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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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is apparently economic to do so in China and apparently any other place you want to outsource it to. Does smaller and one-off productions have as high of margins as high speed automated stamping machines running 24/7? No. But that doesn't mean it isn't profitable at all. And quite frankly, who gives a fuck if top owners and investors get maximum returns, boo hoo they got 4% return instead of 8%, that is still far…

Yes you’ve hit on the reason. Very few people understand this.

The reason we don’t invest in manufacturing is because of requirements for return on capital.

Ask yourself why GM is doing massive stock buybacks in the era of global transition to electric cars. Why aren’t they using these huge sums of cash to invest in the next generation of products and instead literally just sending the money out the door?

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> 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?

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

#163
post #114
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Given that this is being done in large part to appease Trump the fact that it's a red state surely has something to do with it too.

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

#164

[flagged]

Those sound like good things. I'm not sure why your second paragraph sounds like the opposite.

Currying favor with fascists is NOT good. What has meaningfully changed for onshoring to make sense economically? Nothing. All that's happened is an executive came into power who threatens tariffs and other retaliatory action via the DOJ / DHS / FCC if you don't do what Trump says. It's embarrassing and frankly insane that our business leaders continue to stay silent, have dinners at the Whitehouse, and put out puff pieces like this.

Mark Zuckerberg made up pledged "investment" numbers on the spot at one of their dinners and was caught on hot mic admitting it. This is hilariously corrupt and will not result in a US manufacturing boom.

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

#165

They have been saying this since almost a decade.

Apple will spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four yearshttps://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more...

Apple Manufacturing Academy opens in Detroit on August 19https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/07/apple-manufacturing-a...

Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloudhttps://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Was Kamala campaigning on bringing manufacturing to Texas?

Probably referring to the CHIPs Act? Technically Biden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act

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

#167

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…

[flagged]

> Kind of hard to deliver those numbers when you can't keep slaves on call in a dormitory.

Or extensive automation, of course. We're alienated from the supply chain probably by design.

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

#168

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.

There is no contingent in the US federal government that has a coherent plan for doing what you're talking about.

The investment in capability that is necessary to build the next generation of manufacturing capabilities in the US is simply not within the public imagination.

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

#169
post #29

Apple ramping up Mac mini production in Houston to meet demand for Clawbots is wild. When were Mac minis a hot commodity before three weeks ago?

I think there was a rush during the early Intel transition because they were dirt cheap computers you can upgrade yourself and even dual boot Windows. I feel like there was another big bump for them as a set top boxes to run XBMC or something. Might be wrong though. M1 release also saw the Mini's be a cheap entry point to seeing what Apple Silicon could do.

The first Intel Mac minis came out in the era of Front Row, Apple's attempt to turn every Mac into a media center computer. They had IR sensors and remotes. I had one hooked up to my TV, which was a big step up from the first gen AppleTV.

Plex started as a Mac-only XBMC fork during this era. There were also apps like Remote Buddy which let you control pretty much everything with the simple remote that came with the Mac. Apparently Remote Buddy still exists and works with the current gen Siri Remote.

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compon…

> What they stopped manufacturing was menial and low-end product

This statement is as inaccurate as the comment you’re trying to debunk. The fact is that China leveraged it’s low-end manufacturing work to work its way up the chain and now is the leader in many areas: https://itif.org/publications/2025/09/23/how-china-is-outper.... E.g. China has been investing heavily in radar technology and as a result has air to air missiles with comparable range to the U.S. https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_and_tech/why_the_us_is_alar...

There are synergies to having the high end stuff and the low end stuff in the same place. The story of IBM developing System 360 mentions the benefit from the ladies who wound the wire core memory and the guys who designed the computer on the same campus in New York. We gave that up when we outsourced the “menial” stuff abroad.

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