alt Hacker NewsMac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston
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Helene survivor here. What's wild to me is that, regardless of the small scale of this facility, it's only a few hundred meters from a 1% flood zone: https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search
The address I found for the facility is 9101 Windmill Park Lane Hudson, TX 77064
This seems ill advised given recent events like Hurricane Harvey
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?
Is no one else interested in the "assemble advanced AI servers, including logic boards produced onsite, which are then used in Apple data centers in the U.S." in the pictures? Are they using nvidia GPUS? Their own silicon? Is there any data out there on what these servers are like? I don't think we've ever seen a picture of them before.
"advanced manufacturing center" which is 20k sqft, about 1/7 the size of a typical Costco. I wouldn't hail this as the great revival of american manufacturing
Gotta love PR embracing the many definitions of "made in"
Why does the video show them assembling rackmount servers and not the Mac Mini?
Is that assembly really in the US? Asking because the woman in the first shot appeared to have Chinese letters on the left side of her uniform.
For anyone who liked Apple's Xserve lineup, it's very cool to get a peek at these rackmount Apple "advanced AI servers"
I'm excited for these to fall into collectors hands in a decade or two.
Mac minis are sold out in NYC these days because everyone gets them to try out openclaw. Even if this move by Apple is unrelated to the recent demand, it certainly was timed right for the policy and market makers.
It's interesting they have decided to build it in a blue state.
US manufacturing will not take off without fully autonomous robots because Americans don't want to work 18 hour days for pay that is competitive with Asia, and labor laws make it difficult anyway.
Didn't they build the trash can mac pros in Texas?
It doesn't say the Mini will be exclusively produced at this US facility. I wonder in say 2 years what % will be "produced" in the US? 1%? 0.1%?
Really looking forward to seeing how this ends up, especially over the next few years. I knew about their recent Arizona TSMC chips in iPhones, but this is nice to see.
Will they transition to having Americans make them too?
To all critics . This is something good going on in the country. It’s national interest protection .
Together with robotics push , it has a chance , and even they do small things . Today they make body , tomorrow cpu , etc it’s a good thing going on regardless of politics
Apple produced MacPro in US a few years ago, what about that facility and workers? Will this facility has the same destiny like MacPro?
Next, are European made Apple devices?
China's secret to rapid industrial growth in tech has been to invest in the low end, not the high end. Trump has it all backwards. An Apple factory in Texas may be good politics for Trump, but it has zero or negative impact on the competitiveness of the US and creates/amplifies existential risks companies face due to US political forces.
Others need to follow. It's strange that we don't view the manufacturing of advanced electronics as a matter of national security.
Nothing against American ingenuity, but when situations like this occur, quality often declines for a time. The process may be replicated from its original source, but the key difference lies in the workers’ experience—something the Chinese have already mastered.
Right when it gets off the boat from India, they will have contractors and H-1B visa workers snap the pieces together and now its Made in America.
H-Town hold it down!
HOUSTON REPRESENT!!
Didn’t know they were also pushing education so heavily, I mean it makes sense, but still great to see that they don’t expect skills and knowledge to appear out of thin air and is putting money to improving it.
I understand apple's push for US manufacturing in general but what do they mean by AI servers? I thought apple's current AI strategy is using other AI models?
Wasn't going to buy one before, not going to buy one now.
This feels like tariff evasion tactics, I am not against it tho, I think apple is handling it well.
In addition to Mac Mini, hoping more Mac Studios are able to be built including more regular updates.
Either of these devices (per watt of computing power) could become a home appliance pretty easily.
Has anyone seen this documentary? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Factory
Love my Mac Minis..great computers to connect to a TV for a full Internet experience on your TV.
Very happy to see this!
They've been teasing domestic production for over a decade. I'll believe it when I see it.
"made" == "assembled"
Now with OpenClaw pre-installed!
What's the over-under for Trump mentioning this in the State Of The Union speech tonight? The timing of this release can't be a coincidence.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/02/24/apples-us-mac-min...
> Apple's work on a new Mac mini factory in Houston wasn't a quickly-conceived plan to appease President Donald Trump. The reality is that Apple had a plan ready to do this long before the demands started.
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Better than nothing- assemble things made in asian countries in usa, just a step above boxing
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, which is also a possibility.
Good but they should be named 'Mac Donald' or Trump Mini or something and it should be engraved with gold letters. And they are too small, they should be huge
i_dont_believe_you.gif
Apple ramping up Mac mini production in Houston to meet demand for Clawbots is wild. When were Mac minis a hot commodity before three weeks ago?
While shopping I look where items are produced and by whom company. When I see an item is manufactured in Texas I put it back on the shelf and keep walking. That State is too politically corrupt for me to financially support, same with Florida.
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 whole supply chain in one place and very motivated and it all fell apart when tried to move to US.
So things that took weeks became hard on anytime line.. per Apple in China book.