Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/02/apple-accelerates-us-manufacturing-with-mac-mini-production/

by haunter • 5 months ago

634 645 5 months ago

epolanski3• 5 months ago

They have been saying this since almost a decade.

They’re literally opening a new 20,000 square foot facility I Houston. So I’m not sure what your comment implies, but it takes time to build things like that.

epolanski3• 5 months ago

Sure, they pledged 100B under Biden and 200 under trump..to produce a bunch of Mac minis.

iamtheworstdev• 5 months ago

i guess he's wondering if they finally managed to secure a domestic screw producer or they're if importing them from China?

newsclues• 5 months ago

They have made some machines in the us, like the Mac Pro

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

alwillis6• 5 months ago

Apple will spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years — https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more...

Apple Manufacturing Academy opens in Detroit on August 19 — https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/07/apple-manufacturing-a...

Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud — https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

evanjrowley• 5 months ago

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.

tekacs• 5 months ago

My guess would be that they're building Apple internal hardware as a precursor? So that Apple can be the test customer?

jjice3• 5 months ago

“We began shipping advanced AI servers from Houston ahead of schedule, and we’re excited to accelerate that work even further.”

buzzerbetrayed3• 5 months ago

In the second paragraph it says they’re producing advanced AI servers.

giobox2• 5 months ago

It's in the post: "In Houston, workers assemble advanced AI servers, including logic boards produced onsite, which are then used in Apple data centers in the U.S."

JeremyNT• 5 months ago

I'm curious what "logic board production" really means. My suspicion is it means "soldered a thing onto a motherboard" where all the individual pieces were shipped from Asia and the soldering is done by robots.

j452• 5 months ago

Mac Mini's have had a following for a long time.

Increasing for sure with different uses and possibilities.

latexr2• 5 months ago

Why does the video show them assembling rackmount servers and not the Mac Mini?

Because the video is of the workers in that specific factory, and they’ll only start producing the Mac mini there later in the year. It’s in the title. You can’t show real video of something which hasn’t happened yet.

mirekrusin2• 5 months ago

They're assembling linux boxes that run their cloud.

kylehotchkiss• 5 months ago

You can’t show real video of something which hasn’t happened yet.

We're going to have to teach our children this concept about discerning the AI slop their grandparents flood Facebook with :')

ChrisMarshallNY3• 5 months ago

You can’t show real video of something which hasn’t happened yet.

I have seen exactly that, thanks to AI...

abustamam2• 5 months ago

True you can't, but that's never stopped anyone from pretending (for example, trailers for live events).

rayiner8• 5 months ago

I assume Foxconn, etc., have a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese workers on site to help bootup the facilities. But Apple's Houston facility is a real place: https://www.google.com/maps/place/8702+Fairbanks+North+Houst...

Foxconn bought it last year: https://communityimpact.com/houston/cy-fair-jersey-village/d...

wredcoll• 5 months ago

That's... amusing.

jerlam• 5 months ago

It's the same situation as the Hyundai battery plant in Georgia last year. The foreign experts come to the US to teach us modern manufacturing. It's more accurate to describe it as Foxconn outsourcing to the US (for tax reasons), not Apple bringing manufacturing back home.

arcfour• 5 months ago

How would you take a video of something that has yet to happen?

amelius2• 5 months ago

Ask AI.

whilenot-dev• 5 months ago

Interestingly, these exact letters appear to have been removed in the photo after the first two paragraphs: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2026/02/apple-accelera...

EDIT: a screenshot from the video: https://imgur.com/a/X3t4crC

rayiner8• 5 months ago

Crazy propaganda!

neilv• 5 months ago

Apple PR did what they could with the art they had available and the need to pander to a gov't administration, but weren't inspired to do it more genuinely?

"Think Different" -> "Think Indifferent"

TiredOfLife2• 5 months ago

Also what is the point of hair cover if half of hair is hanging outside it.

tokyobreakfast• 5 months ago

Are you suggesting Apple is engaged in a massive subterfuge where they imported Black and Hispanic actors and hung a US and Texas flag on the wall in a Chinese factory as a staged photo op? Maybe the factory is really a sound stage.

SpaceManNabs2• 5 months ago

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?

jjice3• 5 months ago

I believe they're choosing to run Google models on their hardware.

tibbydudeza• 5 months ago

They are using M workstation class chips for inference on their own blades since Google's models are meant run on TPU's it would not have been difficult to port it.

They also use Anthropic internally (code/marketing/sales) which runs their models on Cerebras so they also seem to be agnostic so runs on the same Apple hardware.

snazz• 5 months ago

Private Cloud Compute uses their own hardware: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

SpaceManNabs2• 5 months ago

Thanks! I wonder how they enforce retention of personal data if a user adds identifying data and they use a model from anthropic or wtv like others said. maybe that is the wrong question at all if they are using their own models but i thought they didn't. Apple's AI strategy on the whole sounds coherent to me but the specifics are super confusing.

jjice3• 5 months ago

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.

arthurcolle2• 5 months ago

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?

bigyabai8• 5 months ago

This is not for Clawdbot, this is a re-run of the 2019 strategy where Apple promises to manufacture a low volume of high-margin PC enclosures on US soil.

arthurcolle2• 5 months ago

They mention Mac mini! They have like 3 other desktop lines going, and they mentioned the mini!

Also: "In Houston, workers assemble advanced AI servers, including logic boards produced onsite, which are then used in Apple data centers in the U.S."

Advanced AI servers!

sigmar2• 5 months ago

With its next-level AI capabilities, it has become an essential tool for everyone from students and aspiring creatives to small business owners.

Seems to me this part of the PR release is a reference to claudbot/openclaw. What else could it be referring to?

Aurornis5• 5 months ago

to meet demand for Clawbots is wild

This is not in response to OpenClaw. It takes a long time to plan a new manufacturing facility.

The Mac Mini is a natural place to start training at a new facility because it's their simplest product.

Mac Minis are also around 1% of Apple's device sales. Even with an OpenClaw-inspired burst of sales, it's still a small part of their volume.

gigatexal5• 5 months ago

This is to appease pumpkin potus and his merry band of idiots

Update: For the record I do hate the POTUS. He’s ruined our reputation around the world. Allowed things like USAID to die removing aid from millions leading to many deaths. He’s incompetent and very stupid which will likely get us killed either in some war or in the next pandemic. Tarrifs are a tax. Congress raises taxes. If you support his right to tax without congress then go live under a king. I’m an American. We don’t want kings. Need I go on?

