Cook is on record as saying that Apple didn't move manufacturing to Asia because of cheap labor, but because that's where the skilled workers are. It's interesting to hear him change his tune about the skill of American workers now that labor costs in Asia have risen. I'm sure it's just a coincidence...
Was he talking about in general or in the volume they need it for assembling something as huge as the iPhone versus the lower volume pro?
Baloney. It's just a simple business decision for companies like Apple. Can we make this product, with this level of quality, for this much money and deliver it in time? These are the questions that matter. If China or Vietnam or Africa or Texas or Ireland can check off all the checklist items (these and many more), then they get the business.
IMO, China should never have been admitted to the WTO because of their practice of dumping and currency manipulation (the US is not free of currency manipulation either, BTW).
Most of the Semiconductor skilled labor is being hired as fast as possible. Clearly, with Malta GloFo hiring 600-800 skilled labor, starting now, they are ramping up their full GloFo/Samsung 20nm/14nm FinFET Fab plant to full capacity for the fall and beyond.
All major US universities would be wise to require advanced manufacturing lab requirements for ME, EE, CE/ChemE/Material Science E, etc., but they never have. I'll be the first to admit I would have killed to have learned the advanced Manufacturing applications of the 90s in the 90s, but no that was solely for grad school [total bs].
Industry needs to marry with Education and get the shit going far beyond just computer assembly or semiconductor production.
A little historical awareness would help you avoid this ideological drama here. The first to exploit solid state electronics commercially in a big way were the Japanese. Sony started out in transistor radios, and developed television and recording equipment from there. The Japanese government backed corporate development in these fields. Americans never had a chance.
It all had less to do with greed, more to do with American sloth and lack of vision. You and others keep saying "bring back manufacturing" to the US. America never really did solid state in a viable way, until the advent of large scale integration. There the US has been able to compete, but it lacks the enormous electronics manufacturing infrastructure that's grown up in Asia since the 1950s.
Note that this Austin factory is being run for Apple by Flextronics, no doubt because there are not enough experienced American manufacturing engineers to run an assembly plant like this efficiently.
Understood, actually. See my second post and the edit at the end of it. It's still corporate culture in the USA that sucks. True, we never had solid state manufacturing expertise in the USA, and true, the Japanese really started that off in a big way. But it grew to plenty other places from those beginnings... except to the USA, which was satisfied buying it from outside the USA, rather than growing into it here (and paying to do so, or risking competing against its own suppliers and manufacturing contractors). Corporate America has long had the finances and stockpiles of money but it has not had the will or the support among corporate shareholders that only care about bottom line profit, which has as much as zero relevance to what is good for a society, economy, and nation.
Why not say USA -- A beer in one hand and a gun in the other?:no: :no:
Yup. It's the nation. The attitude of roughly 50% of the populous. Maybe more than. Texas is just a hotbed or focal point for the politics. The attitudes are everywhere.
Baloney. It's just a simple business decision for companies like Apple. Can we make this product, with this level of quality, for this much money and deliver it in time? These are the questions that matter. If China or Vietnam or Africa or Texas or Ireland can check off all the checklist items (these and many more), then they get the business.
IMO, China should never have been admitted to the WTO because of their practice of dumping and currency manipulation (the US is not free of currency manipulation either, BTW).
It's that bottom line crap that's the greed problem. If executives didn't waste so many resources on ridiculous pay for themselves, they could stand to take a small cut in profits in order to support society. But how dare I say any capitalist should support society. They're opposites. Capitalists vs socialists. The old stale propaganda that keeps everything the way it is, which benefits a shrinking percentage of Americans who successfully convince those beneath them to think it benefits them as well (that's the supporters of the 1%, in the middle and lower class, who have delusions of aspiring to being one, believing all the propaganda about hard work and bootstraps). Edit: ie Reaganomics/the "trickle down" economics myth, proven to be only a myth.
If executives didn't waste so many resources on ridiculous pay for themselves, they could stand to take a small cut in profits in order to support society.
Businesses exist to make a profit. If Apple strays too far off mission, I'd consider them unworthy of owning as a stock. Thankfully, they are still laser-focused on making the very best products they can and delivering them to buyers in a way that will continue to surprise.
Most of the Semiconductor skilled labor is being hired as fast as possible. Clearly, with Malta GloFo hiring 600-800 skilled labor, starting now, they are ramping up their full GloFo/Samsung 20nm/14nm FinFET Fab plant to full capacity for the fall and beyond.
