Apple's New Mac Pro Won't Be 'Made in USA' as Production Reportedly Moving to China

[-BigMac-]

Yes greedy Tim Cook: keeping costs as low as possible to drive down on prices for customers.

Damn theyre so low. 8 core for $5000. Heard of the 9700k? Lmao. $500. Not xeon but pretty damn comparable in performance.

2080ti = $1500. Rips anything in Apples line up, even if you underclock it lol.

They could make a system far superior for lower. Who has ever needed 1.5tb of ram haha

 

[laz232]

Manufacturing these things in America is doable but would take investment in rebuilding the computing manufacturing industry lost to China in the 90s. It isn't just about the labor to assemble, but also about the ability to manufacture all of the various parts. Just like how car manufacturers need close proximity to a multitude of part suppliers the same is true for computer manufacturers.

It isn't impossible though and can be done. You'd think there is some urgency from US industry to shift this due to how pervasive IP theft has become with regards to China and the Chinese Government seeing domestic production of replacement for American parts as a national security interest. But American industry is still addicted to the low costs China affords them. Even if it means they may not be around in 10 years.



No, in China human labor is still cheaper than robots since they are paid so little and labor laws are next to non-existent. For instance, if Foxconn needs to ramp up production quickly for an iPhone surge they can literally wake workers up from sleep and demand they return to work immediately. You can't pull that off in the US (and I'm not saying you should be able to in China either)...

It depends on what is meant by "made in the USA". I've worked for 2+decades in the HW electronics industry in Scandinavia. The bare PCBs are mostly sources from China, components from where-ever (Intel would be USA, other semiconductors and passives from the Philippines, China, Japan, Scotland, Taiwan etc).
Automated PnP + soldering is done in Scandinavia, mechanics are done locally, final assembly test and packing is done locally.

Only at 1k-10k+ p.a. volume does it make sense to outsource the relatively complex electronics that I work on to China. Better run companies like Apple could probably make up to 10k-100k units P.a. profitably in the USA.

At the price / relatively low volume that the new Mac Pro will be (especially at *that* price), most of those processes could be done in the USA, probably with not much extra cost as the factory is already making Mac Pros. Something makes me think there is an additional aspect to this - Tim Cook clearly wants to distance himself from DT. If the new Mac Pro was produced in the USA then DT could use this as an extravagant (as is his nature) claim about bringing "good jobs" back. I am quite sure, that rather than give up 2% profit and actually bring a few jobs back to the USA, TC would rather play politics.

 

[ryanwarsaw]

And you up to your usual one tone rant. Get over it. Cook has taken Apple from strength to strength. If you don't like what Apple has to offer, that's your own problem.

Let them whine. Cook and us shareholders bend these people over the barrel month after month and year after year. While they spend more of their disposable income on the toys they cry about. They deserve to vent a little bit. After a little while the tantrum wears off and we stick it in again. Cook and the investors are pure evil geniuses, it works every time.

 

[mudflap]

Huge margins on a $1000 monitor stand not enough?

Do we know the margins on the stand yet? Has anyone done a teardown and figured out the cost of each part? Until we know more details it makes no sense to complain about it. Don't get me wrong, if it costs $500 to make I'll be upset. If it costs $650 or $700, then it's a completely reasonable price.

 

[LogicalApex]

Something makes me think there is an additional aspect to this

I agree with you, but I think it more likely is to soften the pushback they are getting from China in the "trade war" that has made it harder to sell Apple devices in China. My layperson guess is that Apple committed to more manufacturing in China to get some better treatment from the Chinese government.

 

[dumastudetto]

That's gross margin. You also have a lot of other costs that aren't considered in that, design, administration, marketing, sales, taxes........... Its all in Accounting text books, look it up.

Also, try to price a self-build including the Xeon's, ECC memory, 10gb ethernet, etc, etc, etc. You quickly see that the complaint on price is ludicrous. can't build one with same quality components for less!

If, on the other hand, you want to see a consumer grade version, (i9, i7, or AMD) then shout it out

Yes, but the bottom line is if the production costs are higher the retail price will be higher.

The complaints about price are ludicrous I agree. The people whining are not the target market for this product, just as they are not the target for the new Apple display and precision-engineered stand.
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I’m guessing you haven’t seen how much of a rip off the base model is then...

It's not.
[doublepost=1561739912][/doublepost]

REALLY?

