1.
IPad (3rd generation)
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The third-generation iPad is a tablet computer, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It shipped with iOS5.1, which provides a platform for audio-visual media, including electronic books, periodicals, films, music, computer games, presentations. In the US and Canada, nine variations of the third-generation iPad were offered, compared to six in the rest of the world, each variation was available with black or white front glass panels, with options for 16,32, or 64 GB of storage. In North America, connectivity options were Wi-Fi only, Wi-Fi + 4G on Verizon, AT&T, Telus, Rogers, the Wi-Fi + Cellular model includes GPS capability. The tablet was released in ten countries on March 16,2012 and it gained mostly positive reviews, earning praise for its Retina display, processor and 4G capabilities. However, controversy arose when the LTE incompatibilities became known, three million units were sold in the first three days. After only seven months of availability, the third-generation iPad was discontinued on October 23,2012. The third-generation iPad had the shortest lifespan of any iOS product and it is also the last iPad to support the 30-pin dock connector, as the fourth generation iPad and later use the Lightning connector. Speculation about the product began shortly after Apple released the iPad 2, speculation increased after news of a 2,048 by 1,536 pixel screen leaked. During this time, the tablet was called the iPad 3, on February 9,2012, John Paczkowski of All Things Digital stated that Apple’s not holding an event in February – strange, unusual or otherwise. But it is holding one in March – to launch its next iPad, another common rumor at the time was that the tablet would have an Apple A6 processor. On February 29,2012, Apple announced an event scheduled for March 7,2012. The company did not predisclose the subject of the event, the announcement affected the tablet resale market positively. At the event, Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced iOS5.1, a Japanese version of Siri, and the third generation Apple TV before the third-generation iPad. Cook claimed that the new product would be one of the contributors to the emerging post-PC world – a world in which digital life would not be tied to the PC. The March 16,2012, release included eight countries including Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the March 23,2012, release included many European countries, Mexico and Macau. The April 20,2012, release added a dozen countries including South Korea, the April 27,2012, release added nine more countries, including India and South Africa. May 2012 releases added 31 countries, including Brazil and Turkey, on October 23,2012, upon the announcement of the fourth-generation iPad, the third-generation iPad was discontinued
2.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
3.
Yerba Buena Gardens
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Yerba Buena Gardens is the name for two blocks of public parks located between Third and Fourth, Mission and Folsom Streets in downtown San Francisco, California. The first block bordered by Mission and Howard Streets was opened on October 11,1993, the second block, between Howard and Folsom Streets, was opened in 1998, with a dedication to Martin Luther King, Jr. by Mayor Willie Brown. A pedestrian bridge over Howard Street connects the two blocks, sitting on top of part of the Moscone Center convention center. Yerba Buena was the name of the town in the Mexican territory of Alta California that became the city of San Francisco, California, in 1999 the Yerba Buena Gardens received the Gold Medal of the biannual Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence. Furthermore, the jury applauded the evolution of the development process to an inclusive model involving multiple constituencies. Even during the design stages there were struggles regarding the building program. But what about the kids of the central city, a Redevelopment Agency that hands out free land for art museums for the wealthy in Yerba Buena but cant find funding for a bowling center too has no moral values. Consequently, the SFRA backed down from its plan and the alley was re-included. The original block opened in 1993 contains several art installations. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is located behind a waterfall, the entire memorial was a collaborative project between Sculptor Houston Conwill, Poet Estella Majoza and Architect Joseph De Pace. In the sculptors words, The Memorial is “a sacred space … meant to be experienced as a cultural pilgrimage, an ice skating rink, a bowling alley, and a restored 1905 carousel originally located at Playland-at-the-Beach can also be found in the South block. Eateries within the gardens include the B Restaurant and Grill and the Samovar Tea Lounge on the North blocks terrace, Mos Grill on the South blocks upper walkway, and a snack shop by the carousel. Nearby museums include, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Museum of the African Diaspora, Childrens Creativity Museum, other exhibiting institutions nearby include SF Planning and Urban Research Association and California Historical Society. The Mexican Museum is planned to be built across Mission Street as part the 53-story Yerba Buena tower, the project is planned to cost $500 million and will complete the Yerba Buena district redevelopment area, which apart from the Yerba Buena Gardens includes the Metreon and Moscone Center. Located within two blocks of Yerba Buena Gardens are many hotels, museums, and retail centers, the St. Regis Museum Tower, W Hotel San Francisco, San Francisco Marriott, Four Seasons, and InterContinental Hotel San Francisco are some of the largest hotels in the area. Retail in the include the Metreon bordering the North block. Moscone Center South of Market, San Francisco, California Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Yerba Buena page maintained by the management of gardens
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Fumihiko Maki
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Fumihiko Maki is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, after studying at the University of Tokyo, graduating in 1952, he moved to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, graduating with a masters degree in 1953. He then studied at Harvard Graduate School of Design, graduating with a Master of Architecture degree in 1954 and this building remained his only completed work in the United States until 1993, when he completed the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts building in San Francisco. In 2006, he returned to Washington University in St. Louis to design the new home for the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, in 1960 he returned to Japan to help establish the Metabolism Group. He worked for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York City and for Sert Jackson and Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts and founded Maki, in 2006, he was invited to join the judging panel for an international design competition for the new Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. Maki designed a building for the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After completing a $330 million expansion of the United Nations building in Manhattan, while it has criticized his 51 Astor Place project as out of place, New York magazine called Tower 4 pretty exquisite. Maki will be designing the London campus of the Aga Khan University along with a centre as part of the Kings Cross development project. Steinberg Hall at Washington University Hillside Terrace work at Expo 70, with Kenzo Tange and others St. Louis, June 196410 Stories of Collective Housing, by a+t research group. Tokio, 1967-1998 Maki and Associates, official site Pritzker Prize – Fumiho Maki Interview with Fumihiko Maki Images of Tower 4, WTC
5.
