For Apple's Chief Design Officer and San Francisco resident Sir Jonathan "Jony" Ive, the bothersome chore of being chauffeured to the company's Cupertino headquarters in a Bentley (a commute he revealed in a New Yorker profile earlier this year) might be coming to an end. According to the Business Times, even as Apple constructs its new South Bay campus/planetary escape shuttle, the company has reached an agreement to rent around 76,000 square feet of office space in San Francisco.

The modest sublease is a chance for Apple to join the cool kids in — you guessed it, good job — SoMa. The "CNET building" is six-stories on Second Street between Howard and Folsom Streets. CBS Interactive has been marketing a two-floor sublease through the year 2022.

The space could hold between 400 and 500 employee, and though it's unclear what Apple is paying for it, the sum is likely hefty. The area has some of the highest monthly asking rents in San Francisco (about $66 a square foot)

The expansion to San Francisco, though it represents the company's first formal foray into Baghdad By The Bay, as 9-to-5 Mac adds, isn't without precedent. In past years, Apple has cultivated satellite offices across the United States in Seattle and Boston, with overseas locations, too, in Sweden, England, and Japan.

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