Apple Park Visitor Center

The Apple Park Visitor Center is a full-service Apple Store that also functions as a place to receive unannounced visitors to the Apple Park campus, which is normally closed to the public. It was opened on November 17, 2017 as Apple's 498th retail store and internally identified as R824. However, among existing stores still open as of 2023, it has since moved up to become the 489th oldest as nine other preceding stores had closed over the years.

Location
The visitor center is located at 10600 North Tantau Avenue in Cupertino, California and also features a cafe, an AR exhibit, and a rooftop observation deck from which the Apple headquarters is visible. It was designed with an underground parking structure with space for up to 684 vehicles.

History
The visitor center was designed for Apple by Foster and Partners at an estimated cost of $80 million for the center and an additional $26 million for the parking structure. It was opened to the public on November 17, 2017 and superseded the old Company Store at 1 Infinite Loop in providing souvenir Apple merchandise to visitors.

Incidents
On March 14, 2020, the visitor center was closed due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was reopened on May 27, 2020, but with limited curbside service in observance of health precautions.

On December 5, 2022, pro-democracy activists staged a hunger strike at the Apple Park Visitor Center to protest time limitations placed on the AirDrop feature for users of iOS 16 in China. This change attracted criticism in the wake of protests in the country which were being organized via AirDrop to circumvent censorship. With the release of iOS 16.2 in the following week, the same restriction was rolled out to users in other territories outside of China.

Articles

 * Here are the unique Apple items you can only find at the visitor center near its spaceship headquarters by Troy Wolverton at Business Insider (2019-03-10)