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After 6 years, a major redesign is delayed due to screws?
What a pathetic lame excuse.

It clearly shows that Apple does NOT care about the Pro community whatsoever.

Imagine if they come in and next September they announce that the next iPhone 11 is delayed due to screws...
They could even fly in a few ton of those screws or ship them. In the mean time they could redesign the Mac Pro so they could use custom built American screws. But Tim Cook is the logistics expert here.
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America needs to get over this delusional idea that they can compete with China in manufacturing.

At Foxconn, they hire 450,000 workers during peek iPhone production. A solid third of them sleep in dorms on campus. They work six days a week and 12 hours a day. They get paid about a grand a month.

There is no place in America where you could even find 450,000 skilled workers. And even if you could, they would not work in any manner that even comes close to these hours or wages.

The sheer number of skilled people China can put on a project to produce something as simple as as screw or as complex as an iPhone in mind-blowing. If we made iPhones in America, they would cost $8,000 and there would be a two year waiting list for them.

None of this is an attack on America. But we have to understand that there are certain things we should not try to compete in. After all we do not want to create jobs like this in America.
I totally agree with you. But I don’t understand why they can’t make more automated robotic lines. China got big by it’s cheap hard working workers. Now China is investing into the future by creating robotic workers that will slowly overtake the human workers. USA and Europe should invest in that next gen too or we will become the cheap labor workers of China in the not so distant future.
 
They’re all immigrants haha
Yes, I’m sure your immigrant labor doesn’t like that future immigrants are going to undercut their wages too.

That’s what I’m saying.
So your position is - “Hello low skilled immigrant labor, ill hire you, but don’t get any ideas in asking for a pay raise or ill just hire newly arrived immigrants.”

This is no different than H1B visas. It’s a form of indentured servitude.
 
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Yes, I’m sure your immigrant labor doesn’t like that future immigrants are going to undercut their wages too.

That’s what I’m saying.
So your position is - “Hello low skilled immigrant labor, ill hire you, but don’t get any ideas in asking for a pay raise or ill just hire newly arrived immigrants.”

This is no different than H1B visas. It’s a form of indentured servitude.

I don't think you know what "indentured servitude" actually was..
 
America scores unimpressively in the middle of the pack in academic achievement, whether that's reading, math, or science. The U.S. ranks 14th among 37 OECD and G20 countries.

It's romantic to believe the U.S. doesn't need technical school graduates to operate manufacturing jobs. But the reality is otherwise.

You're thinking primary school.

Our university system is the best in the world.
 
First, it usually is how someone says something that is insulting, not what is said. Second, it is your opinion. Please recognize that your opinion is no more or less valid than other peoples opinions. Show some respect to others please. The US is losing its foundation of democracy because so many people refuse to respect anyone that does not agree with them.

Edit: and if you still insist on insulting people, at least do so in a forum about politics. You do realize this is an article about screw. Screws.

And you are the one that started whining about being insulted.....
 
it's really REALLY hard to tell.

Apple's problem with thte Mac Pro is they designed a super ultra niche product, slapped on the "Mac Pro" badge that was on a different product before, and then claimed nobody wants it when sales tanked.

if the 2013 mac Pro had followed the industry standards in regards to pricing and functionality, would it have seen the same massive declines? We don't know.

But it really looks like Apple put themselves into a catch22 with the Mac Pro.

If they had put out an updated cheesegrater, along with the trashcan (the same way they did the PowerMac and the Cube), I would have upgraded from my (flashed) 2,1 to the updated cheesegrater.

I instead upgraded to a 4,1 (and have been upgrading it since).
 
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I think the key point here is the phrase 'short notice'. According to the article Apple needed 28,000 screws and the factory can produce 1000 screws per day. Are you telling me that Apple did not know more than 28 days ahead that the mac pro needed screws to hold it together? Sounds like poor project management to me.
 
America scores unimpressively in the middle of the pack in academic achievement, whether that's reading, math, or science. The U.S. ranks 14th among 37 OECD and G20 countries.

It's romantic to believe the U.S. doesn't need technical school graduates to operate manufacturing jobs. But the reality is otherwise.

American scores are based around 2 issues:

1. Americans, by and large, do not actually value education. They only go to school 180 days a year. This is because of:

2. Our schools systems are still built around the agricultural harvest, even though we haven't had 40% of the workforce working in agriculture since the 1940s.

3. Don't get me started on the local school boards.....
 
Think business won't go for that? Not only would they not have to pay workers, their replacements never get tired, call in sick, or expect to get paid. On top of that - the franchise owner would get a massive set of tax breaks on new machinery.

Funny
Robot equivalent
  • Their replacements never get tired ... Robot needs maintenance
  • Call in sick ... Robot breaks down
  • Or expect to get paid ... Robot won't work without energy (Electricity)
;)
 
American workers are typically more expensive and unwilling to work around the clock
More expensive? Yes, because we have apartments and homes on which to pay rent and mortgages. We don't live in dormitories paid for by the manufacturing factory.
Around the clock? When I worked on an assembly line at Aladdin (first stainless steel vacuum bottle) in Nashville, I worked from 4:00 PM till 11:30 PM and took overtime whenever I could to earn that $$$. Around the clock does NOT mean working 24 hours straight. Many companies worked multiple shifts.

Is there a large demand for a Mac Pro? I'm genuinely curious.
Had the new Mac Pro been produced earlier, I would have bought one. Instead I have bought a Mac mini to replace the 2008 Mac Pro I had been using.

