Apple to Continue Evaluating GT's Sapphire Production Progress, Looking for New Uses for Arizona Plant

[iChrist]

Lets hope they can keep people in their jobs. And make something cool while they're at it.

Ha. Actually, let's hope not. This company cost Apple a lot of money and now we won't get sapphire for a long time.

This is why you don't bring manufacturing jobs to the US. The slovenly class of workers who fill these jobs are overpaid and not up to the task. Over confident and under-educated. Worst combination.

 

[gluckett]

Wait - if they're completely shutting down operations, how are their production techniques going to improve?

 

[anthony11]

This still doesn't make sense. If the product wasn't good enough for Apple's plans and never was good enough, why did GTAT deploy 2,000 furnaces to prove that?

Makes no sense to me either. And what market do they think they'd have for these? Why would they just throw it all away vs. plugging toward using the stuff for the next product rev?

 

[joueboy]

This is obviously sabotaging the American economy. With all the propaganda bringing jobs back in this country it all ended up as a failure. They're just saying that we are not capable. Just recently Foxcon invested billions to build a plant for the display. You tell me this is not failure because this is going to take off. The message they sending here we are not capable. Therefore bring all the manufacturing in China. Bigger profit margin cheaper labor. This is a setup!

 

[Blue Fox]

Easy answer;

Build Mac minis there. Make them single-core with a maximum 4GB RAM but sexy and thin with a back-lit sapphire Apple logo.

Apple wins on multiple levels with the above plan. It gets to further degrade another product and Jony gets to introduce another stupidly thin product.

What a troll.

 

[CFreymarc]

Or he could sell today and double his money.

He'd be selling himself short. Ride it!

----------

That is all true. But Jon needs to deal with it. Find the cause and fix it so then he can start on making himself thinner. Not easy but it's the harsh truth.

About the old overweight fashon design I know to get away with it was Bill Blass. Most keep themselves thin as a rail and in primary colors.

 

[Moonlight]

Jobs brought more manufacturing jobs to the USA.

Job: Zero manufacturing jobs brought to the USA.
Cook: Minus 700 (or so) jobs brought to the USA.

Cook through this collapse cost many manufacturing workers their jobs.

How many jobs were brought here because of the Mac Pro? You forgot that. :roll eyes:

You also forgot all the other US suppliers that Apple uses and ships to China for final build.

 

[anza]

oops - wrong thread

 

[Lucky736]

He'd be selling himself short. Ride it!

Maybe, maybe not. No one ever went broke taking a profit. This company is far from being in the clear just bc of this agreement but it's certainly something to be optimistic about.

 

[vagos]

Who will be the next USA Manufacturer to take this on? Come on Apple giving an opportunity to bring the jobs back from oversea suppliers! Don't screw it up (again)!!

Actually the goal is to move jobs away from the US, not in.

 

[carlgo]

Apple is taking the high road and that is to be appreciated. It may well work out in time.

BTW anti-US worker trolls, cash your check from China fast. The workers at that plant have nothing to do with the failure. It was management as usual, as it almost always is. Our workers are fine, the lucky sperm management types are not.

 

[bmelson0412]

I'm worried we won't see the light of day of the release of the Apple watch....

 

[Ramchi]

I wonder if someone at Apple was fired over this. They threw $500 million at a company to mass produce sapphire using a production process that apparently didn't work. You'd think Apple would require them to show that they can actually get this to work before giving them the money to scale up to 2,000 furnaces. Why not start with 100 furnaces and see how that pans out? Looks like they were trying to rush a new feature, and lost the gamble.

Problem with US Manufacturers would not allow trial runs, pilot runs and experimentation without firm financial commitments from their customers unlike Asian vendors who would go down the level to please (many times unnecessarily IMO) their customers even if US Customers refuse business.

Whereas US Manufacturers try to put conditions as soon as they find there are potential in the manufacturing process and try to bring their legal team, which is very expensive on top of expensive workforce at US!

It is a double edged sword so these sort of debacles are not that surprising, unless they deliver their commitments.

 

[the8thark]

I would love to hear your views.

Yep you've love them as much as a kick to the crotch.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

How many jobs were brought here because of the Mac Pro? You forgot that. :roll eyes:

You also forgot all the other US suppliers that Apple uses and ships to China for final build.

U.S suppliers that stood up to Apple and others and refused to move overseas.

 

[theSeb]

The last two posters are like caricatures straight out of a parody of the US of A.

"THEY TOOK OUR JOBS"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brj2UkUPjCI#t=23

I laugh, but deep inside I am saddened by some of the downright ignorant responses in this thread.

It's frightening how often ignorance and patriotism go hand-in-hand.

 

[Klae17]

What is there to acknowledge? And why is it a joke? I don't remember any Mac Pro delays. Even if there was, it doesn't mean it was the fault of "US Manufacturing". There is also no evidence that GT sapphire production failure means US manufacturing is a joke. I think basing an option of US manufacturing off 2 incidents without any evidence is trolling. Does it make you feel better thinking US Manufacturing is a joke? What do you have to gain by spreading that false narrative?

If it wasn't a joke there would be way more manufacturing here.

 

[randyj]

I couldn't read my email thru that hockey puck they have pictured.
Can't believe they would get the go ahead to roll out such a large scale production if the end product was not up to scratch.

