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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

#191

Post by dangus »

0xWTF wrote: post #173
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…

Came here with a similar comment, pasting here to avoid another top-level comment tree. ==== I bought a mac mini a year ago for $599. Personally, I'm pretty sure I would pay another $50 if it said "Made in the USA" on it. Maybe $80. Not sure I would pay $100. But I worry this will prove to be like when Daimler bought Chrysler and shipped the Crossfire fully assembled except the rims, which were bolted on in the US so…

The conversion rate is actually 0%. Nobody will pay more for a USA version.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43787647

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

#192

Post by xmcp123 »

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…

They won’t just have custom screws, they will sort them by incredibly small amounts of manufacturing error and make those correspond with devices that have similar amounts of manufacturing error, so it matches(like a slightly too large screw going with a slightly too large hole).

On production lines.

Obviously this is not plan A, but their ops team is insane.

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

#193

Post by chvid »

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…

They are also very tied to Chinese demand with about 1/5 of their total business coming from China.

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

#194

Post by jgbuddy »

giobox wrote: post #57
d--b wrote: post #38

My wild guess is that Cook cut a deal with the IRS so that they build in the US, but get tax benefits other companies don't get, so that it looks good on the administration - like the tariffs are working - and still benefits Apple. I don't think Apple wouldn't find a cheaper place to manufacture Macs than the US. The US is literally the most expensive place to build. That, or the Mac Minis are 100% asembled by robots…

We already know exactly what the deal is, no need to speculate. Apple got large tariff exemptions in exchange for supporting Trump's "Made in America" agenda: > https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-invest-american-manufacturing... > https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/08/06/apple-exempt-from...

Isn't that the whole point of the tariff? To incentivize US investment?

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

#195

Post by cindyllm »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #187
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.

There’s no world in which large scale manufacturing is returning to the US. Not only are our labor costs dramatically higher than in east asia, but we also lack the logistics infrastructure to quickly produce components and get them to their next stage of assembly quickly. And we can’t just build that stuff because we don’t have a totalitarian government that can just bulldoze farms and houses to run a highway or rai…

[dead]

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

#196

Post by dangus »

ruraljuror wrote: post #184
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…

Good point about the supply chain; and it seems like most responses mistakenly disagree with you. Thomas Friedman talks about this after his most recent visit to China. Where China excels is through rapid supply chain development by fierce regional competition among several (state-supported/sponsored/seeded?) competitors.

I get fatigue when everyone claims that all these Chinese businesses are state sponsored.

Do we not recognize that western governments do this too? Do we not recognize that western banks and VC firms are quasi-state institutions? Do we not see western countries continually subsidize businesses by lowering corporate tax rates and giving out cheap loans?

The US government was giving out $7500 per car to buy EVs and the US carmakers still got demolished by better Chinese products.

It’s like the western zeitgeist can’t accept that China is simply out-competing them on pure merit.

It’s not possible for China to have every business be state-subsidized and running a loss. At some point the truth is that China is getting wealthy by selling the most competitive goods. It doesn’t matter that the state “subsidizes” it because the money for the subsidy comes from selling the best and most competitive products.

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

#198

Post by alwillis »

Aurornis wrote: post #17
arthurcolle wrote: post #9

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?

> to meet demand for Clawbots is wild This is not in response to OpenClaw. It takes a long time to plan a new manufacturing facility. The Mac Mini is a natural place to start training at a new facility because it's their simplest product. Mac Minis are also around 1% of Apple's device sales. Even with an OpenClaw-inspired burst of sales, it's still a small part of their volume.

> Mac Minis are also around 1% of Apple's device sales.

Apple doesn't break out the Mac sales by product, but the latest estimates is it's 5% [1] of total Mac sales.

[1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/23/mac-mini-us-manufacturi...

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

#199

Post by fooker »

tokyobreakfast wrote: post #123
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…

[flagged]

> you need aerospace or space-qualified screws

This is, largely, a scam made up for costs plus contracting.

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

#200

Post by throwaway894345 »

xienze wrote: post #135
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.

He’s at least getting companies to pretend like they’re going to try. That’s a starting point. Before, the best you’d get out of these CEOs is “LOL those jobs are never coming back, learn to code or whatever else hasn’t been outsourced fully yet.”

His predecessor worked with Congress to actually bring microchip manufacturing back to the US and tried to keep us competitive with EV manufacturing (not to mention the infrastructure investments that are necessary for any serious manufacturing effort). Those were real commitments.

Extorting CEOs to announce investments (like the Zuckerberg hot mic incident) is not worth anything to me. Meanwhile the US has been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs for the last year.

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