For want of a screw, the Mac Pro was lost.
When I added some electronics to my Mac Pro, I found a particular screw that I had to remove required a special screwdriver.

The better question is why did it need custom screws in the first place...
Using custom screws prevents unauthorized persons from doing repair work on our electronics. However, now the Chinese companies are producing the tools required to do that work. Hopefully, this fact will put electronics manufacturers back on track to use ordinary hardware requiring ordinary tools.
 
This whole "fairy tale" is cheating ratio of everybody who is used to use his brain :confused:

Now we know why they are not able to develop good new products (Mac Pro, Mac Books, Thunderbolt Display) if such a screw is a fact for a new Apple story :rolleyes:

nonsense :apple:
 
That no doubt can be an issue. But what represents cheap labor here in the U.S. isn't necessarily the same as what represents cheap labor somewhere else. In other words, the reason something is cheaper if it is produced somewhere else isn't necessarily that someone there is being taken advantage of whereas that wouldn't be the case if it was produced here.

Paying someone a fair wage for the work they do in, e.g., rural China may mean paying them considerably less than would be needed to pay someone a fair wage to do the same work in, e.g., Los Angeles, CA. The costs of living are different and the expected standards of living are different (and that wouldn't change if a given bit of production wasn't done there). If anything, China doing a great deal of production for people in the U.S. and Europe increases opportunities and standards of living for people in China. That's why they are willing to do it. Our choice not to have them produce stuff for us wouldn't help them, it would hurt them.

I'd add that, paying something much greater than what the market dictates is a fair wage in a given area (i.e. doing so for altruistic, not prudent business reasons) wouldn't necessarily help those currently receiving what would otherwise be considered a fair wage. It would, to some extent, push lower skill workers out in favor of higher skill workers willing to accept those higher wages.

The point, I suppose, is this: To the extent we'd like to see an increasing standard of living in other areas of the world, our outsourcing of production to those areas is likely helping on that front - at least it's helping in general. But it can't effect a sudden massive change on that front without being disruptive in ways that might ultimately prove problematic for them. It has to gradually help pull them toward a higher standard of living. People in China choose to do work for us fairly cheaply - cheaply from our perspective, not necessarily from theirs. They do that not because they think it harms them, but because they think it helps them.

Hats off, most people here assume it's slave labour for very little $, it's not.
I lived in Indonesia, wages are much lower than in the West, there's poverty (we even have) but most get by just fine and it gets better year after year.
 
If Apple had used nails instead - maybe there wouldn't be a problem.
 
After 6 years, a major redesign is delayed due to screws?
What a pathetic lame excuse.

It clearly shows that Apple does NOT care about the Pro community whatsoever.

Imagine if they come in and next September they announce that the next iPhone 11 is delayed due to screws...
They were talking about the 2013 Mac Pro; not the upcoming one.
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I don't understand this post. This happened six years ago and is not responsible for any current delay.
He just likes to invent negativity it seems.
 
Asinine. This is someone at Apple not being capable of basic procurement, not an inability for anyone in the United States to operate a Swiss Machine... or even a basic screw machine. There are, within an hour of where I sit now, easily more than twenty manufacturers of precision fasteners great and small, capable of mass production and frigging shipping them on time and within budget. Perhaps look outside of bloody texas.
Tim Cook may be many things you don't like; but "stoopid at logistics" ain't one of them.

I believe the article said that the issue was the supply-rate that Apple was requiring.
 
You don't need 100,000 workers to make a relative handful of screws for a specialist computer.
That was simply an example at just how flexible Chinese Contract Manufacturers are, compared with CMs in the United States.

For one thing, I don't think China suffers from Trade Unions, do they?
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All this story indicates to me is that Apple picked the wrong supplier. The first one could only produce 1,000 screws a day but the second could supply much greater than that. Both are in the United States.

So why didn't Apple research the suppliers more to find out exactly what they could produce? Obviously that second supplier was there all the time and Apple never called them until the product was delayed.

The teachable moment here is Apple needs better supplier scouts, that's all.
Did you read the article?

They DID scour the U.S. sources before they gave up and sourced the screws from China.
 
Is there a large demand for a Mac Pro? I'm genuinely curious.
Of course... final cut pro is still far quicker at rendering 4k videos than any other software so many professionals still use a mac for that purpose and they'd absolutely love one with beast specs to get their work done faster
 
Whoever was the Apple production coordinator for the Mac Pro should have been fired. Either the scheduling specifications for these screws was deficient or the screw engineering specification was deficient. I'd blame Apple management first for not paying closer attention to production details.
Perhaps; but it was obviously more like they were used to being able to order-up production quantities of nonstandard screw sizes/types, and have them produced in a reasonable time.

But that apparently isn't how lazy American screw manufacturers are used to doing business.
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Apple should get someone in charge that understands efficiency and supply lines and use standard screws.
Or, the U.S. screw manufacturers need to get off their lazy butts, and recognize a big customer-specific order when they see one.
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Really? You didn't have enough screws to make it? Really?
I haven't heard an excuse this poor since "my dog ate my homework".

It takes Apple years to design a real professional, expandable desktop while everyone else can bang out workhorse computers several times a year.
Hell, the hackintosh crowd compiled a list of compatible parts to make killer desktops in less than a year, and continue to update that list constantly. At zero cost.
Now Apple says it can't make the desktop that many business/home users need because their aging computers are painfully in need of an update.
All because they can't find enough screws.
...
Gotta hand it to Timmy Kook. Using screws to screw the customer. That's some next level slime tactics right there.
do you really believe that sputum?
 
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