If you could charge your customers $10M per computer, and only made 500 per year, and could sell the same base design for 20 years; then yes, manufacture in the USA would be no problem at all.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook: We Want to Continue Making the Mac Pro in the United States
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If you could charge your customers $10M per computer, and only made 500 per year, and could sell the same base design for 20 years; then yes, manufacture in the USA would be no problem at all.
So basically, you are saying they should stop trying to design what they consider to be the best product for customers and markets; and instead design so that it can be made in the USA?
How did you make that leap of logic based on the type of screw used?
You are confusing "design for manufacturing" vs. "supply chain management". They are not the same thing at all. In fact, they are not even managed out of the same department in any large corporation.
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The sad implication of your statement is that the USA isn't even particularly good at design. I'm surprised you went there.
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Every US CEO is compensated mostly via stock value, one way or another. It's been that way since before you were born, probably. Only the precise formulas have changed. It used to be stock options; but then financial theories proved that those incentivized overly risky behavior, so now they are mainly compensated by stock bonuses.
Oh, sorry. I just assumed you understood why they designed in a custom screw. It wasn't arbitrary. They had certain design goals regarding size, form factor, serviceability, etc. Those goals started at the top, and when worked down they resulted in a screw that was not a mass-volume standard. They could have made the use of a standard screw a design goal, but that would have required a different form factor or some other change in the top level goals. Given that they have manufactured in China, where custom screws in volume are not a problem, it was likely a default assumption that these would not be a problem in the USA either.
I have 30 years experience in high tech product management, and I sometimes forget that I understand some things implicitly of which many other people are unawares.
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Well, if you think he was 'walking it back', that's no doubt your prerogative and if it makes you happy, ok. As for asking me if I want to "die on this hill", while sporting the name of a gun manufacturer in your username and at the same time espousing Christianity, I'm sure the irony escapes you entirely.
Maybe he is, but why all the hate? Doesn't he have a duty to his Shareholders? Or can he just do what he wants?
I don't agree with everything Cook has done but you can't argue with the abundance that he had brought his shareholders.
And $10M was what computers cost in the 1960s. And for that price they could be buillt in places like New York state where IBM had it's mainframe factory. And the 30 MB drives the size of washing machine were built in San Jose, California.
So there is no mystery why today's high volume computers cannot be cost effectively built in the US.
Of course, this may change if we can manufacture computers in lights-out factory where the only thing working are robotic manufacturing systems, not humans. Lego has these and it lets them still manufacture in Denmark (and in China and Mexico).
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Then perhaps new management is needed to redefine their design goals.
The difference in cost of labor is a lot more than 10%, unfortunately...
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When you fight against globalization, you get more expensive products produced locally.
Personally, I would love Apple to go full tilt down this road just for a year or 2 - jack the price up of everything by 2-3000% and now we can really start separating the wheat from the chaff. The haves from the have nots.
It's through globalization and outsourcing that we get the best products at the least expensive price point. Any markup that is done - isn't based on raw materials and production costs - it's a perceived brand value. However, even with those profit margins baked in - it allows 90% of consumers to purchase a product they would otherwise not be able to if it were produced in the US.
So I say bring it. Manufacture in the USA. I wanna see iPhones that start at $3000 - I don't want to hear any complaining. Either shell out - or go somewhere else. This is America!
The only time we learn as human beings is through pain. Perceived or physical. Hurting the wallet is a good place to start. Squeeze the wallets, and you squeeze the human it belongs to into submission.
Given the amount of thumbs up on my post I think it’s just you who missed the point of my statement. Apple is indeed claiming cost cutting as their reasoning for moving the production of their most expensive device overseas. This is irregardless of the amount in their bank account.
I'm sure it does. I hope you are not talking about Tim Cook, though. In my experience, those determinations would have been made at a much lower level than CEO, or even VP of Engineering level.
Most of Apple's hardware products are not only extremely high volume, but also designed to be as light and compact as possible, as you know. That means there must be a space and weight budget. So, of course, for those products, any excess weight or space spent on a mundane screw would be better spent on some more important function, and custom screws are likely going to be part of the design. Any designers and engineering leaders who have been working within Apple for some number of years, and have worked on high-volume Apple products, are going to take that as a given. It's part of the internal engineering DNA. You see this not just in the iOS-based products, but the laptops and iMac as well.
