Apple Will Manufacture Its New Mac Pro In Texas (engadget.com) 89
Apple has confirmed Monday that it will manufacture the redesigned Mac Pro in Texas. The company said it will assemble the workstation at the same Austin, Texas plant that has produced the cylindrical Mac Pro since 2013. The reason for the move: exemptions from Trump's China tariffs for "certain necessary components" in the system. Engadget reports: Apple had received 10 out of its 15 requested exemptions for components like partial circuit boards. While Apple has a network of U.S. suppliers for its products, many of the parts for computers (and those of rivals) are still made in China -- the company wouldn't have seen much benefit from U.S. assembly if it had to pay a premium for some of the Mac Pro's key ingredients.
CEO Tim Cook (who hinted at this possibility in July) touted this as part of Apple's existing commitment to American jobs, including its recent investment into Corning. However, it's not necessarily the coup it sounds like at first blush. Apple can produce the Mac Pro stateside due to both its low volume (few people will buy a $6,000 tower for home use) and the high levels of automation at the Austin plant. This won't lead to an abundance of new jobs, and it may still be more practical to make high-volume products like iPhones and MacBooks in China even if future tariffs cut into Apple's profit margins.
CEO Tim Cook (who hinted at this possibility in July) touted this as part of Apple's existing commitment to American jobs, including its recent investment into Corning. However, it's not necessarily the coup it sounds like at first blush. Apple can produce the Mac Pro stateside due to both its low volume (few people will buy a $6,000 tower for home use) and the high levels of automation at the Austin plant. This won't lead to an abundance of new jobs, and it may still be more practical to make high-volume products like iPhones and MacBooks in China even if future tariffs cut into Apple's profit margins.
Re:MAGA! (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple has confirmed Monday that it will manufacture the redesigned Mac Pro in Texas. The company said it will assemble the workstation
Half way through the first sentence and you've already contradicted yourself: "manufacture" != "assemble"
Shipping in the minimum number of prefabricated modules to qualify for tax exemption then having robots screw them together in Texas != "manufacture".
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I"ve been holding off on my next media computer for awhile now and need this.
Evolution of Apple management (Score:5, Funny)
Steve Wozniak: "Wherever smart people work, doors are unlocked"
Steve Jobs: "Think different"
Tim Cook: "Sign me up for the minimum"
Re:Evolution of Apple management (Score:4, Informative)
Truth. Even under Steve Jobs I thought Apple products where over rated. But at least under Jobs Apple was a leader in the field. Where some people would see a novelty, Jobs would see a Market for. Apple didn't always invent the technology but they sure found a way to make it useful for the everyday person.
No so under Tim Cook. As a leader in the field Apple has fallen way behind. The new Iphone may look nice but its nothing more than developed technology that Android has had for years.
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No one else is innovating either. Apple had $88,000,000,000 in profit last year. Not sure if that matters to anyone.
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It matters, temporarily.
Owning the owners, though, is the more profitable long-term play.
And I did not, officially, just say that.
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I mean, I'm not aware of any innovations in any cell phones in the past 5 years, with the exception of 3d sensors that get rolled out on some models and then removed when there's no use-case.
Foldable technology is coming soon, just like it was 5 years ago. But now you can buy a $6,000 prototype and pay to test it if you like.
Because tariffs, yeah right (Score:5, Interesting)
Like I've said before, how can cost nitpicking really be a factor in a $6000 computer with only $3000 worth of hardware? And that's just the starting price.
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It's not cost nitpicking that makes the tariffs cause the announcement. It's the very real and obvious low-cost (because of few units) headline that makes Trump feel like a winner so he doesn't target Apple when he gets cranky and focuses on Amazon or Google instead.
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This is all tied to security. Right at this time M$ is extremely vulnerable as a result of the abuses of Windows anal probe 10, it already killed their mobile phone business. So the US government is working in the background to block all imported tech and software from accessing the US government market. So to get into the server and connected appliance market, the software and hardware has to be US made.
