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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

#211

Post by rayiner »

gigatexal wrote: post #142
rayiner wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Obama managed to deport many without the vitriol or the killing of American citizens. Are you a one issue voter? Just showing a blind eye to everything so long as no brown folks cross into this country?

According to the LA Times, that statistic is misleading: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obama-deportations-2014... (“A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data… On the other side of the ledger, the number of people deported at or near the border has gone up — primarily as a result of changing who gets counted in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s deportation statistics.”).

I believe that the premise of the immigration laws is correct—that exceeding certain levels of immigration harms society for various reasons that have nothing to do with protecting sunscreen sales—just as Clinton and Obama claimed to do.

Again, you can disagree with the premise. But my entire life I saw presidential candidates promise to fix this particular problem, and Trump succeeded.

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

#212

Post by chihuahua »

arthurcolle wrote: post #19
bigyabai wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not for Clawdbot, this is a re-run of the 2019 strategy where Apple promises to manufacture a low volume of high-margin PC enclosures on US soil.

They mention Mac mini! They have like 3 other desktop lines going, and they mentioned the mini! Also: "In Houston, workers assemble advanced AI servers, including logic boards produced onsite, which are then used in Apple data centers in the U.S." Advanced AI servers!

Everyone else (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc) has boring plain AI servers.

Apple invented Advanced AI Servers! So much more advanced!

Just like in the 2000s when the G4 Mac was a "supercomputer".

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

#214

Post by hn_acc1 »

vsgherzi wrote: post #145
9dev wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of course I do. Competition can only be good here.

You willing to work 996? I would prefer some form of work-life balance.

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

#215

Post by maxdo »

To all critics . This is something good going on in the country. It’s national interest protection .

Together with robotics push , it has a chance , and even they do small things . Today they make body , tomorrow cpu , etc it’s a good thing going on regardless of politics

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

#216

Post by vsgherzi »

rockskon wrote: post #183
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.

No amount of time will let the U.S. - a country of 348 million people - replicate what China - a country with 1.4 billion people - a can do with manufacturing. This isn't "working harder". This isn't "rebuilding infrastructure". This isn't "training people in trades". The numbers are so cartoonishly lopsided as to be a non-starter for categorically replacing Chinese manufacturing.

we don't have to entirely replace Chinese manufacturing to build back American manufacturing that's a false dichotomy.To compete we'll just have to be more revolutionary than the manufacturing industry already is.

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

#217

Post by ruraljuror »

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.

Link to Friedman's piece on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/trump-tariffs-chi...

Also he talks about this on The Ezra Klein Show.

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

#218

Post by Terr_ »

xmcp123 wrote: post #192
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.

> sort them by incredibly small amounts of manufacturing error and make those correspond with devices that have similar amounts of manufacturing error

I spent a little while unsuccessfuly trying to recall the jargon or the anecdotal company-name here, but IIRC there was an early pioneer in this where a company making radios (?) tried to develop a software system that would categorize non-conforming parts so that the flaws in different pieces would cancel out.

I don't think it worked for them, at the time it was far more efficient to just spend money on improving the quality and tolerances of the parts.

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

#220

Post by Romario77 »

rockskon wrote: post #183
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.

No amount of time will let the U.S. - a country of 348 million people - replicate what China - a country with 1.4 billion people - a can do with manufacturing. This isn't "working harder". This isn't "rebuilding infrastructure". This isn't "training people in trades". The numbers are so cartoonishly lopsided as to be a non-starter for categorically replacing Chinese manufacturing.

both are pretty big numbers and I think are pretty capable to do mass manufacturing. As evidenced by many industries that US had and still has.

it could be less economical, so Apple has to innovate to be competitive on pricing - with automation, robots, etc.

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