And hating POTUS for what he’s doing to the country is my right as an American. We weren’t perfect. But we were at least respected. Now the world laughs at us.

He works for me. And you. And he’s doing a garbage job at his job. Why continue to give him a free pass. Would you give someone like this in your team a pass?

Here’s hoping his managers (congress) fires him (impeaches) him.

alwillis6• 5 months ago

Mac Minis are also around 1% of Apple's device sales.

Apple doesn't break out the Mac sales by product, but the latest estimates is it's 5% [1] of total Mac sales.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/23/mac-mini-us-manufacturi...

jajuuka2• 5 months ago

I think there was a rush during the early Intel transition because they were dirt cheap computers you can upgrade yourself and even dual boot Windows. I feel like there was another big bump for them as a set top boxes to run XBMC or something. Might be wrong though. M1 release also saw the Mini's be a cheap entry point to seeing what Apple Silicon could do.

mikepurvis2• 5 months ago

Even to this day there aren't really a ton of options for a non-devkit, non-router arm64 machine that you can use as a desktop workstation.

al_borland• 5 months ago

The first Intel Mac minis came out in the era of Front Row, Apple's attempt to turn every Mac into a media center computer. They had IR sensors and remotes. I had one hooked up to my TV, which was a big step up from the first gen AppleTV.

Plex started as a Mac-only XBMC fork during this era. There were also apps like Remote Buddy which let you control pretty much everything with the simple remote that came with the Mac. Apparently Remote Buddy still exists and works with the current gen Siri Remote.

Fergusonb• 5 months ago

They're definitely more popular right now, but they've been a winner since M1.

Great performance, quiet, efficient.

It would be tough to get a windows machine at that price that gets anywhere close on performance, especially if you consider the cost of electricity.

Great parent/grandparent machines, home servers.

bigyabai8• 5 months ago

It would be tough to get a windows machine at that price that gets anywhere close on performance

Not that tough. I paid $299 for a Ryzen 5800h mini PC last year, which roughly lands in the same performance bracket.

Would have considered the Mac Mini, but the AMD box has much better Linux support.

ErneX3• 5 months ago

That’s not the reason.

paul7986• 5 months ago

Love my Mac Minis..great computers to connect to a TV for a full Internet experience on your TV.

thinkingtoilet• 5 months ago

Others need to follow. It's strange that we don't view the manufacturing of advanced electronics as a matter of national security.

mattnewton2• 5 months ago

The government is slowly waking up to how important chips are and how far behind domestic sources have fallen from foreign (mostly Chinese and Taiwanese) sources. That's what the 2022 CHIPS act was about.

These things just take a lot of time, there are tremendous headwinds to fight, and the US government + US media increasingly seems unable to see through projects past the next election cycle.

ChrisMarshallNY3• 5 months ago

What folks don't talk about, is that the reason for all the offshoring, is good old-fashioned American Greed™.

Lots of billionaires in the US, got that way, by exporting all their production to China. Because they did it, lots of lower-tier people had to do the same, or go out of business.

Since we worship billionaires, that little bit never seems to get mentioned, as it makes them look bad.

The only cure is to cost some of those billionaires money.

Ain't gonna happen.

hypeatei3• 5 months ago

[flagged]

s-y• 5 months ago

Your point being?

philipallstar3• 5 months ago

Those sound like good things. I'm not sure why your second paragraph sounds like the opposite.

bigyabai8• 5 months ago

They're cursory gestures at best, and stark condemnations of US manufacturing capacity at worst. The Mac Mini and Mac Pro are not complex or dense electronics in the slightest. They're carrier enclosures for TSMC technology, you could probably make them in Siberia if you wanted to.

The hard part is manufacturing Apple's high-volume hardware, namely the iPhone. That is not anywhere close to being onshored, and Apple seemingly has no interest in even attempting it if Indian labor is still an option.

As Tim Cook put it: "In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields..."

hypeatei3• 5 months ago

Currying favor with fascists is NOT good. What has meaningfully changed for onshoring to make sense economically? Nothing. All that's happened is an executive came into power who threatens tariffs and other retaliatory action via the DOJ / DHS / FCC if you don't do what Trump says. It's embarrassing and frankly insane that our business leaders continue to stay silent, have dinners at the Whitehouse, and put out puff pieces like this.

Mark Zuckerberg made up pledged "investment" numbers on the spot at one of their dinners and was caught on hot mic admitting it. This is hilariously corrupt and will not result in a US manufacturing boom.

buzzerbetrayed3• 5 months ago

Let’s say you’re right and Apple is only doing this because of Trump.

Then Trump did a good thing. You’re inadvertently praising Trump in your attempt to slander Tim Cook.

techpression• 5 months ago

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.

AIorNot• 5 months ago

Better than nothing- assemble things made in asian countries in usa, just a step above boxing

lysace2• 5 months ago

Why is that better?

rayiner8• 5 months ago

Because it’s important to have the domestic capacity to build the most sophisticated products. Political power is downstream of manufacturing capacity. The countries that have sophisticated enough centrifuges that they can refine weapons grade plutonium derive an incredible amount of political power from that fact.

Remember that, after World War I, the U.S. had most demobilized its military. The Japanese had more aircraft carriers than the U.S. in 1941. That’s why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor—it thought it could win!

But while the U.S. was weak militarily, it had been the largest industrial producer since the late 19th century. Within a couple of years of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. had built a bigger air force and navy than the rest of the world combined.

That’s why it’s better to be able to make Mac Minis in Houston. Because you can repurpose those facilities to produce electronics for warships instead of having to buy parts from countries you might be at war with.

d--b2• 5 months ago

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.

nessbot2• 5 months ago

Can one "cut a deal" with the IRS without it ending up in legislation (i.e. tax law)?

CursedSilicon2• 5 months ago

Not without a big beautiful bribe [1] I assume

[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donald-...

mattnewton2• 5 months ago

Legally no, but in practice the president has been trying to assert the power to unilaterally levy taxes, even in spite of the supreme court ruling that you need the legislature to pass a tax. People still paid the tariffs. I would be extremely suprised if that's the only place this admin is trying to tax by fiat, and tax policy enforcemetn is far less visible than consumer tariffs.

d--b2• 5 months ago

Large companies cut deals with the government all the time.

When a large company wants to create a new plant somewhere, they go shopping for what state/city will give them the most favorable tax. Politicians throw in special exemptions, special tax credits, exclusivity contracts, all sorts of things.