They have to start if off pretty quite, else the majority of high end countries in the rest of the worl
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Yep, lets say you want to produce a computer with limited appeal because it is big, bulky, and few people need that kind of power. Trying to recoup cost, pay overhead, etc. on a relatively small number of said computers should be easy at price exactly?
I'm sure you know more than Apple about how to sell their computers without losing money. Maybe you could tell them how, I'm sure they'd listen to you.
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Oh please...other than styling, there's little investment in those machines. It's not like they're trying to recoup R&D on these things.
SO NOTHING CHANGES? (Score:2)
They take the previous model's factory and use it for the new model? The expensive new model which likely has the margin to do that?
By spinning this they get Trump to notice and then maybe they can get exemptions for the fact most the components inside the computer are NOT made in the USA.
Yes something changed (Score:1)
Yeah, about that (Score:2)
CEO Tim Cook (who hinted at this possibility in July) touted this as part of Apple's existing commitment to American jobs
More like Cook saw which way the winds were blowing and decided to cut bait. Costs him what, maybe $5-$10 per unit to build in Tx instead of China?
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Yep, this is mostly a PR move, but companies don't care about jobs in any certain country, they want cheap labor. Once the tariffs are gone, production will move back to somewhere in Asia. Just like Google did with the Texas Motorola factory.
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Or... they've also some to realize that having all of their eggs in one basket isn't the best thing for their stability as a company, something pointed out by the tariffs.
While it's convenient to have most/all of your manufacturing in a single region/country, it's hella risky as you've a single point of failure which can be squeezed, and packing up and moving manufacturing elsewhere is difficult and expensive.
Instead, Apple and others are is realizing they can/should start manufacturing elsewhere to hedge t
Half right, companies don't care where things made (Score:1)
Yep, this is mostly a PR move, but companies don't care about jobs in any certain country, they want cheap labor.
Half right. Companies don't care where things are made per se. However its not about cheap labor. Its about the profit margn and first and foremost for the profit margin is getting the sale. If you don't get the sale it doesn't matter how much you saved on labor, how much you saved on avoiding environment regulations, etc. So what is really the key here? The buyer. If the buyer does not care where things are made then you can misuse labor and misuse the environment overseas. However if the buyer does care,
drnb the bullshiter (Score:1)
I think a bunch of economics professors at USC figured that making an iPhone in the US would add $35-50. Labor is not as big a factor as many think.
That's funny 3 months ago you said it was $10 more:
Actually economics professors at USC have researched the cost increase and it would add about $10 to the price of an iPhone. Labor costs are a relatively small part of the overall cost. [slashdot.org]
Hey drnb, is it possible for you to post something that's not total bullshit?
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Yep, this is mostly a PR move, but companies don't care about jobs in any certain country, they want cheap labor. Once the tariffs are gone, production will move back to somewhere in Asia. Just like Google did with the Texas Motorola factory.
Seems to me that's a good reason to not let the tariffs expire, and to apply them to all 3rd world nations.
Re: Yeah, about that (Score:3)
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Re: Yeah, about that (Score:2)
And that's a-okay. If somewhere like France with higher labor and environmental standards wants to impose an equalization tariff on America's (mostly non-existent) exports, that's fair play.
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Apple won't sell enough of them to care about moving production back to China. It is easier to keep the quality high here for a computer few would buy.
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No. Nothing changed here. The entire point of the tariffs are to get the parts built here in the US. They were already doing the building in the US, so continuing to do the building in the US is a net sum of zero. The exemptions just allow what was happening to continue to happen. Nothing has changed from pre-tariff days. There isn't and winds blowing here. If anything, Cook just found out that all he needs to do is tell the President he'll just build everything in China and the President will blink a
Re: Yeah, about that (Score:2)
Sounds to me like an argument for more and stricter tarrifs.
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Sounds to me like an argument for more and stricter tarrifs
That's fine but they need to be implemented in a sane way. Putting tariffs on parts before consumer goods is silly as being demonstrated. Honestly, tariffs or no tariffs I stopped caring either way maybe about six months back because it's clear that either way, they aren't being implemented in any sort of orderly fashion and exemptions are being doled out, so the long term effect is going to be nothing learned/nothing changing.