All major US universities would be wise to require advanced manufacturing lab requirements for ME, EE, CE/ChemE/Material Science E, etc., but they never have. I'll be the first to admit I would have killed to have learned the advanced Manufacturing applications of the 90s in the 90s, but no that was solely for grad school [total bs].
Industry needs to marry with Education and get the shit going far beyond just computer assembly or semiconductor production.
I agree with you, more or less. Materials science, manufacturing and computer programming should be subjects American students are taught very early and using the very latest information. I'm against public education anyway, so... The current educational system is an inefficient student assembly line.
Education is not relevant to the topic, though the American public school system is indeed primitive and based on a system of indoctrination, not education.
This is definitely true and becoming more so as things swing to the extreme right. In Texas the wing nuts spend a lot of time trying to dumb down the education system. http://www.therevisionariesmovie.com
This is definitely true and becoming more so as things swing to the extreme right. In Texas the wing nuts spend a lot of time trying to dumb down the education system. http://www.therevisionariesmovie.com
Here's the thing... the US is not a uniform body with uniform views. Ours is a vast republic composed of individual states and we have a constitutionally limited federal government. The federal government should not be in the education business and there are many things the federal government does that clearly exceeds the boundaries placed on it in our Constitution. I happen to believe mixing religion into an educational program is misguided (unless it is part of a history class), however I also believe the states and the people of those states should choose what they want to teach their kids. If the people living in the states do not want their kids learning what the state offers, they should fight back or move out of that state.
Businesses exist to make a profit. If Apple strays too far off mission, I'd consider them unworthy of owning as a stock. Thankfully, they are still laser-focused on making the very best products they can and delivering them to buyers in a way that will continue to surprise.
Your response is a perfect illustration of the shortsightedness of current American capitalism. The purpose of a business is to support its owners by trade. Somewhere along the line, the idea of "support" turned into hoarding of excessive wealth, while "trade" turned into "we expect to be paid. Period."
Therefore, I find that automatic capitalist propaganda response to not be relevant to the topic ("industry in the USA, yay") because it doesn't address the problem of "almost no industry in the USA, boo".
Or maybe the deeper problem is that current american capitalism is not relevant to society. Capitalism a consumer of society, not an economic system to support a society.
Why am I bothering? This is a tech forum. It is therefore largely void of social thinking, emotion, empathy, and common sense. It is far more heavily populated by armchair economists and self-proclaimed entrepreneurs, of the libertarian mindset, who are based in tech as a lifelong interest, and have many of the common behavioral & social problems associated to them today, as employed adults, that they had as socially scorned nerds and geeks when they were bullied by more socially outgoing & physically robust kids in grade school.
Plus all the current nerd and geek teens of today that are growing up within the pop culture of "geek as chic", which their adult predecessors crafted as part of their marketing practices in the tech companies and tech culture being glorified today.
There's nothing wrong with good tech, by the way. It's the elitist attitudes, immaturity, and antisocial selfish ideologies I have a problem with. Especially when these kids are not being forced to grow up, socially, because of a tech businesses lucky strike at a young age... and they become influential on public policy via money.
Note: I cared enough to edit for readability and clarity (and autocorrect sucks) but I think I'm going to shove off now. Call that a win if you like. ;-)
Cook is on record as saying that Apple didn't move manufacturing to Asia because of cheap labor, but because that's where the skilled workers are. It's interesting to hear him change his tune about the skill of American workers now that labor costs in Asia have risen. I'm sure it's just a coincidence...
Do you have that quote? I remember it being a matter of locating enough engineers, although I'm sure costs factored in. The line that is assembled in the US has the lowest volume and highest price. It's not exactly the same scale as something like the iphone, although many of the idevice SoCs are produced in the US. In any case there's more than one factor when determining where to produce something, and beyond that I encourage everyone not to take executive speech at face value.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich
I agree with you, more or less. Materials science, manufacturing and computer programming should be subjects American students are taught very early and using the very latest information. I'm against public education anyway, so... The current educational system is an inefficient student assembly line.
Most people do hate the public school system as it is, and a lot of them have overly simplistic ideas regarding how it could be fixed or what would replace it. I have yet to see a single well fleshed out plan presented anywhere on that one. The other comments are more interesting. By manufacturing are you referring to machinist work or something? There are menial tasks that are specific to the job, but some schools used to have various vocational electives such as metal shop. You might want to familiarize yourself with the level of education required to do anything substantial in materials science. It's a very Phd heavy field.
Yup. It's the nation. The attitude of roughly 50% of the populous. Maybe more than. Texas is just a hotbed or focal point for the politics. The attitudes are everywhere.
Oh and don't forget the bible and cigarettes.
*yawn* you forgot about cows and horses.
