
Apple Computers Used to Be Built in the U.S. It Was a Mess - ingve
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/business/apple-california-manufacturing-history.html
======
inieves
This was a disappointing article on a few levels.

1) it doesn’t make a clear logical case for why manufacturing isn’t done by
Apple (or many other companies) in the US, right now

2) it doesn’t give reasoning about why sotuation is unlikely to change, or if
it does change, how it will not look anything like industrial-era factory
labor manufacturing

3) it doesn’t explain that these realities have nothing to do with Apple,
except that Apple finds these economic realities faster than other companies

4) it ends completey abruptly without drawing any real conclusion or thesis or
adding any insight (based on solid reasoning)

===

The fact that Jean Louis Gassed can’t use a screwdriver has nothing to do with
anything... Manufacturing of complex computer systems is complex, therefore
requires many different competencies, said competencies must communicate to
resolve challenges, and that in and of itself is hard. This hardness requires
(literally) an ecosystem of skilled workers to address. Could Apple (or any
other company) build such an ecosystem? Yes, if they did it from scratch early
on, when the cost to build it was low because the ecosystem was relatively
simple. But now, its not a simple ecosystem, and it would be painfully
expensive to replicate.

It should be noted that there is probably a strong difference in the
complexity (therefore difficulty) of manufacturing high tech products versus
other consumer products like cars/trucks, general electronics. That difference
is the velocity/pace of new features going to market, required to drive sales.
Tech products literally compete on feature sets. Sales of cars and toasters
and espresso makers can depend on many factors and so they are not constantly
racing to update the product every 6-12 months. I could be wrong here, but I
believe the conclusion that tech manufacturing is like all other kinds of
manufacturing is baseless. And in fact, the fact that so much has moved to
China is the strongest evidence that it can’t simply exist anywhere.

~~~
Reason077
The article also doesn't mention that the Mac Pro line has been manufactured
in Texas since 2013 (Admittedly a niche product compared to Apple's overall
scale.)

Apple is also investing $390m in a chip plant in Texas to supply some of their
custom silicon, and there are several suppliers of iPhone components in the
area.

~~~
webninja
Texas Instruments (TI)?

------
pinewurst
This is a very stupid article. It describes* the lack of economic success of
two somewhat automated factories built to produce large numbers of computers
during an interval when neither's products were popular enough to justify
their scale. It's like judging the economics of the Edsel factory in 1959 and
generalizing that large scale US auto production was a stupid idea.

*Fixed - bad wording choice

~~~
RossBencina
I found the article to be an interesting chronological journey. It's worth a
look just for the photos of the 1984 Mac production line, and 1990 NeXT
production line.

> It cites the lack of economic success

It _describes_ the lack of economic success. I'm not sure what thesis you
think the article is "citing" in support of.

~~~
miles
>> It cites the lack of economic success

> It _describes_ the lack of economic success. I'm not sure what thesis you
> think the article is "citing" in support of.

Nothing wrong with "cites" in this context. From the OED:

"4\. To bring forward an instance, to adduce or allege (anything) by way of
example, proof, etc."

~~~
Armisael16
Yes. The article doesn’t use the lack of economic success as an example or
proof of anything.

Merely mentioning something is not enough to be citing it. There has to be a
larger purpose.

------
newnewpdro
In a talk Jobs gave at MIT [1] he described the NeXT automated manufacturing
facility in a positive light. I can only begin to imagine how much better it
could be done today than back then.

Articles like this one like to point out the number of people involved in the
Chinese iPhone manufacturing as if that's somehow indicative of something
other than simply using cheap labor instead of automation.

If we wanted to manufacture this stuff in the USA, we definitely could, and it
would be done using fewer people through automation.

My understanding is the core reason we don't do manufacturing here anymore is
it's a lot cheaper to do it where industrial pollution goes unchecked, where
regulatory bodies are immature or entirely nonexistant.

When China gets its shit together enough to protect its lands and people from
the toxic output of all this industrial activity, large-scale manufacturing
will move on to the next victim.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-9Fd2mEnI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-9Fd2mEnI)

