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

#651

Post by tuna74 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

api wrote: post #624

tedd4u wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Q:What does China's competitive edge look like in practice?' 'A: One example from The Times article: When Jobs decided just a month before the iPhone hit markets to replace a scratch-prone plastic screen with a glass one, a Foxconn factory in China woke up about 8,000 workers when the glass screens arrived at midnight, and the workers were assembling 10,000 iPhones a day within 96 hours. 'Another example: Apple had…

A popular misconception is that manufacturing is done in China because it’s cheaper. That hasn’t been true for a while. There are cheaper places, many of them. China is now simply the best, at least when it comes to electronics and adjacent stuff.

A lot of things are much more efficient in China as well. Compare the cost in time and money for travel between Beijing to Shanghai vs New York to Chicago for example.

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

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Post by _DeadFred_ » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

Almondsetat wrote: post #631

lenerdenator wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best == cheaper. Could you do it in the US? Probably. But it'd take longer and you'd have to pay more money.

The US literally doesn't have the people to do this.

China didn't either, until it did. US business isn't willing to build up the workforce to do this but we definitely have the people.

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

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Post by rockskon » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

rswail wrote: post #520

rockskon wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what exactly will stop China - a country infamous for copying U.S. technology - from copying whatever the U.S. comes up with?

China did in the 1990s exactly what the US did in the 1890s, steal IP to build up its own industries. The US did it to the UK and Europe back then, China has done it against the US/EU over the last 3 decades. It's at the point now where it is self-sustaining, which is why you see China starting to enforce IP Rights, precisely because it is now generating its own IP that it wants to protect. Any economist would say th…

It sounds like you're agreeing with me.

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

#654

Post by tuna74 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

Synaesthesia wrote: post #485

dangus wrote: 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.

If you build good infrastructure you reap the rewards.

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

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Post by _DeadFred_ » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #416

shimman wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are just trying to find an alternative narrative because the vast majority of the population have been rejecting neoliberalism for a good 30 years now. So they spin up the foreign enemy is better than us, so we need to deregulate more and not hold monopolies accountable. If we broke up Google or Amazon, suddenly we're just as bad as China!

why can't we go "wow they're getting really good, maybe we should invest harder in education and research?" That makes wayyy more sense to me

In the west greater education doesn't lead to people wanting to live in a factory compound in communal dorms with suicide nets where they can be woken up at midnight to start a shift on a whim. Doesn't lead to people wanting to eat all their meals in a cafeteria with the other people on their shift. The factories I visited even their children went to school in a school within the compound.

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

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Post by dartharva » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:32 PM UTC

nutjob2 wrote: post #115

apercu wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jebus. “It’s hard to manufacture in the US.” Yes. That’s what rebuilding capability looks like. China built dense supply chains over decades. Of course iteration was faster. Hard isn’t a reason not to do it. It’s what happens when you’ve optimized for margin and optics and performance instead of resilience.

No, it's local manufacturing theater. The US does a lot of manufacturing, second only to China, but not low margin stuff that isn't economic. Trying to "bring back" that sort of thing is idiotic and is entirely performative and induced by the current incompetent administration. China is a genuine threat but the right solution is to move it to other friendlier countries instead of losing money trying to do it in the U…

Common rhetoric says the US's grassroots economics and job market have been consistently sinking to the point that falling back to that kind of "low margin" manufacturing is back to being feasible. Is that false? Are US wages still too high for that?

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

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Post by dartharva » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

givemeethekeys wrote: post #151

random3 wrote: post #44

Gotta love PR embracing the many definitions of "made in"

Surely, someone high up asked, "What is the least amount of work we have to do in order to not pay tariffs?"

you say that as if they were supposed to do something else.

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

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Post by Kirby64 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

jamescostian wrote: post #583

apercu wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there's more to your sibling's taxes than property taxes. The data tell the opposite story - WI property taxes are higher than TX ones, at least if we look at the medians: https://www.propertytax101.org/propertytaxbystate As someone living in Fort Worth and making good money as a Staff SWE, I got a tax refund this year. It was due to paying interest on my house, but still. I'd recommend asking your sibling se…

Texas property tax rates are some of the highest in the country. Should be higher than Wisconsin.

The difference here is really more of an indicator of property values in the respective areas. In major metros in Texas, you're looking at ~2%+ tax rates, which is infact higher than Wisconsin, even in the metros there.

> As someone living in Fort Worth and making good money as a Staff SWE, I got a tax refund this year. It was due to paying interest on my house, but still.

If you paid more in property taxes, that would indicate you can take a larger federal tax deduction... so, if anything, a tax refund implies you paid a lot in local property tax. Either that, or a boatload in interest (or, both). Neither is indicative of local property tax being low.

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

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Post by chrisweekly » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

kakacik wrote: post #625

midnighthollowc wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty amazing, honestly. Here I can't even get a tradesperson to give me a quote, much less show up on a dime. I guess I need another eight billion dollars, give or take a penny

Project this a decade or two into future and I honestly don't have a solution for the west but a gradual decline into mediocrity. We have less corruption and communicate directly also about problems, so at least that will work for us for some time too. But maybe China and similar places will elevate their overall prosperity enough that people will refuse to be treated like this en masse, so there is some hope.

less corruption?

maybe time to check your priors

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

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Post by kube-system » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #652

Almondsetat wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US literally doesn't have the people to do this.

China didn't either, until it did. US business isn't willing to build up the workforce to do this but we definitely have the people.

The US used to have a more built out industrial base but since those days a lot of things have changed, structurally, economically, culturally, and in their regulatory environment. The people who would have been doing this work are doing cushy service industry jobs today.