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The previous Mac Pro was also built in the U.S. The problem with this one is that although much of the Mac Pro's components are made in the U.S., some parts can't be. And the extra cost of those made-in-America parts, plus higher labor costs, plus the 30% import tariff on parts that must be imported from China almost certainly exceeds the 10% tariff that they w
Nokia factory was in Texas in the mid 90s (Score:2)
I used to visit the Nokia factory in Fort Worth quite often. The production line was highly automated, even in 1998. I think they closed it in 2000 and moved to Mexico, then later to China. Automation and design-for-manufacturing has improved a lot since then. Even in China, the production lines require very few workers. The majority of the phone is assembled by machine and workers are mostly doing the final test and packaging. Too bad Nokia is owned by a Chinese company now... they could have produc
Its a start ... (Score:2)
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But this is a move in the correct direction. Its a start.
No. It is not a move in any direction. They build the current Mac Pro there, and they're going to build the new Mac Pro there. It's like if you said a GM plant was going to build the 2020 Camaro SS where they had previously been building the 2019 Camaro SS.
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...The new model will be produced in the same factory in Austin operated by Flex Ltd. that has produced the previous Mac Pro since 2013, Apple said in a statement Monday. Manufacturing of the new model was “made possible” after the U.S. government approved on Friday Apple’s request for a waiver on 25% tariffs on 10 key components imported from China. The company was granted exclusions on several parts, including processors, power components and the computer’s casing.
While some key components will be made in China and exported to the U.S. for final assembly, Cupertino, California-based Apple said the new version includes 2.5 times the value of American-made parts as the previous model. The new Pro will include components made by more than 12 U.S. companies in states such as New York, Vermont and Arizona for distribution to U.S. customers, Apple said. The company didn’t specify whether this includes Mac Pros being sold outside the U.S.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
A decision to offshore was reversed (Score:2)
But this is a move in the correct direction. Its a start.
No. It is not a move in any direction. They build the current Mac Pro there, and they're going to build the new Mac Pro there.
Incorrect, you missed the part where they *were* moving production overseas. Changing the plan from move overseas to stay in the US is an improvement, a step in the right direction. A decision to offshore was reversed, that is the step in this case.
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... you missed the part where they *were* moving production overseas. ...
Whether they were actually going to move production overseas, or were just saying that as a bargaining chip to get tariff relief, is not known.
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... you missed the part where they *were* moving production overseas. ...
Whether they were actually going to move production overseas, or were just saying that as a bargaining chip to get tariff relief, is not known.
"The tech giant has tapped Taiwanese contractor Quanta Computer Inc. to manufacture the $6,000 desktop computer and is ramping up production at a factory near Shanghai, the people said. Apple can save on shipping costs for components given the proximity of many of its suppliers to Shanghai, rather than having to supply a factory in the U.S."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a... [wsj.com]
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I had seen that article. Something sounds odd. The WSJ article says that Apple was moving production to China to save shipping costs on components. Now, Apple is keeping the production in Texas because they got an exemption from the 25% tariffs. There was no mention of component shipping costs in the decision, just the tariff exemption. If the shipping costs don't matter now, why did they matter back when the WSJ article was written? I think there is more that needs to be told here, as what has been told makes little business sense.
They got exemptions on some components they need that are manufactured overseas by others, sort of off the shelf stuff. And I believe on circuit boards that, well, can't really be mass produced in the US anymore.
They did *not* get the exemption for some other customized parts they were going to make overseas. They were equipping and training a company in China to make custom designed parts unique to the Mac Pro. That is what they failed to get exceptions for, that changed the economics of their original
Re: A decision to offshore was reversed (Score:2)
"on circuit boards that, well, can't really be mass produced in the US anymore"
The next big war will be a drone war. We've already lost.
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...Basically Apple had to set up a new shop somewhere to make these unique parts, they wanted to setup that shop in China, tariffs forced them to set up that shop in the US....
So when (if?) there is a trade agreement and the tariffs are removed, Apple will return to overseas manufacturing? Or do you envision a permanent level of tariffs to keep Apple manufacturing in the US?