Correct me if I'm wrong- that drunk Ted Kennedy, where was he from? There's drunks and trash everywhere. And when is gun ownership a bad thing? I don't obsess over it like some people (on both sides), but I have a shotgun on a top shelf and a handgun (under my bed w/ a fingerprint safe). So needless to say, when things go bump in the night I don't fret much. And no- I don't think I'll ever have to defend myself from the government- so don't lump me in that group
Texas has some of the brightest people in the world. Top 5 incomes in the country, bottom 5 cost of living- our housing market is still strong and growing- and we don't pay a state income tax. I hear about this recession, but we simply don't feel it down here. I'm proud to be a Texan. No need to knock us- without us you couldn't drive a car (no gasoline)- in an ironic twist, you'd be on a horse
This is definitely true and becoming more so as things swing to the extreme right. In Texas the wing nuts spend a lot of time trying to dumb down the education system. http://www.therevisionariesmovie.com
Don't you realize that not everyone has the same philosophy as you on life? I wouldn't want to live in New England because of the general belief system up there, but I also don't slander and belittle them and think I'm somehow superior. You realize you're a bigot, right? You realize you stereotype and generalize, right? You're no different than these "close minded racist wing nuts" you talk of so hatefully.
Texas - A beer in one hand and a gun in the other.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dysamoria
Oh and don't forget the bible and cigarettes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WelshDog
This is definitely true and becoming more so as things swing to the extreme right. In Texas the wing nuts spend a lot of time trying to dumb down the education system. http://www.therevisionariesmovie.com
You guys do understand this plant is located in Austin, right? It may not represent your cliched views of the overall state.
The US companies that have foreign manufacturing had better move it back to the USA soon or they will be in a world of hurt. The Russian Federation is already now accepting payment for its oil and gas in Rubles. The Chinese are doing deals with Iran and Russia to buy fuel. If they switch to using another currency than the dollar then the dollar will no longer be the worlds reserve currency. All OPEC needs to do is accept other currencies and the value of the dollar will crash. The Arabic nations, Venezuela, and Canada have no real reason to drop the dollar as the world reserve currency, yet. Any big problem with Israel again and they might do it to weaken the USA.
All it will take is for the gigantic oil users and producers to agree on payment in Yuan or Rubles not tied to the US dollar and suddenly everything manufactured in China will cost people in the USA three to ten times more than they do now. Apple would lose a gigantic amount of money in North America and Europe because of the new prices. The Euro is closely tied to the dollar.
Russian isn't too happy with the USA right now. The Chinese would be happy to buy fuel if it cost them less in Rubles or Rials. Right now moving manufacturing back to the USA is a really smart thing to do for the preservation of any US company. Apple will still be able to sell products to the remainder of the world at whatever rates they feel works. When the valuation of currencies switches around during such a big change in reserve currency, the dollar will be the biggest loser.
If Apple's doing well enough to bring manufacturing or even assembly back into the USA over little preferential issues like secrecy, I'm all for it. Most companies only care about punching pennies so the executives can squeeze out more profit for themselves at the top. The problem with American industry isn't a lack of skill or availability/willingness of workers to do the work. It's greed. American capitalists don't want to pay people to do quality work. That's why they exported it to countries that have a lower standard of pay. Now that those countries have slowly benefitted from the decades of total industrial dominance, their own standards have improved and are less cost competitive, especially when considering the lack of control over the flow of information and worker safety/rights. Hopefully, the standard of living in the world has increased enough to encourage more American companies to move manufacturing back to the USA, considering the benefits of local control to be enough to compensate for the "not as cheaper as it used to be" cheaper labor.
...but I bet there are still plenty of other places left to criminally exploit, where the standards for human rights and workers' rights are still horrible...
Yep $15/hour to say "so you want to SuperSize that order" has nothing to do with greed.
Any new products would be nice. Everything built now is a tad stale.
Hear that everyone? The new Mac Pro, iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina display, iPhone 5s, etc are all "stale" products. These are all breakthrough, critically acclaimed products that did not even exist until a few months ago, and with no current equivalents on the market. This is the level of pathetic ADD and entitlement this generation has.
That's Windows 7 actually. Either way, WTF is Windows doing in a Mac factory?!
It's a damn factory- it's probably using very custom software, that has to interface with a variety of systems and machines, that is not available for Mac OSX. It's not that shocking. I'd be shocked if computers in an assembly line are running OSX. It probably would not be the best setup for the tasks.
Comments
Texas - A beer in one hand and a gun in the other.
Why not say USA -- A beer in one hand and a gun in the other?