My Mac Pro was used for digital editing a Toy Story movie and it yes, it was tricked out to nearly $5000, but not a base model price of $6000! This base price is outrageous, plain and simple for a base model.

Apple clearly is sending the signal that a mid-range Mac Pro will never be tolerated. This machine is charging you for two Mac Pros for the price of one in exchange for unlimited expansion.

Remember when Powermacs and Mac Pro's started at $2999 or lower?

The component costs are very high for these types of machine. Apple is going even more higher end with the new Mac Pro, so you can't really compare it to the past.

The iMac Pro is probably a better fit for you.

The new Mac Pro is for those who need the most awesome power, huge amounts of RAM, and room for expandability.

 

[Anarchy99]

Damn theyre so low. 8 core for $5000. Heard of the 9700k? Lmao. $500. Not xeon but pretty damn comparable in performance.

2080ti = $1500. Rips anything in Apples line up, even if you underclock it lol.

They could make a system far superior for lower. Who has ever needed 1.5tb of ram haha

the 9900k would have been better for the base model.

cheaper than the xeon, same core count,higher clocks, so faster single threaded performance with comparable multicore performance.

not to mention even if we go for a part comparison, the base model could be built as a PC(or hackintoshed ) for about half of what Apple's charging, usually the "Apple Tax" isn that egregious.

to me them being in china is a good news, i think the case is sexy and i'm hoping some cast offs leak into the supply chain i'd love to do a case mod and put my next Hackintosh into one.

 

[Quu]

Do we know the margins on the stand yet? Has anyone done a teardown and figured out the cost of each part? Until we know more details it makes no sense to complain about it. Don't get me wrong, if it costs $500 to make I'll be upset. If it costs $650 or $700, then it's a completely reasonable price.

I have an Ergotron MX arm which can hold the same weight as Apples arm and is also finger movable, it supports tilt, swivel and can even bring the display down completely flat to the table to draw on. Supports screens upto 32" in size too.

Price tag? $125. Made from steel, looks incredible etc - VESA standard connection.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

I thought the materials were the issue as well. If the cost of materials & labor are cheaper in China, Apple is obligated to their stock holders to produce the product as cheaply as possible for a profit.

This is true. I researched this awhile back and You can only incorporate as a non-profit (with those rules) or a for-profit (and all THOSE rules) company. You can’t incorporate as a “for-profit but in some cases I will do things not because they’re profitable, BUT because they would provide certain (financial or non-financial) benefits to people other than JUST the shareholders.”

 

[Bug-Creator]

Who has ever needed 1.5tb of ram

Yeah cos 640k is more then enough!!

Who has ever needed 1.5tb of ram

(Part of) the target audience for the mPro I'd assume

 

[Glideslope]

Tim must know the iPhone will not be exempt from the China Tariffs. Pretty pathetic on the part of Apple.

 

[vvs14]

LOL

So true! If it’s the same price, I wonder how much they are truly saving and if it’s really all that much to not have production in the USA
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Have you seen the reliability with the MacBooks since he’s taken over? The quality of the product isn’t there anymore. Cheap tacky keyboards which have a lot of problems, and not to forget the display cable issues.

I own a 2015 MacBook pro. Zero issues so far. And I am not going to overreact based on the media reports. They never have any statistics on how many Macbooks were affected. Apple always goes above and beyond to address these issues even when the products are not under warranty.
[doublepost=1561741593][/doublepost]

He’s actually dismantling customer loyalty and brand image, design by design and decision by decision. These things take time to manifest but he is taking the company in all the wrong directions. It will soon make itself apparent - about 5 more years before the slide picks up, I predict about 10 before a potentially irreversible decline.

There is no way you can predict that. Plus your opinion is not supported by Apples earnings or based on any kind of statistics.

 

[nutritious]

Having listened to people who actually played with it and spoke to Apple at WWDC, this new high-end monitor stand is actually an amazing feat of engineering. Yes it's got a healthy profit built in, but these prices are common in its target market.

Everyone throws their trash on the floor at the park! That means I might as well do it, too! Hehehehe

 

[vvs14]

Since Cook became CEO in 2011, only two senior VPs remain in their same titles: Cue/services and Schiller/marketing. Since Jobs died, Cook has changed SVPs of hardware, HW technologies, software, finance, legal, retail (3 times), operations (Williams now COO), and now design.

So what is your point exactly? How does this make him greedy or a bad CEO. What are you comparing this to? Does this not happen in other big companies? Look at Apples market cap when he took over and where it is now.