~~~
froindt
I've read articles about the supply chain impacts of being in China, very near
all your suppliers, compared to being in the US. When you need the screws in
your first production run to be 0.1 mm shorter, you can call the screw
manufacturer, they'll make a new mold right away and get you screws in 3
hours. Your screw manufacturer is almost certainly more than a 3 hour drive if
you're in the US. [1]

Looks like labor flexibility is another factor. In the US, culturally, you
can't summon people from their sleep to start making phones urgently.
Apparently this happened after the iPhone prototype Steve Jobs had got a
scratched plastic screen 6 weeks before launch. [2]

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-
an...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-
squeezed-middle-class.html?pagewanted=all)

[2] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyshih/2018/11/05/apple-
only...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyshih/2018/11/05/apple-only-in-
china-can-you-change-your-forecast-like-that/)

------
GreenToad5
Yet other personal computers were being built in the U.S. at that time and it
was somehow not a mess... Jobs was a great idea man for technology and UX, but
not so good at many other areas (such as we see here with manufacturing). I
know that this article is trying to make a case that the problem was the US
culture ETC (pro globalism), but if that was the case... why were so many
other so successful where Apple failed?

------
doe88
Also one aspect not discussed in this article is that now China is dedicating
huge efforts [1] in order to maintain and secure its access to natural
ressources needed for manufacturing, while most occidental countries have
likely lost this capacity.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative)

------
ChuckMcM
It seems to imply that because Apple didn't have success making computers in
the Bay Area that manufacturing in the Bay Area isn't possible. Not true of
course, Sun manufactured computers here, Force computers made millions of
computers here, and there are still manufacturers around.

That said, _today_ it is greatly reduced. But it isn't clear to me at least
that this is a permanent state. There is definitely a "community" aspect to
this stuff (that part the article seems to get right), but the causality is
not clear. If people started manufacturing more things in the Bay Area the
community would get stronger as supply chains were shortened.

As I see it, you start building things, and you order all of your components
from far away. Then one of your suppliers creates a local factory / warehouse
to cut down on shipping costs, then another. At which point you have a lot of
things nearby. Similarly for services such as rework, tooling, and metrology.

~~~
CydeWeys
Land (and thus labor) are way too expensive in the Bay Area to see a
resurgence of high volume manufacturing. It'd be more likely to see
manufacturing make a comeback a short flight away from SF where land is
plentiful. That way you could easily make day trips to the factory and receive
goods via truck within a day.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I disagree, there are already quite a few manufacturing facilities in the bay
area. They don't grab the headlines but when you drive through the industrial
parts of town they are all there.

There is the Tesla plant (fairly high volume), there are three glass/window
factories in Oakland (fairly high volume), probably a dozen printed circuit
board houses of various volumes, a number of tool and die shops around south
SF and Berkeley and elsewhere, at least two sheet metal fabrication plants in
south San Jose. Intuitive Surgical has a surgical robot factory in Sunnyvale I
believe.

Nothing like a Foxconn "city factory", that is pretty clear. There is however
the Gigafactory which is outside of Reno (to your point of being easy to get
to).

There is a lot of activity though.

------
reacharavindh
Manufacturing is fast evolving with the influence of high tech automation. As
business relations gets too much to manage and brings more and more risks
(trade war with china), I'd imagine companies will start investing in
automated manufacturing plants stateside. Perhaps, the many of the components
would still come from cheaper parts of the world, but I can see custom
microprocessors being manufactured in the west, and say iPhones's body
machined in the US, parts assembled into the enclosures at the US - by robots
anyway.

~~~
HeadsUpHigh
>I can see custom microprocessors being manufactured in the west

This would _really_ depend on the node used. For anything modern I think the
only company left in the west that can do it is intel and I don't know how
much of a market friendly option they are. Maybe with a lot of investment
there could be some 28nm fabs in a few years which would then take forever to
get a ROI, at which point it's anyone's guess what kind of technology will be
used for chip manufacturing.

------
Amezarak
You'd think an NYT article about how Apple computers used to be built in the
US would find it worthy of mention that Mac Pros are produced in the US
_today_.

~~~
carlob
1\. Do they still make them? I know they still sell them, but given that they
have been unchanged for 5 years...

2\. I would say assembled rather than produced (if I buy components and
assemble a PC at home is it produced in Italy?)