Baloney. It's just a simple business decision for companies like Apple. Can we make this product, with this level of quality, for this much money and deliver it in time? These are the questions that matter. If China or Vietnam or Africa or Texas or Ireland can check off all the checklist items (these and many more), then they get the business.
IMO, China should never have been admitted to the WTO because of their practice of dumping and currency manipulation (the US is not free of currency manipulation either, BTW).
Most of the Semiconductor skilled labor is being hired as fast as possible. Clearly, with Malta GloFo hiring 600-800 skilled labor, starting now, they are ramping up their full GloFo/Samsung 20nm/14nm FinFET Fab plant to full capacity for the fall and beyond.
All major US universities would be wise to require advanced manufacturing lab requirements for ME, EE, CE/ChemE/Material Science E, etc., but they never have. I'll be the first to admit I would have killed to have learned the advanced Manufacturing applications of the 90s in the 90s, but no that was solely for grad school [total bs].
Industry needs to marry with Education and get the shit going far beyond just computer assembly or semiconductor production.
Understood, actually. See my second post and the edit at the end of it. It's still corporate culture in the USA that sucks. True, we never had solid state manufacturing expertise in the USA, and true, the Japanese really started that off in a big way. But it grew to plenty other places from those beginnings... except to the USA, which was satisfied buying it from outside the USA, rather than growing into it here (and paying to do so, or risking competing against its own suppliers and manufacturing contractors). Corporate America has long had the finances and stockpiles of money but it has not had the will or the support among corporate shareholders that only care about bottom line profit, which has as much as zero relevance to what is good for a society, economy, and nation.
Yup. It's the nation. The attitude of roughly 50% of the populous. Maybe more than. Texas is just a hotbed or focal point for the politics. The attitudes are everywhere.
Oh and don't forget the bible and cigarettes.
It's that bottom line crap that's the greed problem. If executives didn't waste so many resources on ridiculous pay for themselves, they could stand to take a small cut in profits in order to support society. But how dare I say any capitalist should support society. They're opposites. Capitalists vs socialists. The old stale propaganda that keeps everything the way it is, which benefits a shrinking percentage of Americans who successfully convince those beneath them to think it benefits them as well (that's the supporters of the 1%, in the middle and lower class, who have delusions of aspiring to being one, believing all the propaganda about hard work and bootstraps). Edit: ie Reaganomics/the "trickle down" economics myth, proven to be only a myth.
If executives didn't waste so many resources on ridiculous pay for themselves, they could stand to take a small cut in profits in order to support society.
Businesses exist to make a profit. If Apple strays too far off mission, I'd consider them unworthy of owning as a stock. Thankfully, they are still laser-focused on making the very best products they can and delivering them to buyers in a way that will continue to surprise.
Most of the Semiconductor skilled labor is being hired as fast as possible. Clearly, with Malta GloFo hiring 600-800 skilled labor, starting now, they are ramping up their full GloFo/Samsung 20nm/14nm FinFET Fab plant to full capacity for the fall and beyond.
All major US universities would be wise to require advanced manufacturing lab requirements for ME, EE, CE/ChemE/Material Science E, etc., but they never have. I'll be the first to admit I would have killed to have learned the advanced Manufacturing applications of the 90s in the 90s, but no that was solely for grad school [total bs].
Industry needs to marry with Education and get the shit going far beyond just computer assembly or semiconductor production.
I agree with you, more or less. Materials science, manufacturing and computer programming should be subjects American students are taught very early and using the very latest information. I'm against public education anyway, so... The current educational system is an inefficient student assembly line.
Education is not relevant to the topic, though the American public school system is indeed primitive and based on a system of indoctrination, not education.
This is definitely true and becoming more so as things swing to the extreme right. In Texas the wing nuts spend a lot of time trying to dumb down the education system. http://www.therevisionariesmovie.com
This is definitely true and becoming more so as things swing to the extreme right. In Texas the wing nuts spend a lot of time trying to dumb down the education system. http://www.therevisionariesmovie.com
Here's the thing... the US is not a uniform body with uniform views. Ours is a vast republic composed of individual states and we have a constitutionally limited federal government. The federal government should not be in the education business and there are many things the federal government does that clearly exceeds the boundaries placed on it in our Constitution. I happen to believe mixing religion into an educational program is misguided (unless it is part of a history class), however I also believe the states and the people of those states should choose what they want to teach their kids. If the people living in the states do not want their kids learning what the state offers, they should fight back or move out of that state.
Side note: I hadn't intended to post the above text, but the quote-reply function resurrected it from an unsubmitted reply field.
