What's Apple doing in Kendall Square?

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

I know just about nothing about the new office, and haven't yet found anyone who does. Apple didn't respond to my inquiries, but building residents say an Apple sign appeared above an office door just before the holidays. The single door is frosted glass, and the office looks like it could fit perhaps four or five people. (Apple isn't listed as a tenant — yet? — on the floor's directory.) One neighbor told me he has only seen one person use the new space thus far, and not on a daily basis.

In addition to the employees at its stores, Apple has always had sales and support staffers working in the Boston area to serve major corporate and academic customers. But what would be big news is if this is a new engineering or R&D outpost. Those are activities Apple has historically done only at its Cupertino headquarters. "It'd be a huge strategic shift if they are hiring engineers here," says Chuck Goldman, a former Apple executive who is now chief strategy officer at Boston-based Apperian, which helps companies deploy mobile apps to their employees. "The mantra was always that everything was made in Cupertino."

And even when Apple has acquired companies — like Waltham-based Quattro Wireless, in 2010, which became Apple's iAds mobile advertising product — it has mandated that employees relocate to Cupertino, or find new jobs.

Perhaps, as Jonathan Kay hypothesizes, Apple "wants to play in any sandbox that is in such close proximity to Google and Microsoft." (Not to mention Amazon.) Kay runs Apptopia, a Boston-based app brokerage. Cambridge Innovation Center CEO Tim Rowe declined to comment on the new tenant.

I couldn't find any Apple job postings that seemed to pertain to this new office.

Know anything more? Post a comment or drop me an e-mail...

Update: Bob Cassels, a software engineer at Google who previously worked for Apple, e-mailed me with a little history about an earlier Apple presence in Cambridge...