As someone else mentioned, build mac minis there.
On that but off topic. I wouldn't mind an all soldered in ultra small Mac Mini if you could expand it by buying another Mac Mini and plugging them in together to function as one machine. So if you wanted an 8 core mac mini, you just buy 4 of them and stack them together. Wonder if that would be possible...

 

[Robstevo]

A healthy body is a healthy mind. And we all want Ive as healthy as possible so he can keep designing great products.

We should care for his health as it possibly could interfere with his job. And to be honest I don't like the fact Ive is not caring about himself as much as he should be.

That Steven hawking fella isn't doing too bad for himself is he.....

 

[loon3y]

Who will be the next USA Manufacturer to take this on? Come on Apple giving an opportunity to bring the jobs back from oversea suppliers! Don't screw it up (again)!!

i think it was the obama administration that inquired about apple doing production domestically.


with the demand and high cost of labor plus healthcare, overtime and the fact that they can work after a certain amount of hours, made it near impossible.

 

[vomhorizon]

This still doesn't make sense. If the product wasn't good enough for Apple's plans and never was good enough, why did GTAT deploy 2,000 furnaces to prove that?

There can be many reasons why the "product was not good enough". Some of these may not have anything to do with the characteristics of the product itself. For example, it could well be the case that Apple desired a particular technical specification coupled with a particular yield rate and rate of production that could meet their projected need for the sapphire screen covers. It could be the case that GT managed to produced the technical characteristics so desired, but were unable to get the yields to an acceptable level or hit the production rate milestones. It could also be a case that the cost projections went over what the companies had agreed upon. Bottom line is that, something may work very very well, and one OEM may have the know how of designing it to the exacts specs but that OEM may be having issues producing it, may have high production rejection rates or may not be able to produce the desired volume at the desired cost. Any one of these could cause the contract to be terminated or payments held up as happened. I think it happens with chips all the time. The ability to design technically advanced chips exists with quite a few OEM's but they usually require time and investment to get a production line running and to hammer out the chips with an acceptable yield and at a desired price point.

 

[KPOM]

I'm worried we won't see the light of day of the release of the Apple watch....

I'm not. There is plenty of sapphire on the open market for watches. It's a common material.

 

[samcraig]

GTAT the fall guy? You serious? More logical assumption is GTAT failed to meet the requirements of the contract and not Apple 'late in the game' decided not to use the sapphire. You actually think Apple don't have the life cycle of every component planned in detail? You think this is their first complex smart phone they have manufactured? This ain't Blackberry. Apple is the top of the food chain because of proven track records and you want to say GTAT is the one more competent then Apple? So competent they only had 1/15-1/20 of the revenue prior and have no experiences at this scale but you still think GTAT is the 'scape goat' really? Tin foil hat anyone?

On the other hand - people want to believe that GTAT pulled one over on Apple. That pretty much implies that Apple couldn't or didn't do their due diligence. That doesn't sound like Apple.

 

[rdlink]

I am not praising Apple on this situation. I think GT is the fall-guy / scapegoat here.

I think this mess all comes down to Apple deciding, late in the game, that sapphire was not a possible/practical/affordable solution for mobile device screens.

From this decision Apple then decided to cover it's ass for making an impossible/impractical/unaffordable decision in the first place.

The most powerful organizations in the world can get away with this type of stuff.

What part of "GT began missing technical milestones back in February" did you not read?

Apple never publicly declared that the iPhone 6 would have sapphire. Hell, they still haven't. They were working GT on a new, cutting edge material for their products. It's called R&D. Companies do it all the time, and we never hear about 98% of it. The reason this is such a big deal is because it's Apple, and Tim Cook can't belch after dinner without it making headline news.

GT failed to make something happen that they agreed to try. Does that alone make them the bad guy here? No. Is Apple the bad guy for deciding that they didn't want their products to be held hostage to a material that clearly wasn't ready for prime time? No.

My only issue with all of this (besides the demonization of both Apple and GT by low information posters on this site) is the troubling apparent dumping of stock by upper management of GT after it became clear to them that they were failing at their goal. Hopefully, the SEC will do a full investigation into this, and if there was wrongdoing those men will end up in jail.

----------

On the other hand - people want to believe that GTAT pulled one over on Apple. That pretty much implies that Apple couldn't or didn't do their due diligence. That doesn't sound like Apple.

The money Apple spent on this project is a rounding error to them. This was an R&D project that didn't work out. There are tons of these every year. It's the cost of pushing the envelope in the tech world.

The only drama here is the possibility of insider trading by upper management of GT.

 

[vomhorizon]

On the other hand - people want to believe that GTAT pulled one over on Apple. That pretty much implies that Apple couldn't or didn't do their due diligence. That doesn't sound like Apple.

Things don't always work out the way one hopes they will. Even for apple. I guess the current state of affairs with GT and them looking to get out of sapphire altogether really suggests that there is something wrong with their core business (no ***** ) however apple could also have got it wrong by placing a burden on GT that they could not realistically delivery upon. When you out of your comfort zone and look to do something new such as switching to a new material such as Sapphire, given the volumes you require, you better nail it or else it aint going to work out.