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.
Increasing for sure with different uses and possibilities.
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.
We're going to have to teach our children this concept about discerning the AI slop their grandparents flood Facebook with :')
I have seen exactly that, thanks to AI...
Foxconn bought it last year: https://communityimpact.com/houston/cy-fair-jersey-village/d...
EDIT: a screenshot from the video: https://imgur.com/a/X3t4crC
"Think Different" -> "Think Indifferent"
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.
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!
Mac Mini is their simplest product. It's the natural place to start training at a new facility.
> Advanced AI servers!
Yes, they have their own AI servers.
How can it be simpler than the Apple TV?
Apple invented Advanced AI Servers! So much more advanced!
Just like in the 2000s when the G4 Mac was a "supercomputer".
Seems to me this part of the PR release is a reference to claudbot/openclaw. What else could it be referring to?
If you genuinely can't find out what they are referring to, you've been on HN too long.
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.
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.
Now, you might disagree on whether blocking immigration from unsuccessful countries is a good thing or not. Maybe you disagree that those immigrants will bring the problems of their home countries to the U.S. But many prior Presidents have promised to do this and until Trump they have all failed.
I believe that the premise of the immigration laws is correct—that exceeding certain levels of immigration harms society for various reasons that have nothing to do with protecting sunscreen sales—just as Clinton and Obama claimed to do.
I’m on the right side of history. Are you?
As stated, it is offensive
You need to do appeasement as needed. Business is business.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Not really. And this is before the M5 Mac mini which ships later this year.
Putting it together in desktop‑mini form factors:
- Raw CPU: M4 is much faster single‑core, generally faster multi‑core at lower power.
- GPU: M4’s iGPU is roughly 2×+ Vega 8 and more modern.
- Memory subsystem: M4 has far higher bandwidth and unified memory, ideal for integrated GPU and many modern workloads.
- Efficiency/noise: M4 wins by a large margin; much higher perf per watt.
- Compatibility: 5800H wins if you need bare‑metal x86 OSes like FreeBSD or specific x86‑only software stacks.
- 5800H: 35–54 W configurable TDP in laptops; mini‑PC implementations often run it fairly hot to maintain clocks.
- M4 in Mac mini: ~24 W base TDP, ~40 W boost, but getting clearly higher performance per watt.
The mini would save $87/year. That's a 3.5y breakeven assuming no reinvestment.
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.
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.
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..."
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.
Then Trump did a good thing. You’re inadvertently praising Trump in your attempt to slander Tim Cook.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donald-...
> https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-invest-american-manufacturing...
> https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/08/06/apple-exempt-from...
What is the final judgement about this?
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.
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.
A VPS that can perform like a Mac mini will likely cost the same as a Mac mini in 12 months time.
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.
If I was interested in "performative local manufacturing" I'd also build my own servers, it has the least economic impact.
— As Vice President, Kamala Harris was a key proponent and promoter of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to boost U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.
It's gone down according to the official US numbers, as expected
Extorting CEOs to announce investments (like the Zuckerberg hot mic incident) is not worth anything to me. Meanwhile the US has been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs for the last year.
The investment in capability that is necessary to build the next generation of manufacturing capabilities in the US is simply not within the public imagination.
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.
it could be less economical, so Apple has to innovate to be competitive on pricing - with automation, robots, etc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What they stopped manufacturing was menial and low-end product; because it's not price-effective to have 100 Americans sit on an assembly line and solder SMT components for $7-18/hr. Instead, those potential workers pivoted into service jobs and office work.
1 - https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/blog/top-10-manufa...
China at this point is hard in automation, beyond anything the US has. China is well past the peak of sweatshops.
As someone in the manufacturing space in the US, the biggest issue we have in the US is that manufacturing continues to die. Any manufacturing we have left is the old guard dying off. It comes from a range of issues from companies refusing to invest in younger employees, to the cost of real estate (both buy or rent) for commercial properties being absurd..
The reason we can’t do manufacturing is because Wall Street demands capital light business models.
That, in turn, is an outcome of being the global reserve currency.
This statement is as inaccurate as the comment you’re trying to debunk. The fact is that China leveraged it’s low-end manufacturing work to work its way up the chain and now is the leader in many areas: https://itif.org/publications/2025/09/23/how-china-is-outper.... E.g. China has been investing heavily in radar technology and as a result has air to air missiles with comparable range to the U.S. https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_and_tech/why_the_us_is_alar...
There are synergies to having the high end stuff and the low end stuff in the same place. The story of IBM developing System 360 mentions the benefit from the ladies who wound the wire core memory and the guys who designed the computer on the same campus in New York. We gave that up when we outsourced the “menial” stuff abroad.
I think some more "low margin" computer and chip manufacturing would be healthy.
And quite frankly, who gives a fuck if top owners and investors get maximum returns, boo hoo they got 4% return instead of 8%, that is still far better than the average working class's deal. Our entire problem is a suffering middle and lower classes that need decent work, they will still be happy even if the product they make is a bit lower margin because they are paid hourly, not paid by dividends and stock options which is where all the higher margins profits go. Average citizens pay has not correlated with increased company profits, and increased company profits isn't what makes society stable, so the investor class is going to have to suck it up and take the hit unless they want their entire house of cards to collapse.
The reason we don’t invest in manufacturing is because of requirements for return on capital.
Ask yourself why GM is doing massive stock buybacks in the era of global transition to electric cars. Why aren’t they using these huge sums of cash to invest in the next generation of products and instead literally just sending the money out the door?
Unless of course you need aerospace or space-qualified screws in which case they are definitely coming from the US.
Where China was successful is volume; Apple makes hundreds of millions of iPhones a year (I was shocked at that number) which is orders of magnitude more than computers. Kind of hard to deliver those numbers when you can't keep slaves on call in a dormitory.
Ok... Is that what they're using to build Mac Minis and is that what they need to iterate on typically?
One can only marvel at how high-quality the parts and phone would be if it was made in the United States
Are you claiming somehow that China would be incapable of making these? Or just admitting that the USG generally restricts such contracts to be sourced from the US only? And what does this have to do with Apple?
Or extensive automation, of course. We're alienated from the supply chain probably by design.
So that's why macs are so expensive.
This is, largely, a scam made up for costs plus contracting.
====
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.
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-...
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.
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.
The US government absolutely does not do what China does in this case. But the reason for my paranthesis and question mark was that I was not sure what call it.
Also he talks about this on The Ezra Klein Show.
On production lines.
Obviously this is not plan A, but their ops team is insane.
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.
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
[1] https://pangea-network.com/busiest-and-biggest-ports-in-the-...
I grew up in DFW.
My house in WI is assessed at a significantly higher value than my siblings house in Ft Worth.
My 2025 property tax bill ~$5k, my 2025 state income tax - not gonna publish it here but not all that significant.
Sibling in Texas property tax bill: ~$14k. Significantly higher than my state income tax + property tax.
Also, I don't have to live in Texas.
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.
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?
> 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.
If "can't have been made in any capacity in Texas" is your criteria that might be pretty difficult.
Either of these devices (per watt of computing power) could become a home appliance pretty easily.
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
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