Doesn’t Texas have an even more regressive bill?
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Nope. They saw the SH##SHOW we created and were smart enough to run like hell from something that stupid.
I know for a fact the HB2 and the legislature is the sole reason Apple changed the ‘pending announcement’ for coming to Raleigh/RTP and instead switched moved the jobs to Austin.
Let’s just say my source was very much ‘in the know’.
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The bathroom bill has been in limbo in Texas for a few years. It is in the background, never having been completely settled, but I’m assuming that Apple felt better to bet on the Austin they knew than the Raleigh they didn’t.
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Austin has a brand identity that transcends its state’s identity. It’s loved by celebrities, has a cool vibe, is the reigning capital of growth, and is known internationally for its SXSW festival. Raleigh doesn’t have any room for error, and Apple would have had a harder time “selling” Raleigh to future employees within the context of the dumbass state political image that rapidly got out of control.
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All that, plus location - I think the California based companies find it easier to expand to TX instead of all the way on the East coast. Google has a big tower in Austin, and SpaceX also prefers the TX gulf coast for some of their operations over FL due to easier transit and it’s also cheaper.
That doesn’t explain the initial pursuit and then the sudden pull back. Raleigh didn’t suddenly become uncool versus Austin. Plus initially Apple said that neither CA or TX are in the run for the expansion. Tim Cook is very sensitive to politics and while the HB2 has been an issue they knew that going in.
The real differentiator was the political turmoil in the year of 2018 running up to the elections. It was just plain imprudent to start the ballots over controversial topics such as Voter ID in the same year when Amazon and Apple take a close look at your state.
Anyway guys, lets leave this behind us and look forward
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Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
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Apple WAS coming to Raleigh/RTP. This isn’t about whether or not Austin is ‘cool’ or not. Raleigh/Wake County lost a potential game changing corporate expansion by a company that would send a statement globally. IBM, Cisco, SAS are all dinosaurs. Apple is ‘cool’ and would have helped Raleigh create a ‘cool vibe’. It would have given Apple an East Coast presence
For anyone who still doesn’t believe this announcement was pending, another tidbit:
Apple is lead by a CEO who went to Duke AND lived in Raleigh for 7+ years and has a COO who graduated from Sanderson High School, NC State, & Duke University…and yet our legislature F#'d it up for us all.
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Personally if Apple (or any company) doesn’t like the way things are done here in North Carolina, be it liberal or conservative as we are on the fence here nowadays, then maybe we just don’t want or need these companies. Not much for outsiders dictating how we should be or act or do things.
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Lol. SAS, the A.I. leader, is a dinosaur, but Apple, the guy that sells overpriced phones, is cool?
They let their server business fail, and Macs are rarely updated and in slow decline, tablet market is saturated, and iPhones are increasingly losing market share. Steve Jobs is long gone for sure.
It would have been a cool campus in no-where’s ville RTP. But I don’t recall any rumor they were moving to Raleigh.
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OK bro.
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Lol love how you just tore apart the most profitable public company in the world! But seriously obviously Apple seems much cooler because it is much more of a consumer brand then the others mentioned.
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At least IBM products do not turn users brains into apple-sauce 
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Oh and do not forget the bale out by Microsoft just so justics department would not call Microsoft a monopoly.
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Are you serious Ted? We lost 15,000 jobs because of an asinine law. That was just Apple and it would have been game changing for this region. Start adding up the other jobs we lost, many of which people have forgotten or didn’t even know about take that number much higher. Deutche Bank sent 2500 jobs to Jacksonville Florida instead of Raleigh because of the idiots in the legislature. Bet you didn’t know about that one.
I have never seen companies refuse to come to N.C. in the past because of specific laws until then…and we are still feeling the impact.
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Deutsche Bank has other problems.
I never see the loss really if we never had the jobs to begin with. More focus needs to be put on what we have, the companies that are growing here in Raleigh and less on the ones that could have been.
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Yeah while an HQ2 at Spring Hill would have been kind of a game changer in a way, an Apple campus off of Little Drive in southern RTP would have been kind of a yawn tbh, a doubling down on the failed development strategy of the past. O well. Let’s be sure to win the next one and be sure we have our ducks in a row with a planned urban megasite with an A- or B-grade location ready to go and zoning entitlements already in place.
A-list:
- South Saunders PD
- Spring Hill
- Downtown South(maybe?)
B-list:
- North Hills buildout
- Midtown Exchange
- Cary Town Center redevelopment
- Gregory Poole and NCDOT maintenance yard at Blue Ridge & Hillsborough (Haven’t heard much about this one in the past decade but it’s still there and still loaded with potential.)
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I don’t like the way things are done here either, same with many others. We aren’t blaming Apple for their decision, we are blaming the idiots in government.
