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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

#301

Post by peyton »

kccqzy wrote: post #275
827a wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, to be clear about one thing (which I believe is also raised in the book): Much of this is the direct result of Apple investing literally a quarter trillion dollars and exporting critical western IP toward developing Chinese advanced manufacturing capability (among other American technology companies). The story of startups only being able to manufacture in China is a cute tale that is true for startups. For Appl…

A company like Apple has very little incentive to care about geopolitics, other than by current or future government laws and regulations (a government mandate, tariffs, etc). In the absence of government intervention, Apple has determined that investing a quarter trillion dollars is the cheap choice; getting the same result in the United States would probably need much much more than a quarter trillion dollars worth…

Dell ate Compaq’s lunch with a BTO model. It’s pretty clear Tim Cook decided to put the factories out of reach after that experience. Putting the supply chain close to major customer markets is cheapest but invites competition.

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

#302

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

lkbm wrote: post #289
mlsu wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you met an engineer? I'd say "being an engineer" is probably the single most predictive trait for authoritarianism in my experience.

Possibly, but it's just as much a predictive trait of being libertarian, which for all its faults, is extremely anti-authoritarian.

Except in 21st Century America, where libertarian is really just masked authoritarian. Essentially, that means “free to do whatever you want as long as it’s our way.”

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

#303

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

denkmoon wrote: post #225
whynotmaybe wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, US didn't lose it, we collectively decided that whenever we buy something, the price was the most important aspect. It's like everybody forgot that their neighbour's job depend on them. We're repeating the same pattern with online shopping, malls and stores everywhere are closing because of our collective actions, we're not losing them like I lost my keys.

Homo economicus' desire for a 'good deal' or 'a bargain' will kill us.

“Why would I hire X when I can get it for $20 a month on ChatGPT?”

Hmm, I don’t like the sound of that.

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

#304

Post by mountainriver »

hackingonempty wrote: post #97
locusofself wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why were mac minis so popular for this compared to any other machine, cloud VPS or local VM?

Macs have "unified memory" meaning the GPU uses the same memory as the CPU and minis can have up to 64 gigs. So its a lot faster than running on a CPU and a lot cheaper than any other GPU based rig with similar memory.

Mac’s are still pretty terrible at running LLMs. They will be there someday, but that isn’t today

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

#305

Post by locusofself »

mholm wrote: post #109
hackingonempty wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs have "unified memory" meaning the GPU uses the same memory as the CPU and minis can have up to 64 gigs. So its a lot faster than running on a CPU and a lot cheaper than any other GPU based rig with similar memory.

Most openclaw users are not running the models locally.

This is what I thought. The iMessage integration makes sense I guess though.

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

#306

Post by derektank »

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.

600 million people live in North America. 1 billion people live in the Americas. Another billion live on the Pacific rim in non-Chinese countries.

Establishing regulatory harmony across all those countries is obviously not possible in the same way it is in a single authoritarian state, but if the US made it a priority to create a trade bloc capable of replicating China’s manufacturing capacity, it probably could.

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

#308

Post by quantumwannabe »

dangus wrote: post #191
0xWTF wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's because his American-made competitors charge $50 less than he is charging for his Chinese-made showerhead: https://www.waterchef.com/products/waterchef-sf-7c-premium-s...

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

#309

Post by ihsw »

donw wrote: post #245
whynotmaybe wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, US didn't lose it, we collectively decided that whenever we buy something, the price was the most important aspect. It's like everybody forgot that their neighbour's job depend on them. We're repeating the same pattern with online shopping, malls and stores everywhere are closing because of our collective actions, we're not losing them like I lost my keys.

We collectively decided nothing. Our political/ruling class wanted more of the pie for themselves, dropped the trade barriers protecting American industry, and gorged themselves on the arbitrage as manufacturing flowed to our chief geopolitcal rival, who was quite happy to accept such a generous gift.

[dead]

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

#310

Post by philipallstar »

hypeatei wrote: post #164
philipallstar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Calling people fascists for any reason has completely removed the real meaning of the word. Putin did the same to incentivise the war in Ukraine, and in the US, if you're not the media companies benefitting from endlessly stirring people up to a frenzy with that word, you're the LLM trained on their very narrow input texts.
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