 

[DVD9]

I wonder if that was a discussion topic between Mr. Cook and President Trump a couple weeks ago.

Trump just lies about what's happening on Twitter. The outflow of manufacturing under Trump has continued. Has not even slowed down. Anyone Trump has called out has just ignored him.

Trump does whatever Tim Apple tells him to do.

 

[raghu8912]

With a price tag of $5999, you'd think that there would be enough "overhead" to pay an American worker a living wage to, at the very least, assemble these. The iMac we just bought for a client was assembled in Pennsylvania.

Shareholders would beg to differ with you, they care about profit margins and profits that's all they care about, this is not Tim's Choice, don't understand why just Apple is targeted.
Would you pay 300$ extra for a smartphone if its made in US ?
I am sure very few would be ready to shell out more money just because it's made in USA.
Mac Pro manufactured now was assembled in US, how many people purchased existing Mac Pro just because it was manufactured in USA ?

 

[timborama]

Then maybe you should ask the Japanese or even the Germans why they are moving a lot of their manufacturing to the United States.

Except for automobiles, give some examples.

 

[raghu8912]

Hmm, let’s see, an instant 25% increase in cost by moving it to China. There must be some humongous cost savings in production to offset that.

do we know that it was priced at the beginning to be manufactured in USA ?
I am pretty sure assembling in China was the plan all along, its difficult to move product of an existing product. not worth for low volume product.

 

[Mousse]

Yes greedy Tim Cook: keeping costs as low as possible to drive down on prices for customers.

You tell 'em, bro. That explains why Apple only charges $4999 for a monitor without a stand and $999 for the monitor stand. It would have cost $7999 + $1499 if they were made in the USA.

 

[brendu]

Trump just lies about what's happening on Twitter. The outflow of manufacturing under Trump has continued. Has not even slowed down. Anyone Trump has called out has just ignored him.

Trump does whatever Tim Apple tells him to do.

Lol your signature is a straight up lie. Why should anyone take anything you say seriously when you have that nonsense published under all your comments??

 

[kemal]

By using off shore labor, Apple can significantly reduce production costs. This way, they can pass along value to the customer in the form of 32GB RAM, using four of the six available memory channels and 256GB of storage. All for only twice what it is worth.

 

[raghu8912]

Manufacturing these things in America is doable but would take investment in rebuilding the computing manufacturing industry lost to China in the 90s. It isn't just about the labor to assemble, but also about the ability to manufacture all of the various parts. Just like how car manufacturers need close proximity to a multitude of part suppliers the same is true for computer manufacturers.

It isn't impossible though and can be done. You'd think there is some urgency from US industry to shift this due to how pervasive IP theft has become with regards to China and the Chinese Government seeing domestic production of replacement for American parts as a national security interest. But American industry is still addicted to the low costs China affords them. Even if it means they may not be around in 10 years.



No, in China human labor is still cheaper than robots since they are paid so little and labor laws are next to non-existent. For instance, if Foxconn needs to ramp up production quickly for an iPhone surge they can literally wake workers up from sleep and demand they return to work immediately. You can't pull that off in the US (and I'm not saying you should be able to in China either)...

CEOs care about profit margins for this quarter, they don't care about profit margins in next 10 years, so China is attractive.

 

[brendu]

What will happen to all the employees at the US plant?

 

[marco114]

We really need a lower cost Mac. This is the computer for the Top 1% of it's customers and does not have mass appeal. The $5999 model is a joke of features and will likely need $20-30k to be at the target customer base. Even the Mac Mini is super expensive for what it is.

 

[foodog]

Do people realise Apple is a company and not a charity?

Apparently not.

Breaking news. HP and Dell also turn a profit when they sell computers... more news at 11. Before you say "yea but Apple charges more..." spec out a comparable Dell or HP workstation
[doublepost=1561743175][/doublepost]

Shareholders would beg to differ with you, they care about profit margins and profits that's all they care about, this is not Tim's Choice, don't understand why just Apple is targeted.
Would you pay 300$ extra for a smartphone if its made in US ?
I am sure very few would be ready to shell out more money just because it's made in USA.
Mac Pro manufactured now was assembled in US, how many people purchased existing Mac Pro just because it was manufactured in USA ?

Too easy. People who purchased a MacPro just because it was made in the USA is equal to the number of people who purchased a MacPro because that is what they wanted.