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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

#561

Post by Neil44 »

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…

A bit like the automotive CKD kits, to comply with trade rules in the most efficient way possible.

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

#562

Post by Maxious »

tom1337 wrote: post #532
otterley wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re built anything like AWS’s servers, their cryptographic key chip that’s required for boot will be destroyed the moment it’s removed from the rack it’s in, rendering it useless. They’ll be scrapped.

Never heard about this procedure but sounds interesting. Is there anywhere to read about how this works?

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/pdfs/whitepapers/latest/security...

obviously not framed in terms of "here is how we create more e-waste" but you can see the additional barriers to attempting to reuse decommissioned hardware

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

#563

Post by bux93 »

nessbot wrote: post #45
d--b wrote: 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)?

The IRS can issue Private Letter Rulings (which are anoymized but public so you could check if they treat a company preferentially - although not which company) and Advance Pricing Agreements.

Rulings from different countries are typically used to ensure no taxes are paid. E.g. get a ruling from the US that some activity is taxable in Luxembourg, and then get a ruling from Luxembourg that it's taxable in the US. Like McDonald's did. Either country will then say "well, it's up to the other country to tax that, I'm not policing that". Mostly after a while, multiple companies get clued in and it all gets exposed and the "loophole" is closed. E.g. a uble Irish with a Dutch Sandwich. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

This can be an honest error by one or both tax services, a strategic move (to be a "tax paradise" and prevent other taxable activities from leaving the country), or - one would speculate, allegedly - for political or personal gain.

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

#564

Post by _heimdall »

ijustlovemath wrote: post #345
jccooper wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industrial buildings are typically built at dock height. Even if they don't do any grading, that would put the building well above any plausible flooding in that area.

My point is that we really don't know what "plausible" is anymore with these storms. That much is clear in the data. It seems silly to be so close to a flood zone with your very expensive DUV/EUV machines. There are probably other places they could have placed this facility.

I don't think we can both consider FEMA's 1% flood risks and also assume no longer know what plausible is with these storms.

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

#565

Post by MSFT_Edging »

Saline9515 wrote: post #376
shimman wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude come on, the US already has a social credit system. Where do you think China got the idea of credit scores from? Try getting a good loan in the US if your credit score is under 400. You're barred from having certain jobs if you don't have a good credit score. Get some new talking points, you're like 40 years out of date.

The difference with China is that the US credit score is limited to your banking activities.

That's not actually true. Companies can opt to report your employment to credit agencies, providing another datapoint in background checks.

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

#566

Post by rayiner »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #455
rayiner wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were correct, it would be trivial for Apple to reshore the manufacturing. But it’s not. Because what China has proven is that, when you outsource the “low margin low skill” stuff, everything going up the chain will follow. China used its low-margin low skill work to bootstrap the rest of the stack, and now they can make air to air missiles with range exceeding US missiles: https://militarywatchmagazine.com/art…

> China used its low-margin low skill work to bootstrap the rest of the stack, and now they can make air to air missiles with range exceeding US missiles: https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-first-close- ... We’ve got to get you some better sources, mate. This is a straight-up Russian propagandist pretending to operate out of the UK while having a mailing address in South Korea. https://mediabiasfactcheck…

Fact check websites are tankie propaganda. But this particular point about air to air missiles is well attested.

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

#567

Post by Gud »

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 concur with moregrist

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

#568

Post by thenthenthen »

superxpro12 wrote: post #325
mikestorrent wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Social credit system is not really a thing. Yes various apps have various ‘credit scores’ and if you are convicted of crimes you can get travel limitations, but there is no such thing as a ‘social credit system’. Much like how the government is not centralised at all, provinces can make their own laws and so on.

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

#569

Post by embedding-shape »

Gud wrote: post #567
embedding-shape wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 concur with moregrist

I'm very glad that you confirmed that with a comment, I was a bit confused what specifically you thought.

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

#570

Post by thenthenthen »

gaigalas wrote: post #555
zekrioca wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You mean https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/ ? The only thing it says is "custom Apple silicon", which honestly could mean a high-binned chip from the same production line. You gotta admit that the M4 price is kind of a magic trick. Also, with zero carbon emissions. Look at their environmental report: https://images.apple.com/co/environment/pdf/products/desktop... > To address emissions generated b…

Sounds like greenwashing. They just sell the chips from cnc’ing alu cases to a recycler, hell apple does not even manufacture anything it is all outsourced
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