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Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

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Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#111

Post by ljsprague »

tencentshill wrote: post #105
vsgherzi wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as manufacturing in China took time manufacturing in the US will take time. The US has lost much of its skilled labor and mom and pop parts shop. If we have any hope of re-invigorating this some large company is going to have to bite the bullet. Chicken and egg problem imo. I'll leave whether this is worth it or not up to the economists.

It needs a careful long term approach from real leaders. Not a run-and-gun, corrupt, chaotic president throwing tariffs (taxes) up on a whim.

[flagged]

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#112

Post by luketaylor »

vsgherzi wrote: post #92

Is no one else interested in the "assemble advanced AI servers, including logic boards produced onsite, which are then used in Apple data centers in the U.S." in the pictures? Are they using nvidia GPUS? Their own silicon? Is there any data out there on what these servers are like? I don't think we've ever seen a picture of them before.

WSJ published a video yesterday with the first pictures of those servers: https://twitter.com/yiningkarlli/status/2026176857541075274

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#114

Post by mgh95 »

apercu wrote: post #106
ijustlovemath wrote: post #91

Helene survivor here. What's wild to me is that, regardless of the small scale of this facility, it's only a few hundred meters from a 1% flood zone: https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search The address I found for the facility is 9101 Windmill Park Lane Hudson, TX 77064 This seems ill advised given recent events like Hurricane Harvey

Weirdly the first thing I thought was "Why Texas"?

Likely a combination of business-friendly policies (low tax, no employer payroll tax, etc.) and proximity to ports. Houston is the 6th [1] largest port in the USA.

[1] https://pangea-network.com/busiest-and-biggest-ports-in-the-...

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#115

Post by nutjob2 »

apercu wrote: post #103
adamgordonbell wrote: post #84

Apple is very tied to Chinese manufacturing in a way that is hard to replicate in US. They will agree to make some high margin simple to assemble thing in the US to appease government, but if it goes as well as last time, they will stop as soon as they can. In china they were often able to iterate on designs and have custom screws and other parts made and ramped up in very short times. Something about having the whol…

Jebus. “It’s hard to manufacture in the US.” Yes. That’s what rebuilding capability looks like. China built dense supply chains over decades. Of course iteration was faster. Hard isn’t a reason not to do it. It’s what happens when you’ve optimized for margin and optics and performance instead of resilience.

No, it's local manufacturing theater.

The US does a lot of manufacturing, second only to China, but not low margin stuff that isn't economic.

Trying to "bring back" that sort of thing is idiotic and is entirely performative and induced by the current incompetent administration.

China is a genuine threat but the right solution is to move it to other friendlier countries instead of losing money trying to do it in the US.

Stupid is a reason not to do it.

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#116

Post by alwillis »

bigyabai wrote: post #56
Fergusonb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're definitely more popular right now, but they've been a winner since M1. Great performance, quiet, efficient. It would be tough to get a windows machine at that price that gets anywhere close on performance, especially if you consider the cost of electricity. Great parent/grandparent machines, home servers.

> It would be tough to get a windows machine at that price that gets anywhere close on performance Not that tough. I paid $299 for a Ryzen 5800h mini PC last year, which roughly lands in the same performance bracket. Would have considered the Mac Mini, but the AMD box has much better Linux support.

> a Ryzen 5800h mini PC last year, which roughly lands in the same performance bracket [as a Mac mini].

Not really. And this is before the M5 Mac mini which ships later this year.

Putting it together in desktop‑mini form factors:

- Raw CPU: M4 is much faster single‑core, generally faster multi‑core at lower power.

- GPU: M4’s iGPU is roughly 2×+ Vega 8 and more modern.

- Memory subsystem: M4 has far higher bandwidth and unified memory, ideal for integrated GPU and many modern workloads.

- Efficiency/noise: M4 wins by a large margin; much higher perf per watt.

- Compatibility: 5800H wins if you need bare‑metal x86 OSes like FreeBSD or specific x86‑only software stacks.

- 5800H: 35–54 W configurable TDP in laptops; mini‑PC implementations often run it fairly hot to maintain clocks.

- M4 in Mac mini: ~24 W base TDP, ~40 W boost, but getting clearly higher performance per watt.

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#117

Post by Dig1t »

ijustlovemath wrote: post #91

Helene survivor here. What's wild to me is that, regardless of the small scale of this facility, it's only a few hundred meters from a 1% flood zone: https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search The address I found for the facility is 9101 Windmill Park Lane Hudson, TX 77064 This seems ill advised given recent events like Hurricane Harvey

They will build to a much higher standard than normal US residential construction, as they do with most commercial buildings. Many people do not understand the vast difference between residential construction quality and the quality that mega corps get. I personally watched Apple build their new campus in Austin (I have daily progress pictures of the construction site, I work there), everything is solid concrete. These buildings can withstand any type of hurricane.

Flooding is also something which can be mitigated: build foundations to be taller, work with the topography to avoid the path of water, and build drainage solutions. You should see the drainage field that Apple built for their campus in Austin, it's absolutely massive and can divert an incredible amount of water.

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#118

Post by OsrsNeedsf2P »

ljsprague wrote: post #111
tencentshill wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs a careful long term approach from real leaders. Not a run-and-gun, corrupt, chaotic president throwing tariffs (taxes) up on a whim.

[flagged]

Was Kamala campaigning on bringing manufacturing to Texas?

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#120

Post by tombert »

yndoendo wrote: post #113

While shopping I look where items are produced and by whom company. When I see an item is manufactured in Texas I put it back on the shelf and keep walking. That State is too politically corrupt for me to financially support, same with Florida.

Don't most big tech companies have an office in Dallas or Austin? I remember that the MS campus was huge when I lived in Dallas.

If "can't have been made in any capacity in Texas" is your criteria that might be pretty difficult.

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