In the US, everything is flexible.

bux93• 5 months ago

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.

null_deref• 5 months ago

Non political genuine question, is building in the USA more expensive than let’s say Germany?

runako• 5 months ago

No. But you have to understand that American political rhetoric only allows for things to be made either in the US or China (and occasionally Mexico). In that framework, yes the US is the most expensive place to make things.

bdangubic• 5 months ago

by IRS you mean Mar a Largo?

giobox2• 5 months ago

We already know exactly what the deal is, no need to speculate. Apple got large tariff exemptions in exchange for supporting Trump's "Made in America" agenda:

https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-invest-american-manufacturing...
https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/08/06/apple-exempt-from...

jgbuddy• 5 months ago

Isn't that the whole point of the tariff? To incentivize US investment?

random32• 5 months ago

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

givemeethekeys• 5 months ago

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

random32• 5 months ago

and everythign ended in "this is the way!"

dartharva2• 5 months ago

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

jcims• 5 months ago

It’s worked for the automotive industry for decades.

jama2114• 5 months ago

When the system works against you, why not

jesse_dot_id• 5 months ago

i_dont_believe_you.gif

general_reveal2• 5 months ago

Was it such a sin that our electronics were made in the East? Was the west truly deprived and the east really abused? It’s nearly the end of of our lifetime (+-100 years is a margin of error), so the fact for our lifetimes is that our electronics got made there.

What is the final judgement about this?

TulliusCicero• 5 months ago

"Sin" is the wrong framing, but outsourcing most of your capability to actually make stuff can definitely cause problems for a country.

For example, on a military level, the US is concerned about how rapidly China is catching up in naval capacity, China is building new warships far faster than the US can. And it's hard not to notice that China's overall shipbuilding capacity is more than 200x higher than America's.

The US has a lot of pride over having been "the arsenal of democracy" in WW2, and it's well known that a huge part of why the US was effective in that war was sheer mass: the US simply made much more war 'stuff' than any other combatant. But if the US was to get in a shooting war with China today, it would likely be China that would enjoy an advantage in production scale, with the US trying to make do with fewer vehicles and munitions.

general_reveal2• 5 months ago

Tactical error then. I suppose I was hoping someone would make the human plea that the barter was mostly a net good for our lifetimes. Our neighbors made our clothes. You suggest tactically this a problem, but I’m wondering if we managed to live peacefully and goodly this way?

notepad0x90• 5 months ago

The same reason Europeans are moving away from US tech right now. You can't bury your head in the sand and pretend geopolitics is imaginary.

tedd4u4• 5 months ago

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%?

mcmcmc• 5 months ago

They’ll make a gold one there every year as tribute to Trump

alwillis6• 5 months ago

It doesn't say the Mini will be exclusively produced at this US facility.

What's likely to happen is Mac minis for North America will be made in Houston. Otherwise, the ones for the rest of the world will be made at the same facilities they are now.

Just like iPhones for the US are made in India; iPhones for the rest of the world are made in China.

toast0• 5 months ago

I imagine iPhones for India are also made in India. India has a lot of programs to promote production within the country, and IIRC, Apple moved production there to take advantage of that. Given they have production in India, it makes sense to use that production for shipments to the US given better tariff rates for things produced in India vs China.

swiftcoder• 5 months ago

What's likely to happen is Mac minis for North America will be made in Houston

I'd guess it's a small percentage of the Mac minis for North America. Just enough that they get exempted from tariffs on the ones coming in from overseas...

kombine• 5 months ago

Wasn't going to buy one before, not going to buy one now.

pama• 5 months ago

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.

locusofself2• 5 months ago

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

llmslave• 5 months ago

so you can use the full operating system

amelius2• 5 months ago

Because these people have Apple IDs, and they need a machine that can access their various accounts.

retired• 5 months ago

The Mac mini has a very good value for money if you need raw performance in a small silent package. Frequently available for between $399 - $499 discounted.

A VPS that can perform like a Mac mini will likely cost the same as a Mac mini in 12 months time.

hackingonempty• 5 months ago

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.

PlatoIsADisease4• 5 months ago

In classic Apple fashion, they fooled people into thinking an integrated GPU is the same as Nvidia.

Gosh I wish I could hire their marketing company.

TiredOfLife2• 5 months ago

claws are run mainly by rich american programmers. The only computer they have is a macbook. The only brand they know is apple. The only cloud they know is serverless

sigmar2• 5 months ago

It's so funny to me that HN seems convinced that artists have a sudden renewed interest in desktop computers, when LLMs have been driving mac mini sales for more than a year

F7F7F7• 5 months ago

I'm a product exec now but used to be designer and lead UX teams. Even though I don't use those skills as much nowadays it's still a almost daily hobby of mine.

Like the rest of HN (maybe it's HN's fault!) I managed to convince myself that I not only needed a Mac Mini desktop but also a 4090 rig for AI.

The 4090 hasn't been booted up in 9 months and the Mac Mini is now the world's most amazing 10GBE NAS server. My older M1 Max Macbook Pro and underpowered newer Macbook Air are the only things I use.

bigyabai8• 5 months ago

It's so funny to me that X users think OpenClaw represents more than 1% of Apple's desktop sales because it's what their timeline says is true.

If you want to humiliate me conclusively, throw me some numbers. LLMs have moved trillions worth of hardware value, but only a fraction of it is Apple branded.

PlatoIsADisease4• 5 months ago

The wild part is that these are awful and not usable.

Both my fortune 20 company and my buddy got these for LLMs... and the champion/my buddy had the look of shame when it wasnt usable.

adamgordonbell• 5 months ago

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.

NetMageSCW2• 5 months ago

The press release says they’ve been making their own servers there successfully so it doesn’t seem like there is a reason they would stop Mini manufacturing quickly.

modeless• 5 months ago

They did the exact same thing with Mac Pro in 2019. I notice they don't say they'll stop manufacturing the Mac Mini anywhere else. This is a political thing and will change with the political winds.

nutjob22• 5 months ago

Two different things. They do not have margin to preserve on the servers.

If I was interested in "performative local manufacturing" I'd also build my own servers, it has the least economic impact.

vsgherzi8• 5 months ago

Just as manufacturing in China took time manufacturing in the US will take time. The US has lost much of its skilled labor and mom and pop parts shop. If we have any hope of re-invigorating this some large company is going to have to bite the bullet. Chicken and egg problem imo. I'll leave whether this is worth it or not up to the economists.

tencentshill• 5 months ago

It needs a careful long term approach from real leaders. Not a run-and-gun, corrupt, chaotic president throwing tariffs (taxes) up on a whim.

