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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

#571
post #314

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 about everything on NPR is I want this to be true, not this is true.

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

#572

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.

Yeah, I was on my way to being convinced that my understanding was a misconception, but this just halted that in its tracks. You’ve just stated the slippery slope has been built and is ready when desired.

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

#573
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company like Apple has very little incentive to care about geopolitics, other than by current or future government laws and regulations (a government mandate, tariffs, etc). In the absence of government intervention, Apple has determined that investing a quarter trillion dollars is the cheap choice; getting the same result in the United States would probably need much much more than a quarter trillion dollars worth…

> Acompany like Apple has very little incentive to care about geopolitics, other than by current or future government laws and regulations (a government mandate, tariffs, etc). Isn't that massive? You make it seem like it's not important but look at Trump's tariffs that are connected to geopolitics. The US's relation with China could worsen to a point where certain imports are banned.

The alternative is to do nothing. That you are worried at all is proof we have to take measures to ensure we aren’t dependent on adversaries.

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

#574
post #539

The woman in the pink smock-like clothing: In the video there are Chinese characters on the clothing above the front pocket area. In a picture of her later on in the news article the Chinese writing is gone. Has it been photoshopped out for the press release images?

https://i.imgur.com/FRcXiSe.png --> here is a printscreen of the girl WITH foxconntech on the work coat. Before and after: https://i.imgur.com/TEmek6j.png

Cant view in Imgur due to international politics.

Can you chare to an image host that isnt quite so rebellious?

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

#575

Hilarious and perfect. Apple know how to play this silly government like a fiddle. Gotta survive the idiot years somehow.

I'm not convinced this is all temporary.

It was last time they did this, when they started producing Mac Pros in US in 2019, then promptly stopped again.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/09/apples-new-mac-pro-to...

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/28/tech/apple-mac-pro-produc...

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

#576
post #527

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…

Here in the UK the leader of the opposition frequently refers to herself as an engineer.

She was a software engineer. LOL.

(I speak as someone with a degree in Computer Science and Software “Engineering”, and an inglorious past as a Chemical Engineering student)

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

#577
post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factory wages in China are almost $2 more per hour than factory labor in Mexico. I don't buy this argument. Sure, labor protections in China are weak, but let's use our mirrors: the US has no guaranteed paid time off of any kind, it has unions on paper only, 1 in 10 Americans have no health insurance, and it's nearly the only country where medical bankruptcy exists as a concept. The largest employer in the US runs a…

Yeah but China is a low cost economy, rent, food and things like transport and electricity are cheap. That means employers simply can pay workers less than the USA because the cost of living is so high in the USA.

Right…which means China is managing their economy better. It’s not like the commenter above us who claims it’s all about repression and restriction.

Literally last night the US president stated that his policy is to keep real estate expensive, and his main attempt to lower housing costs is by lowering mortgage rates, a policy which is incredibly short-sighted and squeezes American workers more. It also won’t work as housing is sold at market value: lowering rates will increase sale prices as buyers compete on available supply and the amount they can pay on a monthly basis.

I am not specifically trying to get political about it, but the Republican Party is generally opposed to public transit and is essentially anti-urbanism. They view cities as dangerous bad places with evil Democrats in them. They have done things like holding federal transit project funding hostage to MAGA demands.

Meanwhile, you don’t need to own a car to live in China and get around. They built out the world’s premier high speed rail network, and they’ve built massive metro systems in their cities rapidly.

Those “ghost cities” in China? That’s also known as “available housing.” They usually eventually get filled. Americans paying above-inflation rates for homes would envy that sort of thing.

Most other countries including China would consider the high cost of healthcare to be a pressing national emergency, but the US government has allowed the insane status quo fester.

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

#578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Everyone recommending a Mac Mini for OpenClaw is recommending the base model (which has just 16GB of ram), so it’s not about the unified memory, it is about the agent being able to interact with your apple ecosystem services like reminders, iMessage etc.

It is the cheapest Mac you can get for that.

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

#579

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…

Sorry, but this sounds more like a myth, or at least heavily exaggerated. Similar to how Japan often gets romanticized. Organizing the entire chain geographically at the scale you described (inter-city) doesn't bring huge cost advantages by itself. In China labor has historically been cheap, so the transport cost between regions was never the dominant factor anyway. Most industrial clusters in China formed organicall…

As a Chinese living in China, you must know the layout of the city does provide logical sense. I've only been once, and I buy stuff from factories fairly often. When I went there I basically went to a mall district where all the furniture was sold, then I went to the tile district to review tiles, I went to several other "districts" that where nothing but that single item.

I went to the window factory, which was directly beside more window factories, and directly beside that was the place that extruded aluminum for use. The aluminum they used was produced a up the road in what they called the metal district.

You are even saying that "industrial clusters in China" so there is clearly some amount of planning involved. There is obviously benefits to having all of the aluminum factories beside a aluminum producer, and having the shipping/packaging warehouses by the docks, etc.

There is some amount of government work at play here, either on a small scale or a larger scale to provide a reason for places to all setup.

I've also seen things that just are not possible in North America. Asked for samples of aluminum extrusions and had the die made and extrusion done in a day. Locally it would take months before a sample is at my door.

I've sent designs for quotes and get quotes in hours, half the time factory in NA doesn't even reply. And even when it does it's more of a "go away" then anything else.

I've seen live video of robotic factories building entire cabinets for housing.

There is some amount of rose coloured glasses in this thread. But we cannot deny that China wants business and can get stuff done fast and efficiently. That cannot be said for modern day factories in US or Canada. The work ethic and desire for business are just completely different.

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

#580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As mentioned upthread, if you go to an American machine shop, they'll take two weeks to get back to you, and generally be a PITA to work with, vs China's jumping at the chance to build stuff. Probably because the Chinese are working 996. I know people who work 996, in China, and they dislike it as much as I would. That's "jumping at the chance."

You don't have to work 996 to have an attitude of let's help the customer take their product to market. The American machine shop will laugh at you for not being a machinist, and tell you oh we don't do powder coating, we don't make cardboard boxes or styrofoam inserts. So then you, as the customer trying to get a product to market gotta run around town figuring it all out. Meanwhile, you start talking to the Chinese…

So basically you're blaming American workers for an attitude problem, when the real issue is, due to offshoring, the supply chain either doesn't exist here or isn't so centralized/expansive enough that someone has random relatives in related manufacturing businesses they're motivated to send work to?

So basically, you're being unfair.

And, from personal experience, while it's not exactly the same, when I've worked with American tradesmen, they've always had someone they could refer me to for related work.

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