Live data from Hacker News

Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

apple.com

41–50 of 728 posts

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

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is to appease pumpkin potus and his merry band of idiots Update: For the record I do hate the POTUS. He’s ruined our reputation around the world. Allowed things like USAID to die removing aid from millions leading to many deaths. He’s incompetent and very stupid which will likely get us killed either in some war or in the next pandemic. Tarrifs are a tax. Congress raises taxes. If you support his right to tax wi…

So what? Even if you hate who the president is, it is in the best interest of everyone that the president does a good job. Wanting the president to fail and millions to suffer is scorched earth hatred, not strategy.

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

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is to appease pumpkin potus and his merry band of idiots Update: For the record I do hate the POTUS. He’s ruined our reputation around the world. Allowed things like USAID to die removing aid from millions leading to many deaths. He’s incompetent and very stupid which will likely get us killed either in some war or in the next pandemic. Tarrifs are a tax. Congress raises taxes. If you support his right to tax wi…

The same thing could be said after polishing with AI and it will be a fact

As stated, it is offensive

You need to do appeasement as needed. Business is business.

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

#43
post #27

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.

>With its next-level AI capabilities, it has become an essential tool for everyone from students and aspiring creatives to small business owners. Seems to me this part of the PR release is a reference to claudbot/openclaw. What else could it be referring to?

[deleted]

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

#45
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…

Can one "cut a deal" with the IRS without it ending up in legislation (i.e. tax law)?

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

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

> They mention Mac mini! They have like 3 other desktop lines going, and they mentioned the mini! Mac Mini is their simplest product. It's the natural place to start training at a new facility. > Advanced AI servers! Yes, they have their own AI servers.

> Mac Mini is their simplest product.

How can it be simpler than the Apple TV?

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

#47

[flagged]

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

They're cursory gestures at best, and stark condemnations of US manufacturing capacity at worst. The Mac Mini and Mac Pro are not complex or dense electronics in the slightest. They're carrier enclosures for TSMC technology, you could probably make them in Siberia if you wanted to.

The hard part is manufacturing Apple's high-volume hardware, namely the iPhone. That is not anywhere close to being onshored, and Apple seemingly has no interest in even attempting it if Indian labor is still an option.

As Tim Cook put it: "In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields..."

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

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

> They mention Mac mini! They have like 3 other desktop lines going, and they mentioned the mini! Mac Mini is their simplest product. It's the natural place to start training at a new facility. > Advanced AI servers! Yes, they have their own AI servers.

Do they now? I assume they use them internally for something like Private Cloud Compute?

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

#49
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…

Non political genuine question, is building in the USA more expensive than let’s say Germany?

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

#50

Why does the video show them assembling rackmount servers and not the Mac Mini? Is that assembly really in the US? Asking because the woman in the first shot appeared to have Chinese letters on the left side of her uniform.

> Why does the video show them assembling rackmount servers and not the Mac Mini?

Because the video is of the workers in that specific factory, and they’ll only start producing the Mac mini there later in the year. It’s in the title. You can’t show real video of something which hasn’t happened yet.

Post reply on HN