9dev2• 5 months ago

Are you sure that’s actually what you want though, competing with China in skilled labor?

rockskon4• 5 months ago

No amount of time will let the U.S. - a country of 348 million people - replicate what China - a country with 1.4 billion people - a can do with manufacturing.

This isn't "working harder".

This isn't "rebuilding infrastructure".

This isn't "training people in trades".

The numbers are so cartoonishly lopsided as to be a non-starter for categorically replacing Chinese manufacturing.

throwaway8943453• 5 months ago

There’s no world in which large scale manufacturing is returning to the US. Not only are our labor costs dramatically higher than in east asia, but we also lack the logistics infrastructure to quickly produce components and get them to their next stage of assembly quickly. And we can’t just build that stuff because we don’t have a totalitarian government that can just bulldoze farms and houses to run a highway or railway. We also are less interested in pollution, which raises the sticker price on US manufacturing.

If we’re serious about it, we are going to have to commit ourselves to economy-tanking tariffs (like thousands of percents) for many decades until the US worker is as poor as the Vietnamese worker.

whynotmaybe• 5 months ago

No, US didn't lose it, we collectively decided that whenever we buy something, the price was the most important aspect.

It's like everybody forgot that their neighbour's job depend on them.

We're repeating the same pattern with online shopping, malls and stores everywhere are closing because of our collective actions, we're not losing them like I lost my keys.

apercu5• 5 months ago

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.

nutjob22• 5 months ago

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 US.

Stupid is a reason not to do it.

onlyrealcuzzo• 5 months ago

You could prototype assembly in China, then have everything ready to go, and do mass assembly elsewhere.

xuki• 5 months ago

Mac mini is a relatively low volume product for Apple, the margin hit would not be consequential to their bottom line. I'll believe it when they start making iPhone in the US.

0xWTF• 5 months ago

Came here with a similar comment, pasting here to avoid another top-level comment tree.

====

I bought a mac mini a year ago for $599. Personally, I'm pretty sure I would pay another $50 if it said "Made in the USA" on it. Maybe $80. Not sure I would pay $100.

But I worry this will prove to be like when Daimler bought Chrysler and shipped the Crossfire fully assembled except the rims, which were bolted on in the US so they could say it was "made in the USA". They only sold 76,014 and now Daimler extracted itself from Chrysler, so maintaining them has become a bespoke hobby.

dangus6• 5 months ago

The conversion rate is actually 0%. Nobody will pay more for a USA version.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43787647

hn_acc14• 5 months ago

Crossfire was an interesting car - looked at them for a bit, but needed a 4-door..

If I was in the apple ecosystem (I prefer PCs with Linux, Android), I would pay $100-200 more for a mac mini made in the USA if there were actual benefits, like most of the additional cost went to paying domestic labor, better parts availability, better repairability, etc.

GeekyBear• 5 months ago

Apple is very tied to Chinese manufacturing

Apple (and all the other multinationals) are tied to manufacturing in nations with cheap labor.

China is far from the only nation with cheap labor.

India now accounts for approximately 25 percent of global iPhone production, up from single digits just a few years ago.

https://manufacturing-today.com/news/apple-moves-quarter-of-...

ruraljuror3• 5 months ago

Good point about the supply chain; and it seems like most responses mistakenly disagree with you.

Thomas Friedman talks about this after his most recent visit to China. Where China excels is through rapid supply chain development by fierce regional competition among several (state-supported/sponsored/seeded?) competitors.

dangus6• 5 months ago

I get fatigue when everyone claims that all these Chinese businesses are state sponsored.

Do we not recognize that western governments do this too? Do we not recognize that western banks and VC firms are quasi-state institutions? Do we not see western countries continually subsidize businesses by lowering corporate tax rates and giving out cheap loans?

The US government was giving out $7500 per car to buy EVs and the US carmakers still got demolished by better Chinese products.

It’s like the western zeitgeist can’t accept that China is simply out-competing them on pure merit.

It’s not possible for China to have every business be state-subsidized and running a loss. At some point the truth is that China is getting wealthy by selling the most competitive goods. It doesn’t matter that the state “subsidizes” it because the money for the subsidy comes from selling the best and most competitive products.

ruraljuror3• 5 months ago

Link to Friedman's piece on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/trump-tariffs-chi...

Also he talks about this on The Ezra Klein Show.

yreg2• 5 months ago

Jobs said so to Obama as well.

https://archive.ph/vGBjd

xmcp123• 5 months ago

They won’t just have custom screws, they will sort them by incredibly small amounts of manufacturing error and make those correspond with devices that have similar amounts of manufacturing error, so it matches(like a slightly too large screw going with a slightly too large hole).

On production lines.

Obviously this is not plan A, but their ops team is insane.

Terr_• 5 months ago

sort them by incredibly small amounts of manufacturing error and make those correspond with devices that have similar amounts of manufacturing error

I spent a little while unsuccessfuly trying to recall the jargon or the anecdotal company-name here, but IIRC there was an early pioneer in this where a company making radios (?) tried to develop a software system that would categorize non-conforming parts so that the flaws in different pieces would cancel out.

I don't think it worked for them, at the time it was far more efficient to just spend money on improving the quality and tolerances of the parts.

chvid• 5 months ago

They are also very tied to Chinese demand with about 1/5 of their total business coming from China.

Aurornis5• 5 months ago

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.

This becomes less of a problem as the product matures.

The Mac Mini is a good example of a design they likely stabilized a while ago.

cobalt• 5 months ago

even if the form factor looks similar, the production will change overtime, esp the internals

a-dub• 5 months ago

it's probably a good thing to have domestic advanced manufacturing if only to have real-world testbeds for development of advanced automation technology.

it's cool and all that boston dynamics can do what they do, but i wonder if one reason why the chinese robotics industry is so advanced is because they've been able to test in production on real production lines, experiment with dark factories and learn a ton in the process.

it's kind of funny when you think about it. both the west and east are facing down the same set of potential problems that come with real automation of industries that have served as true economic dynamos for decades.

dlenski2• 5 months ago

it's probably a good thing to have domestic advanced manufacturing if only to have real-world testbeds for development of advanced automation technology.

Yes, it's a good thing to have domestic advanced manufacturing, but this probably doesn't qualify.

According to the article, it's a site where they already assemble servers for Apple's own use, and will now start assembling Mac Minis as well. Electronics assembly is, for the most part, a pretty low-value part of the supply chain.

