Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by hirvi74 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:44 AM UTC

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #157

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.

It allows your Claw to access all your iCloud data easily like reminders and iMessage for example

Everything about that makes me feel very uncomfortable. Google made and spent a fortune on getting people's data, and now people are just handing it out for free by the GBs.

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

#442

Post by bsder » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:45 AM UTC

shiroiuma wrote: post #382

bsder wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s like the western zeitgeist can’t accept that China is simply out-competing them on pure merit. With a 400m head start in a 1600m race. It's a whole lot easier to out-compete somebody when you know the government will backstop you even if you misstep. Solar and battery technology were two of those areas. China absolutely dumped cheap, mostly inferior solar cells on everybody else to wipe out competing manufactu…

>It's a whole lot easier to out-compete somebody when you know the government will backstop you even if you misstep. You mean like how the US government constantly bails out and props up the American car companies?

> You mean like how the US government constantly bails out and props up the American car companies?

Um, yes? Did I stutter? Do you have bad reading comprehension? Are you using an AI?

Precisely what part of "we have been here before--back in the 1970s with Japan producing better cars" did you miss?

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

#443

Post by hirvi74 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:46 AM UTC

retired wrote: post #93

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?

The Mac mini has a very good value for money if you need raw performance in a small silent package. Frequently available for between $399 - $499 discounted. A VPS that can perform like a Mac mini will likely cost the same as a Mac mini in 12 months time.

I picked one up to replace my prior mini that I spent 4x the amount of money on. It's an absolute speed demon.

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

#444

Post by chii » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:47 AM UTC

decimalenough wrote: post #439

pear01 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What point do you think you're making? That's not the question. You're just repeating the same obvious geopolitical comparison everyone regurgitates these days. The question is about whether any of that can be meaningfully attributed to some lawyer vs engineer divide. Your question doesn't answer that in the slightest and thus I have no idea why you are asking it.

It's not about the specific degree the leaders hold. Thanks to Communism, China (and the Soviet Union before it) had a profound belief that society can be engineered , and that people and nature are both raw material that can be shaped to fit the needs of society. The US, on the hand, is obsessed with individual rights, and any sort of collective action that threatens those rights is extensively litigated. This is re…

> society can be engineered

and the hidden implication is that there's a correct trade off to be made (because engineering is about trade offs).

So what happens to those people whose gotten the bad end of the deal? If china builds a damn, the villages downstream gets moved (with small compensation that is not commensurate with the value of the dam being made).

It's also why the high speed rail in california is costing so much in the US vs something similar in china.

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

#445

Post by TiredOfLife » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:50 AM UTC

whilenot-dev wrote: post #66

evanjrowley wrote: post #4

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.

Interestingly, these exact letters appear to have been removed in the photo after the first two paragraphs: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2026/02/apple-accelera... EDIT: a screenshot from the video: https://imgur.com/a/X3t4crC

Also what is the point of hair cover if half of hair is hanging outside it.

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

#446

Post by TiredOfLife » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:53 AM UTC

locusofself wrote: post #73

pama wrote: post #69

Mac minis are sold out in NYC these days because everyone gets them to try out openclaw. Even if this move by Apple is unrelated to the recent demand, it certainly was timed right for the policy and market makers.

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

claws are run mainly by rich american programmers. The only computer they have is a macbook. The only brand they know is apple. The only cloud they know is serverless

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

#447

Post by jayseb » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:58 AM UTC

SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #261

ryandrake wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something about having the whole supply chain in one place I can't find the source but I thought I read somewhere that the major manufacturing cities in China are all geographically laid out like giant assembly lines. The companies that process the raw materials are located mostly inland, then the companies that form those raw materials into metal and plastic stock are next door, and then the companies that take th…

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...

The books is amazing too, just finished reading it. Gives you peek into cultural dynamic of both countries: https://insightbooks.app/books/breakneck

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

#448

Post by ianbutler » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:59 AM UTC

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…

You're providing much too much credit to China's government, the dynamic is simpler:

China just hasn't calcified yet after workers press for better standards of safety and quality of life and maybe they won't because that's where being authoritarian comes into play. They will crush that in a way we have moved away from.

We used to build great things in the US and then we decided the blood price of 30 lives for the Brooklyn bridge or 100 for the hoover dam wasn't worth it. It's really not hard to build anything when you ignore any second order questions of impact. Why do you think certain people here want deregulation and for the EPA to go away.

A quick google shows China prioritizes speed over safety something we've decided here in the US is not acceptable.

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

#449

Post by transcriptase » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:02 AM UTC

ivankabiden wrote: post #437

Saline9515 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If no one talks about it, why is this .gov.cn article discusses the problems currently posed by the existing social credit system? There isn't indeed a nation-wide score, but given the size of Chinese municipalities (often larger than most countries in the world), it's far from anecdotal. https://credit.fgw.sh.gov.cn/xyyj/20220902/8693d5ba378d4f578...

There is a credit reporting system, similar to the one in the US. However, most people are not affected by it in their daily lives. Only those who are in serious financial trouble and cannot pay off their debts are placed on a blacklist, which restricts them from traveling by high-speed rail or flights.

Now go find a mirror and read your post out loud to yourself, slowly.

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

#450

Post by kevinqi » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:04 AM UTC

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.

just one q: have you been to china before?