~~~
Amezarak
> 1\. Do they still make them? I know they still sell them, but given that
> they have been unchanged for 5 years...

There's no indication I can find otherwise.

> 2\. I would say assembled rather than produced (if I buy components and
> assemble a PC at home is it produced in Italy?)

In that case, iPhones are not produced in China, since the parts thereof are
manufactured in many different countries, including the US, and only assembled
in China.

For what it's worth, photography from the plant shows there's a little more
going on than is typical for building a desktop at home.

[https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/474935247335743489/photo...](https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/474935247335743489/photo/1)

------
reasonablemann
Tim Cook loves the narrative that it's impossible to bring manufacturing
culture back to the US. There was an article a while back about how lazy
people were on the Mac Pro line. How is Tesla able to succeed? Something
doesn't add up.

~~~
baybal2
Tesla makes a super duper expensive car with arguable manufacturability and a
lot of non standard parts. That works for a $100k a piece car, not $30k, let
alone $10k.

You probably read comments that were Tesla be made by an established player,
it would've been made for half the cost?

Tesla's success slash failure is thanks to that absence of the established
manufacturing culture in light industries.

USA is still is a big manufacturing country, it's curse is that their industry
manufacturers "invisible goods," and that its companies are low profile.

For examples, almost all "picoprobes" in the world are made by one small
company in USA that you can't even google.

On the other hand, even a third tier smartphone maker in China has high media
profile, and every highschooler will be able to name a few.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Wait, the iPhone is cheap? I had the first version ( well 3g actually) and
never bothered since, because I thought it would only get more expensive

~~~
baybal2
Apple doesn't wants its good to be cheap to make, they want them to be
borderline free. Have you read that for every iPhone, Chinese economy only
gains single digits of value?

Electronics is one of the most automated industries on the planet already. You
can run in anywhere you want where you can put an SMT line. There are
electronics factories even in African countries.

What matters is being able to run in cheaper and better than the next
competitor, and you can't do it with three quarters of the global electronics
manufacturing ecosystem sitting in a single city - Shenzhen.

IF Apple will agree to sell their products at less than triple digits markup,
than they will be free to make iPhone in America.

~~~
NicoJuicy
You said, Tesla makes a super duper expensive car. Apple is also making an
expensive phone.

You are ignoring your own argument by explaining that every car manufacturers
wants to produce as cheap as possible, which is also the same reason why Tesla
wants to automate everything.

The original comment/question was: how can Tesla do it and not Apple.

Ps. The price of a Tesla is actually okay. It's not 100k and it's avg market
priced. iPhone was never avg market priced

------
patrickg_zill
DEC computers used to be built in the US. As well as Cisco gear and much
more...

------
mietek
This would have been a content-free article if not for the beautiful photos.

Here’s a video tour of the Macintosh factory that used to be in Fremont, CA:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk306ZkNOuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk306ZkNOuc)

------
harrumph
I'm proud of HN for mostly seeing through the steaming crap in this piece.

This article is the latest entry in a many decades-long campaign of capitalist
propaganda dedicated to promoting the concept of "markets" as choiceless
forces of nature -- as weather fronts that determine outcomes. The forbidden
truth is that markets are the result of decisions made by ownership, and you
can't read this terrible article without leaving the truth very far behind.

This deterministic concept of markets is employed constantly to present
howlingly absurd statements that serve as cover for the costly-to-the-US-
middle-class commercial decisions that Apple made and still makes.

You can tell this article is propaganda because of what it delivers:

Deliverable #1: The headline alone tells you exactly what to think about a
historic, complex outcome -- that is to say, this trillion-dollar company's
hands were and remain tied by the market. Won't somebody please think of the
trillion-dollar company?

Deliverable #2: Personal experience is very sketchily generalized to a
historic conclusion. A French exec struggles with his (two whole days' worth!)
of work on an assembly line, therefore the entire US factory-building effort
could never have worked. Irrevocable factors that define Fordist manufacturing
-- division of labor, training, choreography -- these all vanish, dissolved by
the power of a irrelevant anecdote.

Deliverable #3: Orwellian ahistoricism deftly applied: Standing in North
America, decades after success in WWII left it the only undevastated
manufacturer on Planet Earth, someone actually states that the place
"[Doesn't] have a manufacturing culture". No, really, that's something someone
thought up and uttered, quoted in the NYT. See: "we've always been at war with
Eastasia".

Deliverable #4: Eliding troublesome counter-facts: As persons here have
pointed out, Apple is on its sixth year of manufacturing its heavy hardware in
Texas. There is no "mess" there, and this fact will be lost on millions of
laypersons who have taken in at minimum the headline in Deliverable #1 and now
think exactly what Apple prefers they think.

There are more of these deceptions in even this short piece, but the point is
made. Apple manufacturing is not centrally in the US because Apple leadership
made that decision. The "market" did not, "culture" did not. Maximizing
shareholder value -- at any social cost -- did.

------
orionblastar
Apple has the resources to make them without a mess now.