It's not nothing, but it pales in comparison to the scientific and technological sophistication and financial value of wafer fabs and IC test and packaging facilities. (I worked at Intel's flagship fabs in Oregon, and have worked as a consultant with other semi fabs around the world.)

dlenski2• 5 months ago

They will agree to make some high margin simple to assemble thing in the US to appease government

They'll also hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony with maximum fanfare, at which they'll be sure to fawn over Donald Trump, let him ramble at length, and maybe give him some sort of shiny award.

Let's call it The Steve Jobs American Technology Greatness Prize. It'll be a blindingly flashy PVD-gold-plated 12" silicon wafer with a Mount Rushmore-style portrait of Jobs and Trump etched into it.

Romario772• 5 months ago

if you look at Mac Mini design, it didn't change much in many years (2011-2024 is practically the same)

https://preview.redd.it/always-loved-the-design-of-the-mac-m...

so maybe that's the reason they chose it. They just designed a new iteration in 2024, so maybe they don't expect much change for a while.

ccgreg• 5 months ago

The guts on the inside changed several times during that timespan.

ryandrake• 5 months ago

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 that stock and make components are next door to them, and the companies that input those components and output subassemblies are next door to them, and so on all the way down to the harbor where the companies that produce finished products output directly onto the loading docks where the ships await.

The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers and special interests jamming things up for decades through endless impact studies and litigation. How is it going to compete with a country that can lay out entire cities, organizing the value chain geographically towards the ocean?

SaltyBackendGuy• 5 months ago

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...

fuzzfactor2• 5 months ago

In Houston there is no zoning.

nerdsniper3• 5 months ago

So, there’s a decent amount of electronics manufacturing in Anhui Province which is pretty far from the well-known hub of Shenzhen. Anhui is generally more known for their mining industry.

So, to your query, maybe somewhat? But not strictly.

ProAm• 5 months ago

Apple as a company that does not pay taxes should at least invest in the country they are located in. *Designed in Cupertino, Taxes paid no where, profit leveraged in the US

thrdbndndn2• 5 months ago

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 organically over time just like the rest of the world. Aside from some exceptions like mining, there isn't some master plan laying out entire cities as linear supply chains to the ocean It's not SimCity.

One thing you're right about is that there is less bureaucratic friction or 'lawyers' in the way when it comes to economic development. For the former, it's because economic growth is THE metric for the government, especially at the local level, so they do whatever it takes to make it happen. For the latter, it's because… well, in China no one sues the government, period. I'm not sure it's a good thing.

Disclaimer: I'm Chinese living in China.

mschuster914• 5 months ago

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.

... like Factorio, just in real life.

The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers and special interests jamming things up for decades through endless impact studies and litigation.

A lot of that is to prevent our cities from looking like China did before they haphazardly cleaned up shop before the Olympic Games. Remember all the smog alerts? Athletes being afraid the smog and pollution would impact their performance?

How is it going to compete with a country that can lay out entire cities, organizing the value chain geographically towards the ocean?

There's a tool for that, it's called tariffs - basically, make it uncompetitive for manufacturing moving off to a country that systematically undercuts pricing even at the cost of its environment.

Unfortunately, the current administration doesn't even have the concepts of a plan on what they want to achieve with tariffs. It's mind boggling to watch.

selimthegrim2• 5 months ago

You know, I think the bigger issue is Tillman Fertitta scuttling the other UT research campus they wanted to set up in Houston because it would screw up his status as chairman of the University of Houston board or something. I guess Houston’s gonna have to make do with these tech jobs.

bluedino• 5 months ago

It's like they mastered Sim City and applied it to real life

brudgers• 5 months ago

The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers and special interests jamming things up for decades through endless impact studies and litigation.

Famously, Houston has no zoning.

coldtea• 5 months ago

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

There was a great article from like 20 years ago - it quoted Jobs too on that. I remember Forbes or something like that, maybe this "“How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work” — The New York Times (Jan 21, 2012)" (cant open it now)

bdelmas• 5 months ago

I copied your comment to Gemini Pro and it has some interesting things to say.

The link to avoid everybody to do the same query: https://g.co/gemini/share/15fc8eb095a2

m463• 5 months ago

The US used to do this - the piers were next to the warehouses, and the manufacturing was nearby.

Nowadays all that infrastructure is now shops and industrial style apartments.

827a3• 5 months ago

And, to be clear about one thing (which I believe is also raised in the book): Much of this is the direct result of Apple investing literally a quarter trillion dollars and exporting critical western IP toward developing Chinese advanced manufacturing capability (among other American technology companies). The story of startups only being able to manufacture in China is a cute tale that is true for startups. For Apple, investing in the strategic capabilities of America's geopolitical rivals was an active decision Tim Cook and other Apple leaders made.

kccqzy2• 5 months ago

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 of investment. If the United States thought that such investments by Apple would have undesirable geopolitical implications, Congress should have acted a long time ago.

WillAdams2• 5 months ago

A big change from Steve Jobs' dream of a California factory where sand and other raw materials came in one end, and finished computers went out the other --- the NeXT factory was an excellent exemplar of early automation (greatly assisted by Canon, an early investor).

tw19844• 5 months ago

Much of this is the direct result of Apple investing literally a quarter trillion dollars and exporting critical western IP toward developing Chinese advanced manufacturing capability (among other American technology companies).

Really love your 1990s style western centric view.

Care to explain how fancy western IP is not leading in more and more techs fields, e.g. drones, EVs, renewable energy, robotics, fighter jets etc.? because western companies invested in China and gifted fancy western IPs they don't even have to China?

pbreit2• 5 months ago

I think this could stick. The supply chain competence needs to get built in the USA.

WillAdams2• 5 months ago

Didn't work out well when Malco tried to keep Vice Grip production here in the States:

https://toolguyd.com/malco-eagle-grip-locking-pliers-final-u...

vondur• 5 months ago

I doubt the MacMini is a high margin product for Apple. I'd agree it's probably one of the more simpler items to build in their product line.

yreg2• 5 months ago

Yeah not high margin but rather low volume.

bmurphy1976• 5 months ago

The term for China's manufacturing advantage is agglomeration. The US is never going to be successful with these manufacturing initiatives until the US government gets its act together and starts rebuilding all the infrastructure that has been destroyed over the last 50 years. That requires more than just tariffs. It requires actual investment. Investment in infrastructure, people education, power, everything. It's actually why silicon valley is so successful because it is an agglomeration of the tech industry. We need the same for manufacturing if we ever expect to do it again.

shiroiuma5• 5 months ago

Investment in infrastructure, people education, power, everything.

