software is vague, but it seems to (unsurprisingly) grant Apple wide authority to incorporate any functionality feature. The contract—17 pages of sobering legal language—announces that Apple “does not warrant against interference with your enjoyment of the iOS software […or] that the operation will be uninterrupted or error-free.” The contract further warns that “installation of this iOS software may affect the availability and usability” of apps and services.
But fine print disclaimers can shield Apple from liability for unfair acts only so much. Contract law prohibits deception and concealment. The law requires merchants to act in good faith in performance of their contracts with consumers, and does not allow them to escape these obligations by tossing a bunch of boilerplate at consumers.
There are legal precedents holding merchants liable for knowingly inducing consumers to buy things they don’t need. Well known to many lawyers is an old case against Arthur Murray dance studio, who sold to unsuspecting clients endless unnecessary and unusable dance lessons. In one particularly egregious case, the Florida branch of the studio sold to an aging widow 2300 hours of future dance lessons, which she could not realistically utilize—all under the seductive insinuations that such prepaid commitments would elevate her to unending artistic success. The Florida court condemned such “suppression of truth” and the denial of “free exercise of rational judgment” and held that the studio can be found liable for bad faith and fraud. This is not a one off decision; courts all over the country require that merchants alert their contracting parties when they notice that these parties are making crucial mistakes.
Undeniably, companies sell in the market things that people don’t really need all the time, and are not breaking the law. This is the definition of a modern affluent society. But it is one thing to knowingly sell products of no practical use like “smart” water bottles (reminding you to be thirsty) or Bluetooth toasters (“to toast smarter”)—consumers can figure out in advance what they are getting and exercise restraint. It is an entirely different matter to make representations that turn out to be misleading, by merchants with superior information, pretending to provide their trusting customers reliable advice on how to get the most from their products.
Consumer protection law is all about the prevention of such deception by merchants. Each state has laws that prohibit unfair and deceptive acts, including the concealment of material facts, and especially representations on which consumers are known to rely. If Apple deliberately concealed the fact that the upgrades would slow down the phone, it could easily be found liable under these laws, notwithstanding its attempts to disclaim the liability in the contract.
Woot! 
It’s over! Done, dusted, aint gonna happen.
Thank fk for that!!
6 Likes
I like Apple stores, but I really like Fed Square and it would have been a travesty.
Plenty of other spots in the CBD.
1 Like
Fark Apple.
2 Likes
Never been a fan of Fed Square. Don’t like the architecture and it is hard place to get around, too many steps and inclines; and my favorite Chinese restaurant went broke and left. I do like Beer Deluxe before the footy though.
Reckon they should pull it all down and make a park.
2 Likes
I can’t even begin to understand this thinking.
- There are plenty of parklands just around the friggin’ corner.
- Fed Square is…just…a wonderful performance space. Whether it’s for kids or the comedy festival or a small or large art exhibition.
- Its inside-outside plan is so inclusive. It gives a real sense of ownership of the space to the public. People can watch a big sporting event on the screen outside, or you can watch a friggin’ samba demonstration as you walk through it at 9pm.
Melbourne would be a darker, less interesting place without it. - Your alternative is to make the area a no-go zone at night?
- Apple can go fark itself and get the hell out of our space. What, did they promise to maybe pay tax some day for the chance to sit its big corporate ■■■■ in the middle of it?
■■■■ off down next to the casino where you belong.
5 Likes
It took a while to get recognition but it has become an integral part of Melbournes identity.
Personal choice I guess Wim. I have been to many events, all the galleries and displays, and all the restaurants at Fed Square and I find it really barren and one-dimensional.
Yeah I know it has varied textures and shapes in design and build and has the colours of the outback or whatever the architect was trying to achieve, but it has always just left me cold. I like parks and grass and trees and flowers, and you can never has enough of them.
I went to both the Apple and Microsoft stores in San Francisco, and they are just shops. Not really sure why Apple need a “flagship” store in Melbourne. Fark Apple !!!
1 Like