South of Market, San Francisco
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SoMa is home to many of the citys museums, to the headquarters of several major software and Internet companies, and to the Moscone Conference Center. The areas boundaries are Market Street to the northwest, San Francisco Bay to the northeast, Mission Creek to the southeast and it is the part of the city in which the street grid runs parallel and perpendicular to Market Street. As with many neighborhoods, the boundaries of the South of Market area are fuzzy. From 1848 until the construction of the Central Freeway in the 1950s, since the 1950s, the boundary has been either 10th Street, 11th Street, or the Central Freeway. Similarly, the entire Mission Bay neighborhood may or may not be counted as part of SoMa, redevelopment agencies, social service agencies, and community activists frequently exclude the more prosperous areas between the waterfront and 3rd Street. Some social service agencies and nonprofits count the economically distressed area around 6th, 7th, the terms South of Market and SoMa refer to both a comparatively large district of the city as well as a much smaller neighborhood. Before being called South of Market this area was called South of the Slot, while the cable cars have long since disappeared from Market Street, some old timers still refer to this area as South of the Slot. Since 1847, the name of the South of Market area has been the 100 Vara Survey or simply 100 Vara for short. Since the mid-20th century, the name has been gradually forgotten, and today is found mainly in history books, legal documents, title deeds. At the time, the streets of San Francisco were aligned approximately with the points, running north to south. Each block was divided into six lots 50 varas on a side. e, northeast to southwest, and northwest to southeast. He also decided to make the new blocks twice as long and twice as wide, finally, OFarrell created a grand promenade linking the old pueblo with the new subdivision, Market Street. Since then, downtown San Francisco north of Lower Market Street has been known as 50 Vara. Rincon Hill became an enclave for the wealthy, while nearby South Park became an enclave for the middle class. The neighborhood became a largely working-class and lower-middle-class community of recent European immigrants, sweatshops, power stations, flophouses, the 1906 earthquake completely destroyed the area, and many of the quakes fatalities occurred there. Following the quake, the area was rebuilt with wider than usual streets, the construction of the Bay Bridge and U. S. Route 101 during the 1930s saw large swaths of the area demolished, including most of the original Rincon Hill. The waterfront redevelopment of the Embarcadero in the 1950s pushed a new population into this area in the 1960s, the incipient gay community, and the leather community in particular. From 1962 until 1982, the gay community grew and thrived throughout South of Market, most visibly along Folsom Street
6.
Apple Inc.
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Apple is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Apples consumer software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the media player, the Safari web browser. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. in January 1977, Apple joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in March 2015. In November 2014, Apple became the first U. S. company to be valued at over US$700 billion in addition to being the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. The company employs 115,000 full-time employees as of July 2015 and it operates the online Apple Store and iTunes Store, the latter of which is the worlds largest music retailer. Consumers use more than one billion Apple products worldwide as of March 2016, Apples worldwide annual revenue totaled $233 billion for the fiscal year ending in September 2015. This revenue accounts for approximately 1. 25% of the total United States GDP.1 billion, the corporation receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors and its environmental and business practices, including the origins of source materials. Apple was founded on April 1,1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, the Apple I kits were computers single-handedly designed and hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard, which was less than what is now considered a personal computer. The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66, Apple was incorporated January 3,1977, without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple, during the first five years of operations revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980 yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118m, the Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16,1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because of its character cell-based color graphics. While early Apple II models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II. The Apple II was chosen to be the platform for the first killer app of the business world, VisiCalc. VisiCalc created a market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II. Before VisiCalc, Apple had been a distant third place competitor to Commodore, by the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line