This isn't going to happen. The US government these days does not care about investment in things like infrastructure or education.

chrsw3• 5 months ago

Well put. I tried to explain this to someone years ago after they asked a question like "why don't they just build a factory here?". I was like "you need more than _a_ factory, you need a whole ecosystem of manufacturing". I guess I didn't make my argument clear enough based on their response.

I think the USA has been very clear based on our actions over the past 4 or so decades: we don't want this kind of labor in this country. I don't see any material changes despite the recent puff pieces and political grandstanding.

msabalau• 5 months ago

It is really unclear why you think that either the political interest or strategic logic of not wanting to rely on manufacturing in China, and having some on the value being created here goes away, or is some idle whim.

Sure, if it took decades of slow patient effort to create the current situation, it might take decades to unwind it. And, sure, the US political system is exceptionally bad at industrial policy.

But, at the end of the day, the political and military logic is, and will be for the forseeable future, get your supply chains out of China. Just because it is slow and difficult doesn't there is any reason to believe the pressure will relax. (Putting aside the possibility of an AGI/robotics revolution)

typ3• 5 months ago

American business leaders have (had?) an obsession with gross margin and tech "advancedness." They thought they would be the winner as long as they occupied the high-tech sectors in the supply chain. So they discarded the high-volume, low-margin, low-growth, low-tech businesses like assembly lines and outsourced them. But the reality is that the proximity of the assembly lines creates a cost advantage that attracts more upstream suppliers to surround it. Even Intel was seeking to build more fabs in China before being stopped by the US government.

yalogin• 5 months ago

They did and stopped previously? Interesting, can you please give more details?

vablings• 5 months ago

The Mac Pro is already made in the USA and has been for a long long time, at this same facility the apple server is also made.

asimovDev• 5 months ago

to be fair it's not clear if Mac Pro will continue to exist, it's been in a limbo for a while. When I saw this post on the front page my first thought was "oh, this is how they solve the 'We need to have a product assembled in the US but we only have Mac Pro that we do not want anymore'"

bbshfishe• 5 months ago

Chinese manufacturing? It’s not made in China. It’s assembled.

burningChrome• 5 months ago

> Something about having the whole supply chain in one place and very motivated.

This is the legacy of Tim Cook before Jobs passed. He was the guy who put immense pressure on Chinese factories to deliver on the insane quotas and timeframes he forced on them. He essentially blackmailed companies in order for them to his bidding - threatening to go to competitors if they didn't deliver exactly what he wanted.

The stuff Apple got away with in China could never be repeated here. I mean, you think you can regularly push so many workers to commit suicide, you have to put nets around the buildings in order to dissuade them from jumping off buildings? Yeah, not happening here. Which is why Apple does business there. Its why Tim Cook was able to abuse Chinese labor laws to get them to deliver the impossible, time and again, regardless of the human cost.

ribosometronome• 5 months ago

Not happening here? Foxconn's per capita rate during the peak of their suicide cluster was like 1.4-1.8 per 100k, America as a whole averages closer to 12-15 per 100k.

leokennis• 5 months ago

They will agree to make some high margin simple to assemble thing in the US to appease government

I chuckled out loud at the huge-ass-safety-hazard-in-any-manufacturing-environment US flag thumb tacked to the factory wall. It's all wafer thin gold leaf to appease the toddler in command.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2026/02/apple-accelera...

Neil44• 5 months ago

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

tedd4u4• 5 months ago

    '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 originally estimated that it would take nine 
    months to hire the 8,700 qualified industrial engineers needed to oversee 
    production of the iPhone; in China, it took 15 days. Anecdotes like that 
    leave you "feeling almost impressed by the no-holds-barred capabilities 
    of these manufacturing plants," says Edward Moyer at CNET News, 
    "impressed and queasy at the same time."'

From: https://theweek.com/articles/478705/why-apple-builds-iphones...

midnighthollowc• 5 months ago

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

api• 5 months ago

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.

tedd4u4• 5 months ago

I should also link Tim Cook's comments on "why China" from a talk in China at a Fortune event. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wacXUrONUY

Transcript:

    There's a confusion about China — let me at least give you my opinion. The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor cost. I'm not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is China stopped being the low labor cost country many years ago. That is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. 

    The reason is because of the skill, and the quantity of skill, in one location, and the type of skill it is. The products we do require really advanced tooling, and the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with the materials that we do, are state-of-the-art, and the tooling skill is very deep here. 

    You know, in the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I'm not sure we could fill this room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. It's that vocational expertise that is very deep, very very deep here. And I give the education system a lot of credit for continuing to push on that, even when others were deemphasizing vocational. Now, I think many countries in the world have woken up and said, you know, this is a key thing and we've got to correct that. But China called that right from the beginning.

brightball• 5 months ago

Yep. Stories like that are the strongest case to protect US on shore manufacturing. All of the knowledge, skill talent and associated supply chains naturally colocate.

midnitewarrior• 5 months ago

The manufacturing facility they are committing to is 8-12x the size of the average American home at 20,000 sq. feet.

This is a token operation meant to project the idea that manufacturing is coming back to the United States. This is appeasement by Tim Apple.

lenerdenator7• 5 months ago

At a certain point, if you want the people of your own country to have any sort of loyalty or deference for you, then you'll need to have loyalty or deference for them.

"But it's cheaper in our main geopolitical rival" doesn't quite wear like it used to.

ijustlovemath4• 5 months ago

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

apercu5• 5 months ago

Weirdly the first thing I thought was "Why Texas"?

mgh95• 5 months ago

Likely a combination of business-friendly policies (low tax, no employer payroll tax, etc.) and proximity to ports. Houston is the 6th [1] largest port in the USA.

[1] https://pangea-network.com/busiest-and-biggest-ports-in-the-...

lysace2• 5 months ago

That's a good sign it's not a serious long-term effort. Onshoring cosplay?

hinkley2• 5 months ago

The American flag hung on a wall they didn't even bother to paint is a good sign it's not a serious long-term effort.

Steve Jobs would have fired someone over that obvious broken window situation, and he'd have been (mostly) right to do so.

Dig1t• 5 months ago

They will build to a much higher standard than normal US residential construction, as they do with most commercial buildings. Many people do not understand the vast difference between residential construction quality and the quality that mega corps get. I personally watched Apple build their new campus in Austin (I have daily progress pictures of the construction site, I work there), everything is solid concrete. These buildings can withstand any type of hurricane.

