As I recall, the US stupidly made that uncompetitive by enforcing anti-"dumping" duties on DRAM chips. We required that RAM sold to the US should be really expensive, to protect our (then largely hypothetical) local suppliers. So clone PCs built abroad could include cheap DRAM chips while Apple could not legally do the same.
Eventual solution? Move Mac assembly offshore to places like Cork, Ireland.
That is not correct. What happened was an earthquake in Taipei in the early 90s leveled most of the worlds RAM factories. This sent the price of RAM through the roof and took years to level off. Other IC manufacturers, sensing an opportunity, started making RAM as well. Then the factories in Taipei got back up and a price war ensued in the late 90s.
US memory makers had exited the arena long before. Now it was multinationals fighting other multinational corporations for an edge and they knew they could use the US court as their proxy.
PC manufacturing left the US because the labor was expensive not because of the price of any of the components. No matter what you heard the US still manufacturers a lot of things but: a) it's mostly automated, b) really highend specialty c) unlike the car factory, these manufacturing jobs really do require a degree.
There were many rounds of US dumping investigations involving DRAM, some of which caused the manufacturers to raise prices voluntarily and others of which actually caused duties to be implied. This process started as far back as 1985:
http://www.japanlaw.info/lawletter/april86/eoq.htm
> 'The papers also disclosed that Apple Computer had filed a last-minute request that "a product imported by Apple containing Korean DRAMs not be considered within the scope" of the dumping ruling. Micron Technology, which initiated the dumping complaint, opposed the Apple petition'
The earthquake you're talking about happened in 1999, right?
FWIW, the Fremont Mac plant was extremely automated, well ahead of its time in that regard. The anti-dumping duties applied to memory imported alone or in circuit boards but did not apply to memory chips in finished products - that last possibly for the practical reason that nobody wants customs inspectors tearing apart VCRs to see if they can find untaxed memory chips.
Yes you are right I was confused, I thought it was the Taiwan earthquake that caused RAM prices to spike (and it did), but this was earlier. I think the previous RAM spike might have come from the Windows 95 release. A Google search on Japanese earthquakes only displays the one from last year. One chatroom mentions the '93 earthquake.
FWIW, no matter how you cut it California is still an expensive place to do business. All the automation in the world couldn't save that factory. Not for what they were making. Now it's about specialization, automation (in the short term) is still more expensive than millions of chinese factory workers.
http://www.onedigitallife.com/2006/03/21/flickr-find-mac-fac...
As I recall, the US stupidly made that uncompetitive by enforcing anti-"dumping" duties on DRAM chips. We required that RAM sold to the US should be really expensive, to protect our (then largely hypothetical) local suppliers. So clone PCs built abroad could include cheap DRAM chips while Apple could not legally do the same.
Eventual solution? Move Mac assembly offshore to places like Cork, Ireland.