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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

#541

Post by zekrioca »

gaigalas wrote: post #499

> Apple today announced a significant expansion of factory operations in Houston, bringing the future production of Mac mini to the U.S. for the first time. The company will also expand advanced AI server manufacturing at the factory and provide hands-on training at its new Advanced Manufacturing Center beginning later this year. So, servers and minis share a production line then. I kinda knew it: https://news.ycombi…

Sharing a factory does not imply shared chips or repurposing server silicon. Also, Apple doesn’t follow servers’ econ model.

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

#542

Post by gaigalas »

zekrioca wrote: post #541
gaigalas wrote: post #499

> Apple today announced a significant expansion of factory operations in Houston, bringing the future production of Mac mini to the U.S. for the first time. The company will also expand advanced AI server manufacturing at the factory and provide hands-on training at its new Advanced Manufacturing Center beginning later this year. So, servers and minis share a production line then. I kinda knew it: https://news.ycombi…

Sharing a factory does not imply shared chips or repurposing server silicon. Also, Apple doesn’t follow servers’ econ model.

I'm obviously speculating, but you seem to be very sure of what you're saying. Can you share a reliable source for that info?

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

#543

Post by AdamN »

lukan wrote: post #527
adamweld wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"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 lawyer" I can't speak for china either, so I looked it up and indeed, Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering and his predecessor Hu Jintao worked as a hydraulic engineer before becoming a politician. Well in germany we had Merkel as a doctorate in quantum chemistry (b…

Yeah I'm pretty nervous about engineers in charge. Merkel is interesting because her dad was reverend in the East. My reading of her is more that she was smart and there were good options in physics/chemistry - but then she effectively went right into politics directly afterwards. For better or for worse she never had that 5-10 years of day-to-day work before politics.

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

#545

Post by 9dev »

rob74 wrote: post #206
9dev wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, once AI takes over most of the white collar jobs, people will have to do something to put food on the table, and not all of them can be gig workers. Or do you see ideas like Universal Basic Income as an alternative for the US?

I'll worry about the Deus Ex Machina when it's here. Until then, AI is mostly generating a lot of text and burning insane amounts of energy, and we have bigger problems to worry about. Like a president diverting ten billion dollars of tax payer money into his cosplay UN for crooks and dictators.

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

#546

Post by fredley »

bluedino wrote: post #433
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…

It's like they mastered Sim City and applied it to real life

It's like the mastered Factorio and applied it to real life.

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

#547

Post by AdamN »

apercu wrote: post #140
mgh95 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely a combination of business-friendly policies (low tax, no employer payroll tax, etc.) and proximity to ports. Houston is the 6th [1] largest port in the USA. [1] https://pangea-network.com/busiest-and-biggest-ports-in-the-...

I agree with you on all of these except: low tax I grew up in DFW. My house in WI is assessed at a significantly higher value than my siblings house in Ft Worth. My 2025 property tax bill ~$5k, my 2025 state income tax - not gonna publish it here but not all that significant. Sibling in Texas property tax bill: ~$14k. Significantly higher than my state income tax + property tax. Also, I don't have to live in Texas.

Oh ... they don't care about the taxes their workers are paying :-) Apple probably got a nice little abatement for 20 years so they're doing ok.

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

#548

Post by moregrist »

embedding-shape wrote: post #531
Gud wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA still has a lot of high end manufacturing going on. There is no “used to”.

Sure, but it's seemingly doing less and less. "Value Added by Industry: Manufacturing as a Percentage of GDP" has been going downwards for a long long time, here is the last twenty years: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAPGDPMA

I don’t think you can take “percentage of GDP” as an indication that the US is doing less. It could be doing the same amount while the GDP grew tremendously in other areas, for example software.

And if you look at the absolute contribution in dollars, manufacturing has gone up 1.76 times between 2005 and today: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USMANNQGSP

This is roughly 2.9% a year over 20 years, so slightly ahead of inflation over the period.

To me this points to a story where manufacturing grew slightly but the other parts of the economy grew a lot more. Not exactly a bear case on manufacturing, but not a tremendously exciting one either.

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

#549

Post by cucumber3732842 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #393
Braxton1980 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What government policies are you referring to? Businesses moved manufacturing to China because their goal is to make as much money as possible. The only potential barrier is if US citizens would care that it wasn't made in America. Products are labeled and most people don't care. This is an American quality where a person who works in a factory that makes extension cords and needs their job to survive would buy the c…

> Businesses moved manufacturing to China because their goal is to make as much money as possible. There used to be other times and more honorable businessmen. Then came the Dodge Brothers who managed to get a court judgement asserting shareholder supremacy over long term interests [1]. The only thing I never understood is how in god's name Amazon got away with reinvesting profits and never dishing out to shareholder…

>There used to be other times and more honorable businessmen

The 1930s through 1960s (i.e. industrialization had matured but you can't construe it as "modern" business) are chock full of corporate raiders, acquisitions with nearly monopolistic goals, cartels, etc.

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

#550

Post by zekrioca »

gaigalas wrote: post #542
zekrioca wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing a factory does not imply shared chips or repurposing server silicon. Also, Apple doesn’t follow servers’ econ model.

I'm obviously speculating, but you seem to be very sure of what you're saying. Can you share a reliable source for that info?

I’m not claiming insider knowledge, just going by publicly documents on Apple’s architecture and operations.

Private Cloud Compute runs on Apple silicon servers derived from the same silicon used in devices, with custom secure OS infrastructure built around them. See Apple’s security documentation and reporting on PCC servers by finding the link somewhere in the comments of this thread.

As for their econ model, just see Cook’s methodical style with fast turnover to avoid stockpiling [1], i.e., the opposite of what is going on with AI servers where margins are cut at every step of the way. So sharing an assembly facility doesn’t imply chips are interchangeable, it may well just be assembly efficiency, which I guess is common.

[1] https://mondays.supernegotiate.com/post/inside-tim-cook-s-ma...

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