Flooding is also something which can be mitigated: build foundations to be taller, work with the topography to avoid the path of water, and build drainage solutions. You should see the drainage field that Apple built for their campus in Austin, it's absolutely massive and can divert an incredible amount of water.

Aurornis5• 5 months ago

Many people do not understand the vast difference between residential construction quality and the quality that mega corps get.

It’s not limited to mega corps. Commercial construction is built to a higher standard. Some times you can buy commercial grade hardware and materials for your house if you want.

Larger buildings are also more robust at the foundation because it needs to be so much stronger. That thick concrete is necessary, not a luxury.

boznz• 5 months ago

When it floods, they can hold their hands up and say "well we tried".. then get back to business as usual in China

PlatoIsADisease4• 5 months ago

Ask any AI, they say Apple has the best marketing of any company in history.

All this tracks. Anyone else getting bombarded with WSJ youtube videos about Apple manufacturing?

jccooper• 5 months ago

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.

hinkley2• 5 months ago

It also turns out that for insurance purposes you are allowed to use infill to get the corner of a property that's below the high water mark above it. At least in some states.

Some of the calculus is not about if it will flood it's about if you'll lose your investment if it floods. If an underwriter is willing to cover it, you might go for it anyway.

ijustlovemath4• 5 months ago

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.

f33d5173• 5 months ago

I don't know what the topography of houston is like, but here in toronto, a few hundred meters would move you from the bottom of a deep river valley to the top of it. I would imagine they made sure they could get insurance before building and wouldn't have picked any place with a significant risk.

bz_bz_bz• 5 months ago

The topography of Houston is that everywhere is a few hundred meters from a flood zone. You are exactly right; the area did not even come closer to flooding during Harvey and is a good 30ft higher than the flood zone OP is referencing.

bob1029• 5 months ago

That specific location would probably never flood in the way that you might think. The areas you really need to worry about are downstream of the Addicks and Barker dams:

https://www.swg.usace.army.mil/Missions/Dam-Safety-Program/A...

vsgherzi8• 5 months ago

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.

luketaylor• 5 months ago

WSJ published a video yesterday with the first pictures of those servers: https://twitter.com/yiningkarlli/status/2026176857541075274

vsgherzi8• 5 months ago

man what I would give for one of those servers

jsheard• 5 months ago

It looks like they're cramming 32 Apple Silicon SOCs into each server - they're on upright daughterboards attached to both sides of the heatsinks. That's a lotta chips.

doug_durham• 5 months ago

I believe it is the nodes for their private compute cloud for inference. They have described these in the past. It's all Apple chips.

fckgw• 5 months ago

Apple announced their Private Cloud Compute nodes in 2024 and started shipping them last October.

https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/servers/apples-houston...

wdb• 5 months ago

Next, are European made Apple devices?

flumpcakes• 5 months ago

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?

Patrick_Devine• 5 months ago

I noticed the same thing. I'm assuming they forgot to photoshop out the chinese characters.

est• 5 months ago

It says 富士康科技, Foxconn Tech

karel-3d• 5 months ago

Foxconn is a Taiwanese company that assembles iPhones. It's leadership used to be close to KMT that wants to be friends with China.

chrsw3• 5 months ago

That's wild that Apple, the ultimate tech image company, left that in there considering this is whole thing is all lip service and PR anyway, not a real change in the global manufacturing mix. Their entire campaign lost all credibility for me in a matter of seconds. I'm not even an Apple hater, I like my Apple products.

mhandley• 5 months ago

I don't see her later on in the news article - just in the video. Did Apple remove the picture after you pointed it out?

ollin• 5 months ago

The still photo (with 富士康科技 photoshopped out) is the second image of the "In Houston, workers assemble advanced AI servers" photo carousel https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2026/02/apple-accelera...

heopd• 5 months ago

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

alt2277• 5 months ago

Cant view in Imgur due to international politics.

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

simulator5g• 5 months ago

The video is obviously not from the American Manufacturing Center. The article says production hasn't started. It probably looks more like a construction zone right now.

SilverElfin• 5 months ago

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.

yndoendo4• 5 months 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.

tombert• 5 months ago

Don't most big tech companies have an office in Dallas or Austin? I remember that the MS campus was huge when I lived in Dallas.

If "can't have been made in any capacity in Texas" is your criteria that might be pretty difficult.

yndoendo4• 5 months ago

I rarely buy from big tech companies and support them. I am a sunk cost for Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon ... all companies you have to pay me to engage with.

Example, rarely do I navigate to YouTube, I download the videos before watching them. Or if not, and I am presented with advertisement .. I say F' It, not watch, and move on with my life.

Computer components are a requirement and I limit my purchases as much as possible.

prmoustache• 5 months ago

Also US manufacturing is synonymous with shitty quality and has been for at least 5 decades.

yndoendo4• 5 months ago

Some things are good some things are bad.

USA lacks proper regulation for operator safety in automation environments. USA company can manufacturer machinery that is easily capable to remove limbs and decapitate people.

EU regulations require safety be built into the machinery if it can be. This means anything that is manufacture in the USA and authorized for use in the EU is of better quality.

Most US companies don't care if one of their client employees is physically harmed because they put up a warning sign.

platevoltage3• 5 months ago

I do this when I buy things on Ebay. I'm not sending my money into those states unless I absolutely have to.

yndoendo4• 5 months ago

To the one that down voted ... I will continue to not fund the corrupt state of Texas and Florida.

I will continue to not waste my money on states that reject simple humanity ... such as rejecting the requirement for heat and water breaks for outdoor workers ... and erosion of church and state.

[0] https://www.fox13news.com/news/desantis-signs-bill-banning-f...

[1] https://apnews.com/article/paxton-indictment-texas-d5e57fc6c...

[2] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/26/texas-laws-effective...

[3] https://www.fox4news.com/news/texas-laws-now-effect-septembe...

P.S. I have family that lives there and they tell everyone not to move there. If they had the means to get out they would. Unfortunately it is not just about economics it can also be about divorced parents with shared custody that prevents this.

whalesalad2• 5 months ago

Has anyone seen this documentary? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Factory

forinti• 5 months ago

Very interesting documentary. It really highlights the clash of cultures.

jimt1234• 5 months ago

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.

seydor• 5 months ago

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

j452• 5 months ago

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.

tamimio• 5 months ago

This feels like tariff evasion tactics, I am not against it tho, I think apple is handling it well.

atleastoptimal• 5 months ago

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.

maxdo4• 5 months ago

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

selkin• 5 months ago

Why is it a good thing? Manufacturing jobs are horrible, ask anyone who had one.