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Changing the plan from move overseas to stay in the US is an improvement, a step in the right direction. A decision to offshore was reversed, that is the step in this case.
They were moving it to China because there was no reason to have to pay tariffs on all the parts separately and then build it here in the US with an overhead. The tariffs on built computers don't kick in until later this year. So it would make more sense to build the entire computer there and import it. This is why buying an ASIC from China and then putting it into a screen made in the US is more expensive than just putting the ASIC or FPGA into a Chinese screen and then selling the completed TV here. T
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Has offshoring hurt the US? What made it hurt the US?
Re:Its a start ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Has offshoring hurt the US? What made it hurt the US?
The loss of good working class jobs. There needs to be balance in the economy, there needs to be something between pampered engineers at Apple :-) and flipping burgers. For example look at Germany. Domestic manufacturing is supported by both consumers and the government, both know that it makes for a healthier economy and is a social good.
Some offshoring would be OK, we took it too far, and it needs to be done with partners the are open to us as we are open to them.
We gave China an unbalanced trade deal, one that allowed them to erect barriers to the US (forced partnerships, forced technology transfers, restrictions on US manufactured goods, currency manipulation, etc) while remaining completely open to them. We did this due to the Nixon/Kissenger logic of the 1960s that increased interaction with China will liberalize them politically. That logic was seen to be a failure at Tiananmen Square in the 1980s but the imbalanced policy continued because it was good for Wall Street.
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You know what happens when the government starts dinking in the economy?
The current trade openness imbalance with China. Gov't dink'd with trade with China because it thought business interaction would liberalize their gov't. So an unbalanced deal was OK with gov't because they had a larger agenda.
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Okay, I looked at Germany. In the past 50 years, the percentage of German jobs in manufacturing has been cut to half. In the US, it was cut by to 2/5ths. So, somewhat larger loss. On the other hand, we have engineers at Apple/Google/Netflix, so maybe that's where those people are working now.
On China specifically, Nixon/Kissenger wanted China to be closer to the US so it would move away from the USSR in an effort to win the cold war. He didn't give a shit about liberalization. It seems to have worked
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Okay, I looked at Germany. In the past 50 years, the percentage of German jobs in manufacturing has been cut to half. In the US, it was cut by to 2/5ths. So, somewhat larger loss.
Germany did not export manufacturing the way the US did. Their losses have a much larger automation component. However with that automation they are still spending that money in Germany and benefitting from the multiplier effect. The US is spending its money in China, with China benefitting from the direct payments plus the multiplier effect. Its not as simple as counting workers.
On the other hand, we have engineers at Apple/Google/Netflix, so maybe that's where those people are working now.
On China specifically, Nixon/Kissenger wanted China to be closer to the US so it would move away from the USSR in an effort to win the cold war. He didn't give a shit about liberalization. It seems to have worked in that the communist countries lost the cold war.
Nope, only the Soviet Union lost. The Chinese Communist Party leveraged Nixon/Kissenger's mistake to their advantage. Modernized
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I mean, US manufacturing has benefited from automation too. In the past 30 years, the output/manufacturing job has increased 6x.
Until the last 5 or so years, China was liberalizing. If you consider that an important goal, it was happening until Xi reversed the process. But that's part of the regression of democracy everywhere.
I agree that the US should stand up to China. Like, it should get all the pacific nations together to make an anti-China treaty. Or it should work with the EU and NAFTA countries
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Until the last 5 or so years, China was liberalizing.
Uh, no, 1989, Tiananmen Square. People tried to liberalize, to end corruption, but the government responded with troops and tanks and killed many, jailed survivors, etc.
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Yes, in Tianamen people tried to liberalize even faster and got squashed. But Tianamen partly happened because China in 1989 was significantly more liberal than when Nixon arrived. But China was more liberal in 1995 than 1990, more liberal still in 2000, and so on and so forth until Xi consolidated power in the early 2010's.