~~~
unnouinceput
No it doesn't. Even with its 100 billion cash that they sit on, they can't.
That was the conclusion of the article when it said it needs to bring back the
entire web. Well, getting back that web is going to cost more then 1 trillion,
the entire Apple value, so no, they can't.

~~~
Nasrudith
I don't see how that follows necessarily - there is a severe lack of details
supporting their conclusions. I am aware that the supply chain is complex but
you really don't need to bring back the entire supply web. That is like saying
that you can't build houses because you don't have iron mines which you need
for the steel foundries you don't have which you need for the nail factories.

What you need to do is to start bringing back the parts which it makes sense
to do so and expand from there. Assembly plants for cars sold in any
significant amount makes sense period just because of the physical volume of
cars vs their parts - the assembled cab takes up a lot of excess space - and
that is before any tariff issues.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
What if it doesn't make sense for any parts? What if the supply web has fixed
points which make it impossible to transfer it in small-enough chunks?

I doubt Apple haven't considered all of this.

Currently China owns this space because the country invested absolutely insane
amounts of money to build supply chains and manufacturing, to staff all of the
above with competent educated (and mostly docile) workers, and to build
supporting infrastructure.

The US (and the UK) have done the opposite - crapped all over public
education, allowed infrastructure to rot, and deliberately moved manufacturing
offshore, because profit. And also - in the UK at least - because it helps
keep the workers from opposing you.

You can't turn around an entire sector by bringing parts of the supply chain
home unless there's some obvious benefit. "Patriotism" is certainly a benefit,
but if it kills your margins it's a double-edged benefit at best.

This is where the US political system has failed. The US (and UK) haven't had
a credible industrial strategy - or actually much of a credible economic and
social strategy either - since the 60s.

"Leave it to the markets" turns out to be an exceedingly stupid idea over the
medium and longer term. You get your profits and your frothy stock market, and
you get a stand-out sector or two which keeps some of the educated middle
class minority docile. But you lose your industrial autonomy and your
security, the rest of your middle class shrinks to nothing+debt, and
ultimately your competitors eat your lunch.

In the end game - still to come - they eat you.

~~~
zachguo
Productivity per capital in US remains high. Isn't the industrial strategy
simply producing weapons and waging war around world to pump up demand for
weapons?

~~~
Nasrudith
While the weapons industry is somethung the US leads in it is a billions of
dollars industry. The US manufacturing is in trillions.

The truth is that industry is doing just fine in the US - it is just largely
high end and automated so it employees fewer people than services and is more
arcane than just working at the plant making widgets day in and day out.

------
tambourine_man
I've heard the “trash can” Mac Pro was and… well…

------
Kurtz79
"But unlike Detroit’s automotive model of the mid-20th century, relatively few
middle-class jobs were created, and the region is marked by a vast
concentration of wealth in the upper, white-collar reaches."

After reading it about one thousand times, I still struggle with the
definition of "middle class".

Is everyone working with a white-collar job considered "upper class"?

Are traditional manufacturing blue-collar jobs considered "middle class"?

What is considered "working class"?

~~~
rjf72
Traditionally I think it's fair to describe the classes in terms of their
future which I'll just describe as 'economic planning.'

\- Lower class: No economic planning and living hand to mouth. Nearly all of
what they earn goes often entirely to pay for the bare necessities needed to
repeat the cycle against next month.

\- Middle class: Basic economic planning. Able to save a bit for retirement, a
rainy day, or just a family vacation. Traditionally could afford to support
themselves, one other adult partner, and two children.