The US built a high margins service economy.

This is two steps backwards, no step forwards sort of a deal.

maxdo4• 5 months ago

This is why we have troubles. This is so delusional in many ways. You can’t be high margin without building at least something . You can’t be a successful country full of lawyers and doctors only. You have to actually build something

bigyabai8• 5 months ago

It’s national interest protection .

The US has no national interest in the Mac Mini, or the Mac Pro for that matter. Homeland security isn't reliant on Apple datacenters. The Mac comprises less than 10% of Apple's yearly revenue, almost lower-profit than the iPad. Manufacturing Macs in the US doesn't even secure your pension.

The iPhone comprises a minor national interest corollary to Apple's stock price, but that's never being onshored. Apple would go bankrupt paying Americans to assemble the iPhone, and if you don't believe me then Google the leaked BOMs.

maxdo4• 5 months ago

Well, it’s the last company who has more or less complete clue on how to build computers.

When the war will start what wit China are you going to use ? What’s even more critical who will be the one who will start manufacturing?

Yeah maybe it’s a tiny drop in the ocean , but that’s the start at least of something. Not just installing solar toilets billed as solar panels for $40k as it was under previous administration

kevin_thibedeau• 5 months ago

They've been teasing domestic production for over a decade. I'll believe it when I see it.

JeremyHerrman2• 5 months ago

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.

whalesalad2• 5 months ago

My first job was for a startup created by Henk Rogers (Tetris). He was an avid photographer (our company set out to make photo management easier) and so he had a lot of photos. In the center of the office we had a server closet and it was the first time I ever saw xserve and xserve-raid racked up in person. I believe they were 100% dedicated to storing Henk's photo collection. Really really gorgeous hardware.

otterley• 5 months ago

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.

tom13372• 5 months ago

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

JeremyHerrman2• 5 months ago

agreed that Apple will scrap these, but surely some of these will escape (even in a non-functional state) and with enough effort folks will figure out how to boot them.

I have a few prototype apple devices in my collection. Especially with the sheer number of these AI servers it's just a matter of time before they wind up in public.

DonHopkins• 5 months ago

Now with OpenClaw pre-installed!

logotype2• 5 months ago

Very happy to see this!

ggm• 5 months ago

"made" == "assembled"

pers0n• 5 months ago

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.

tcper• 5 months ago

Apple produced MacPro in US a few years ago, what about that facility and workers? Will this facility has the same destiny like MacPro?

ncrmro• 5 months ago

H-Town hold it down!

gnarbarian• 5 months ago

thanks trump!

p_j_w• 5 months ago

This has undoubtedly been in the works since before Trump took office. Construction for manufacturing has taken a nose dive since Trump won the election, though, so even if this particular factory was because of him, the overall picture isn’t any good.

platevoltage3• 5 months ago

He will never notice, or care about you.

with• 5 months ago

"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

t1234s• 5 months ago

Didn't they build the trash can mac pros in Texas?

cod1r• 5 months ago

HOUSTON REPRESENT!!

profdevloper• 5 months ago

Will they transition to having Americans make them too?

fundad• 5 months ago

Could you imagine that?

resters2• 5 months ago

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.

stevev• 5 months ago

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.

DeathArrow2• 5 months ago

It's interesting they have decided to build it in a blue state.

gaigalas3• 5 months ago

Apple today announced a significant expansion of factory operations in Houston, bringing the future production of Mac mini to the U.S. for the first time. The company will also expand advanced AI server manufacturing at the factory and provide hands-on training at its new Advanced Manufacturing Center beginning later this year.

So, servers and minis share a production line then.

I kinda knew it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45599894

zekrioca2• 5 months ago

Sharing a factory does not imply shared chips or repurposing server silicon. Also, Apple doesn’t follow servers’ econ model.

gaigalas3• 5 months ago

I'm obviously speculating, but you seem to be very sure of what you're saying. Can you share a reliable source for that info?

cryptoegorophy• 5 months ago

Is this because of China/Taiwan situation I assume?

grepfru_it• 5 months ago

Still no jobs about this location posted on Apple’s career page. Anyone know how one could find employment at this location?

mrkpdl• 5 months ago

Through Foxconn presumably

timvdalen• 5 months ago

That's a lot of American flags in one article

whh• 5 months ago

They need to make sure a certain someone sees them, I suspect.

jama2114• 5 months ago

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

kilroy123• 5 months ago

I'm not convinced this is all temporary.

alt2277• 5 months ago

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...

jama2114• 5 months ago

Healthy skepticism is fine.

kgwxd• 5 months ago

I'm sure Texas is going to try to give them the "freedom" to "compete" with china. If I owned property in Houston, I'd have sold a long time ago, but with this, I'd panic sell. Take what you can, it's going to be a wasteland if this pans out.

JSR_FDED• 5 months ago

I absolutely love my Mac Mini. But wtf is an "advanced AI server"?

user3939382• 5 months ago

Translation: Apple agrees to lose money on Mac Mini production for x quarters as a concession to the WH for midterm optics in exchange for undisclosed consideration.

_nagu_• 5 months ago

Probably

0_____03• 5 months ago

Hah! I just noticed something - in the video at the top of the page, the female technician assembling servers is wearing a pink smock with Chinese text on it, right above the ESD grounding lead. She features in a still photo down below, but they've digitally removed the Chinese. I think it says "富士康科技" for "Foxconn Technology." Funny that they would go out of their way to hide the depth of their partnership.

Naracion• 5 months ago

Fwiw--it's not digitally removed, it is just behind her sleeve. In the video she starts in the same pose and you can't see the text, but you can once she moves her arm.

bangonkeyboard• 5 months ago

Not true. Here is a mirror of an image posted earlier in this thread: https://i.postimg.cc/MK86WX6s/TEmek6j.png

audunw2• 5 months ago

Foxconn is a Taiwanese company btw. I think they’ve been setting up several factories outside of China recently

guywithahat• 5 months ago

Possibly a hot take but Houston makes more sense in my mind as a city to do this in compared to Austin. Houston is the fourth largest city in the US, it has no city zoning, and is the most wonderful place in the world to do business (at least in my experience). There's a risk if you do it in Austin that suddenly all your employees get priced out whenever the city forgets to update zoning (which has happened in the past, although to their credit they did eventually increase density and prices dropped)

TedHerman• 5 months ago

I foresee someone at Apple saying, someday, "Houston we have a problem".

Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

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