Tianamen was like those blips where the line graph goes in the opposite direction for a short while in the middle of an otherwise long term trend (like looking at Amazon's shrinking st
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You are effectively arguing they are a more liberalized gov't because they kill critics at a much slower rate they they did previously. Its not the numbers killed, its that killing was and still is a response. If you had Hong Kong like protests on the mainland the tanks would be rolling again. The ethnic and cultural cleansing is not a new
Re: Its a start ... (Score:2)
Are you on crack??
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I'm not on crack. Do you want to answer the question or was it too hard for you?
Re: Its a start ... (Score:2)
Would you not say that decimation of our industrial base and immiseration of vast swathes of the population count as hurting the country?
Call a duck a duck (Score:5, Insightful)
Doing final assembly of all of the Chinese parts is not "manufacturing".
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From what I understand, most "Chinese" products are final assembly from even cheaper Asian countries now.
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What I found amusing on this one is that Apple offered to make the Mac Pro in the US earlier as long as the Trump administration gave them tariff concessions on parts like the video cards that go into the Mac Pro.
Trump initially said "Nope, build those in the US as well, or no deal!", apparently not knowing that:
* Apple doesn't make the video cards that go into the Mac Pro, AMD does, and
* There wasn't been a US manufacturer of video cards for a long time now
I wouldn't expect someone like Trump to know that,
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Even in China many of those jobs are going to be automated away in the next decade or two anyway. You need to be thinking beyond that when it comes to manufacturing jobs.
So how many actual jobs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Something like 70% of the manufacturing jobs lost since 1990 were automation and process improvement rather than outsourcing.
Video of the 2013 factory (Score:3, Insightful)
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Also, robots don't demand pesky things like a livable wage, paid maternity leave, and good health benefits. Labor is worth what the market will bear, and the only laborers we have in the USA who are willing to work for slave wages, are robots.
The left's "Fight for $15" and the right's desire to see well paying manufacturing jobs come back are two sides of exactly the same coin: they both want the free market manipulated because it produced a result with which they were unsatisfied.
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Also, robots don't demand pesky things like a livable wage, paid maternity leave, and good health benefits.
Not yet, at least...
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they both want the free market manipulated because it produced a result with which they were unsatisfied.
There is no such thing as 'free market', in practice there is only 'manipulated market'.
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Well, going by your logic, almost nobody in China is involved in the manufacturing industry.
It's strange, though, that China's Gross National Income has risen from $2900/year in 2000 to $16700/year in 2017. But that can't be due to manufacturing. We've established that manufacturing creates almost no jobs. /s
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Manufacturing wages have also risen faster than the number of people employed in manufacturing.
So that's at least 2 ways to raise income without increasing manufacturing jobs much.
Re: So how many actual jobs? (Score:2)
Jobs are one reason to repatriate manufacturing. Defense industrial base is another, arguably even bigger, reason.
Our defense manufacturing capacity is nuts (Score:2)
What we really need is something like the Green New Deal where we build solar and wind farms to lesson our oil dependency. I keep hearing different things on our export/import statistics and in any case we're wrecking ground water to hit our numbers.
Re: Our defense manufacturing capacity is nuts (Score:2)
Yup, we need to stop fracking immediately. Energy independence at the cost wrecking the environment is not a win.
Wind power is awesome. Hydroelectric is awesome. Concentrated solar thermal power is awesome. But photovoltaic solar is an environmental mess and a boondoggle.
Making in TX to save American Jobs? (Score:2)
Great now Iphone will cost $2000?!?!? (Score:2)
Seriously though, does this mean that the children of Texas will be throwing themselves off the tops of production facilities?
Because is was kinda of bad PR for it to be Chinese children.
This move solves a lot of problems.
Doesn't Fly (Score:2)
Can we take them on planes again yet?
Texas, developing nation (Score:1)
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Businesses might start to change their minds now that Texas is getting 100 year floods every couple of years.
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There's that and the regular eruption of gun nuts whacking whatever people are available.
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Automation (Score:2)
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Except in Austin, where everyone is woke to perfection by their liberal utopia.
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Apple Will Buy Land For Its MacPro-Building Machine In Texas
Reminder that we're getting to the point where you don't just question paying American proles for what foreign poors will do, you start running the numbers on paying humans at all.
Old model was made there too (Score:2)