\- Upper class: Extensive economic planning. Earns far in excess of their
immediate or future needs meaning most of their money is spent in 'planning',
often geared at earning more money.

\---

Traditional manufacturing jobs would definitely have been middle class. White
collar jobs used to generally be upper class, but now a days that's certainly
not the case. Working class is a different distinction altogether and that is
just talking about people that need to work in order to be able to sustain
themselves.

~~~
api
Your last paragraph nails a lot of the source of modern middle class rage.
White collar is now just barely middle class. Everything else is living hand
to mouth.

~~~
zozbot123
You're right, economic security has indeed declined sharply for that formerly-
privileged segment. Now, given that living standards are still quite high and
growing over time, you'd hope they would react by being frugal and saving
more, _not_ by living even more hand-to-mouth than they used to! But ingrained
habits are slow to change.

~~~
api
"Formerly privileged..."

This is dangerous race to the bottom thinking. The hidden assumption there is
that previous generations of middle class people didn't deserve it and that
our overall standards should be declining.

I was bringing up the decline of the middle class a while back in a discussion
of why Trump won. Someone else said no, its racism, and people are just angry
about the loss of their privilege. They pointed out that the black white
income gap had shrunk.

Here's the thing though. That's conflating two issues. Racism is real, sure,
and yes the black white income gap has shrunk in part due to activism against
racial discrimination. But... if the middle class were healthier then blacks
with their now-shrunken income gap would be doing much better. If the middle
class is dying then the entire struggle for racial income equality becomes a
squabble over deck chairs on the Titanic.

Also on saving: the problem is that necessities like housing and health care
have exploded. Costs have exploded precisely in those areas that are hardest
to trim in a budget. The price of optional expenses like gadgets and
entertainment has fallen.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Relative poverty versus absolute. People get angry at clearly having less of
the pie than someone else, even if they have enough in some sense.

Sometimes, trying to even the playing field (or outcomes) can throw the baby
out with the bathwater and lead to "We would all rather be equally poor than
unequally better off."

~~~
api
Yes. It also comes in the form of resentment or jealousy e.g. "those union fat
cats make too much" vs "how could I make as much as those union fat cats?"

Race to the bottom mentalities are deadly at all levels from working class all
the way up to corporate strategy.

In the corporate world you see it when companies focus only on their
competition and struggle to undercut each other instead of focusing on
creating customer value. You get a deflationary race to the bottom that kills
both margins and product quality. It ends with a market full of gutted
companies competing to make crap.

------
door-mat
Why does it seem like every NYT article these days is usually pushing some
absurd agenda? What happened to reporting the news?

~~~
akvadrako
Because there is an audience for it which shares their agenda.

~~~
refurb
Pretty much this. It’s like asking why crappy sitcoms are made. It’s because
there is a demand for it.

------
julienreszka
I don't understand why Apple is still considered an American company today

~~~
astrange
Not only an American company but a Californian company.

(Apple isn't registered in Delaware.)

~~~
wolco
Didn't apple re-register in Delaware after orginally registering in
California?

~~~
lifekaizen
California was given in the most recent annual report.

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/0000320193170...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019317000070/a10-k20179302017.htm)

------
baybal2
I amazes me reading that they weren't even able to do a screwdriver level
assembly in US, but that story is not that uncommon. I heard many horror
stories about "Chinese company tries to run factory in US, runs away in horror
in 6 months time."

1\. Work culture - very few people with manufacturing experience

2\. Work ethics - not stellar, were you fire people for low work attendance as
they do in China, you will have to fire 70% of your workforce in US

3\. Workforce education - US has a lot of high school dropouts, lots of PhDs,
lots of community college educated clerks, but nothing in between.

4\. Labour resources - cheap cities in US are small cities, having access to a
lot of labour resources in one place is simply an unattainable dream for US.

------
zwaps
Yes, replacing early automatic factories with an army of Chinese workers who
slave away in so miserable conditions that a big logistical consideration
becomes how many of them kill themselves... Good on ya NYT.

Keep shilling for the CCP, telling us how manufactoring can never, ever move
out of China... Especially now when people start considering this, right?

Ugh.

