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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

#121

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

When it floods, they can hold their hands up and say "well we tried".. then get back to business as usual in China

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

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Even if you hate who the president is, it is in the best interest of everyone that the president does a good job. Wanting the president to fail and millions to suffer is scorched earth hatred, not strategy.

This President isn't doing a good job on really any level. Its not that I want anyone to fail, it's that the President today is currently in a state of failure, and those failures like enriching himself can have long term devastating effects on our society.

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

#123

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…

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

#124

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.

Even if the mini is more power efficient at $600 base, saving $300 upfront pushes out the breakeven point.

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

#125

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.

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

#126

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…

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.

Are you sure that’s actually what you want though, competing with China in skilled labor?

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

#127
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 U…

This is the part that blows my mind. People seem to think the US is incapable of and does no manufacturing. It is the second largest manufacturer[1], and has a capacity about 65% of what China does. Which is 350% of the next largest manufacturing country.

What they stopped manufacturing was menial and low-end product; because it's not price-effective to have 100 Americans sit on an assembly line and solder SMT components for $7-18/hr. Instead, those potential workers pivoted into service jobs and office work.

1 - https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/blog/top-10-manufa...

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

#128

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…

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> Unless of course you need aerospace or space-qualified screws

Ok... Is that what they're using to build Mac Minis and is that what they need to iterate on typically?

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

#130

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]

Managed to do what?
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