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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

#321

Post by nerdsniper »

mlsu wrote: post #274
Avicebron wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authoritarian central planning isn't an inherent trait of engineers and nor should we aspire for it to be.

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

As an engineer, I do think there’s some mild but noticeable correlation in bulk. But there are other categories which would be much more predictive. And most of the correlation with engineers are actually a confounder effect from things like multigenerational socioeconomic status, or religion.

If you were to control for other variables I doubt there’d be much correlation. After filtering out engineers who belong to other categories with stronger associations to authoritarianism, you’re more likely to be left with the hyper-individual-freedom types than the hyper-authoritarian types.

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

#322

Post by Krustopolis »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #210
tokyobreakfast wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You mean, like FoxConn took $B from orange guy, promised 10K+ jobs, then sat on the land for a few years and did nothing? Sure, let's replicate that at scale..

Things take time. Especially during the pandemic and its aftermath. How you been down to Arizona lately to see the developments? Not just the manufacturing itself but everything that has sprung up around it? It’s impressive.

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

#323

Post by bigyabai »

alwillis wrote: post #116
bigyabai wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> a Ryzen 5800h mini PC last year, which roughly lands in the same performance bracket [as a Mac mini]. Not really. And this is before the M5 Mac mini which ships later this year. Putting it together in desktop‑mini form factors: - Raw CPU: M4 is much faster single‑core, generally faster multi‑core at lower power. - GPU: M4’s iGPU is roughly 2×+ Vega 8 and more modern. - Memory subsystem: M4 has far higher bandwidth…

The M4 is from 2024, the 5800h is from 2021. You should be comparing against the M1 or M2, which was Apple's actual competitor at that performance bracket and time period.

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

#324

Post by WillAdams »

827a wrote: post #264
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…

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 big change from Steve Jobs' dream of a California factory where sand and other raw materials came in one end, and finished computers went out the other --- the NeXT factory was an excellent exemplar of early automation (greatly assisted by Canon, an early investor).

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

#325

Post by superxpro12 »

mikestorrent wrote: post #294
Avicebron wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authoritarian central planning isn't an inherent trait of engineers and nor should we aspire for it to be.

You don't need to brand efficiency and structure-at-scale as "authoritarian"; how painfully American of you. I know it's a completely foreign concept for anyone that has grown up in America, but it's actually within the realm of human possibility for the government and the individual to be aligned and want the same thing. Typically this is evidenced by tremendous social progress, which we see in evidence with the rap…

For all the progress, you lose me immediately with the "social credit" system. If there was really true 'progress', then you wouldn't need a one-party system that suppresses all dissent.

Only need to look to the recent changes in Hong-Kong and the obviously hostile takeover of a democratic government to see how "pure" these changes really are.

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

#326

Post by BurningFrog »

Avicebron wrote: post #272
SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a great freakonomics podcast that talked about China being run by engineers and America being run by lawyers. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers-a...

Authoritarian central planning isn't an inherent trait of engineers and nor should we aspire for it to be.

China hasn't done much central planning for many decades.

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

#327

Post by WillAdams »

pbreit wrote: post #282
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…

I think this could stick. The supply chain competence needs to get built in the USA.

Didn't work out well when Malco tried to keep Vice Grip production here in the States:

https://toolguyd.com/malco-eagle-grip-locking-pliers-final-u...

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

#328

Post by adamweld »

pear01 wrote: post #314
SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a great freakonomics podcast that talked about China being run by engineers and America being run by lawyers. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers-a...

That guy is so annoying his subpar analysis has become such a trope. America used to build things too. Lawyers have been part of the founding and fabric of both societies. Trying to reduce China v America to engineers vs lawyers is so reductive it's just mind blowing this keeps getting repeated.

I've only listened to one interview with Dan Wang, but I understood him to be particularly talking about the politicians, not the country as a whole.

I can't speak for China, I've only visited a few times, but in the US it's true that an overwhelming number of successful politicians were previously lawyers. Which is not a good thing IMO.

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

#329

Post by cucumber3732842 »

pear01 wrote: post #314
SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a great freakonomics podcast that talked about China being run by engineers and America being run by lawyers. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers-a...

That guy is so annoying his subpar analysis has become such a trope. America used to build things too. Lawyers have been part of the founding and fabric of both societies. Trying to reduce China v America to engineers vs lawyers is so reductive it's just mind blowing this keeps getting repeated.

It gets repeated because we actively incentivize repeating it.

It's a popular trope that confirms the audiences bias's and when you do that the monkey brain gets rewarded by seeing the number in the top right go up.

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

#330

Post by bmurphy1976 »

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…

The term for China's manufacturing advantage is agglomeration. The US is never going to be successful with these manufacturing initiatives until the US government gets its act together and starts rebuilding all the infrastructure that has been destroyed over the last 50 years. That requires more than just tariffs. It requires actual investment. Investment in infrastructure, people education, power, everything. It's actually why silicon valley is so successful because it is an agglomeration of the tech industry. We need the same for manufacturing if we ever expect to do it again.
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