When it came to the "donut" Mac Pro, this product had its own set of design priorities. It's pretty clear that Apple designers were driven most by thermal considerations and esthetics; Apple management made that clear in the product rollout. If the design required custom screws, I don't think anyone was going to question that, since this was probably a common thing within Apple.
It might have been better if Apple had recruited a hardware team from outside to design that product, including people who had experience designing more conventional boxes. And that might have included designers who had a broader sense of "design for manufacturability" than was prevalent in Apple.
The goalie pad company?
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He's doing better than ever from what I've seen. I unfortunately was forced to retire a few years ago so I'm not sure what his current lineup is like. But he's always hand built his stuff to very high quality. Never had a stich loose. my first set of his pads are still game ready, even if a bit beat up and older
The real question is why design something that needs “custom screws”? Wish Apple would stop being so proprietary with components and parts. Use regular screws. Use regular NVMe. Use industry standards. The trashcan - everything proprietary always - philosophy is what has been the source of problems. Using standards simplifies manufacture chain and reduces costs... and increases where things can be made.
BTW, there are many high quality commercial and consumer goods made in the US. Quite frankly, if one cares about quality and precision it is not a bad option for manufacturing. Much of the stuff that goes inside the case are already manufactured in the US.
But if they used standard off the shelf parts, we'd be able to upgrade, maintain or replace components without ever engaging or giving Apple any more money.
Proprietary parts make sense under extreme conditions when there are no standards that can be used due to some technical limitation.
A phone for example, we don't question soldered on storage, RAM, CPU etc, because we all for the most part understand the size of thed evice provides a massive technical limitation in providing modularity.
But as you scale up in size, you also scale up in flexibility. Purposely designing devices to be proprietary for no other reason other than to be proprietary is purely a monetization method that reeks of avarice.
Lol, I didn’t finish reading all that utter NONSENSE, but I’ll respond to the bit I could stomach...
Anyone that thinks moving American jobs towards industrial revolution era style work, would be a movement AWAY from becoming a 3rd world country & not TOWARDS is simply so bent, I have difficulty fathoming.
Sounds like random pontificating from someone that’s never had to work for a living. Trust me, the working class isn’t clamoring for you to reopen coal mines & iron smelts, lol.
Anyways, I think pretty much most intelligent and/or even mildly aware people by now strongly believe that the next step FORWARD from service economy (1st world country), to.... well, whatever comes after that- has something to do with AI.
Opinion on what that is going to look like varies... but most experts are saying that in the next dozen years or so we should see about 40% of jobs here in America replaced by AI (nearly 100% of the menial labor ones!). So, while the smart money would want their own country to win this INCREDIBLY important race & show leadership to the rest of the world, as to what a post 1st world country/service economy looks like, one where it’s citizens are not even exposed to what I’d consider garbage dull repetitive labor jobs... you’re busy calling for the EXACT opposite?!
“Forget automation! Build old school factories & fill them with bodies!”, that’s your cry?? Brother, you are on your own.
Yeah, that is a very good question. I think, however, the reason lies in the fact that pretty much every other product Apple designs is intended for a market where compactness and lightness are high-value differentiators. That's certainly true for the iOS products and the laptops; and we saw that design philosophy reflected in the iMacs as well, even though a lot of people feel that has gone slightly too far. In order to minimize size and weight to the greatest extent, all components, even the screws, need to be custom.
The "trashcan" was intended for a market where that kind of size/weight minimization had no value at all. But the design team for that Mac Pro was probably made up of engineers who had prior experience of Apple's mainstream products, and retained those sensibilities and values. "Corporate DNA" is a real thing.
Given that the 2013 Mac Pro uses non-proprietary Torx screws, it's an indication of the U.S. simply lacking manufacturing capacity.
Apple may have asked for a different thread diameter, screw length, or other spec. Nothing crazy.
If you are only allowed to use off the shelf parts, you follow the same line of thinking everywhere which limits innovation.
No doubt that Apple engineers had the wrong set of priorities when they designed the previous Mac Pro. But, I don't think it had anything to do with "avarice"; just a matter of assigning people to the job who didn't understand the priorities in this specific market segment.
Espousing Christianity is inconsistent with the Second Amendment?
This is news to me.