Your response is a perfect illustration of the shortsightedness of current American capitalism. The purpose of a business is to support its owners by trade. Somewhere along the line, the idea of "support" turned into hoarding of excessive wealth, while "trade" turned into "we expect to be paid. Period."
Therefore, I find that automatic capitalist propaganda response to not be relevant to the topic ("industry in the USA, yay") because it doesn't address the problem of "almost no industry in the USA, boo".
Or maybe the deeper problem is that current american capitalism is not relevant to society. Capitalism a consumer of society, not an economic system to support a society.
Why am I bothering? This is a tech forum. It is therefore largely void of social thinking, emotion, empathy, and common sense. It is far more heavily populated by armchair economists and self-proclaimed entrepreneurs, of the libertarian mindset, who are based in tech as a lifelong interest, and have many of the common behavioral & social problems associated to them today, as employed adults, that they had as socially scorned nerds and geeks when they were bullied by more socially outgoing & physically robust kids in grade school.
Plus all the current nerd and geek teens of today that are growing up within the pop culture of "geek as chic", which their adult predecessors crafted as part of their marketing practices in the tech companies and tech culture being glorified today.
There's nothing wrong with good tech, by the way. It's the elitist attitudes, immaturity, and antisocial selfish ideologies I have a problem with. Especially when these kids are not being forced to grow up, socially, because of a tech businesses lucky strike at a young age... and they become influential on public policy via money.
I haven't read anything but the following review,
http://main.nc.us/books/books.cgi?cyberselfish-acriticalrompthroughtheterriblylibertariancultureofhigh-tech
but I think this book talks about that which I'm complaining... and I'm unlikely to see support here on this forum. So again, why bother.
Note: I cared enough to edit for readability and clarity (and autocorrect sucks) but I think I'm going to shove off now. Call that a win if you like. ;-)
Cook is on record as saying that Apple didn't move manufacturing to Asia because of cheap labor, but because that's where the skilled workers are. It's interesting to hear him change his tune about the skill of American workers now that labor costs in Asia have risen. I'm sure it's just a coincidence...
Do you have that quote? I remember it being a matter of locating enough engineers, although I'm sure costs factored in. The line that is assembled in the US has the lowest volume and highest price. It's not exactly the same scale as something like the iphone, although many of the idevice SoCs are produced in the US. In any case there's more than one factor when determining where to produce something, and beyond that I encourage everyone not to take executive speech at face value.
I agree with you, more or less. Materials science, manufacturing and computer programming should be subjects American students are taught very early and using the very latest information. I'm against public education anyway, so... The current educational system is an inefficient student assembly line.
Most people do hate the public school system as it is, and a lot of them have overly simplistic ideas regarding how it could be fixed or what would replace it. I have yet to see a single well fleshed out plan presented anywhere on that one. The other comments are more interesting. By manufacturing are you referring to machinist work or something? There are menial tasks that are specific to the job, but some schools used to have various vocational electives such as metal shop. You might want to familiarize yourself with the level of education required to do anything substantial in materials science. It's a very Phd heavy field.
*yawn* you forgot about cows and horses.
Correct me if I'm wrong- that drunk Ted Kennedy, where was he from? There's drunks and trash everywhere. And when is gun ownership a bad thing? I don't obsess over it like some people (on both sides), but I have a shotgun on a top shelf and a handgun (under my bed w/ a fingerprint safe). So needless to say, when things go bump in the night I don't fret much. And no- I don't think I'll ever have to defend myself from the government- so don't lump me in that group
Texas has some of the brightest people in the world. Top 5 incomes in the country, bottom 5 cost of living- our housing market is still strong and growing- and we don't pay a state income tax. I hear about this recession, but we simply don't feel it down here. I'm proud to be a Texan. No need to knock us- without us you couldn't drive a car (no gasoline)- in an ironic twist, you'd be on a horse
Then you have guys like this: Don't you realize that not everyone has the same philosophy as you on life? I wouldn't want to live in New England because of the general belief system up there, but I also don't slander and belittle them and think I'm somehow superior. You realize you're a bigot, right? You realize you stereotype and generalize, right? You're no different than these "close minded racist wing nuts" you talk of so hatefully.
lol @ iMacs running Windows XP in the background.
That's Windows 7 actually. Either way, WTF is Windows doing in a Mac factory?!
Quote:
Texas - A beer in one hand and a gun in the other.
Oh and don't forget the bible and cigarettes.
This is definitely true and becoming more so as things swing to the extreme right. In Texas the wing nuts spend a lot of time trying to dumb down the education system. http://www.therevisionariesmovie.com
You guys do understand this plant is located in Austin, right? It may not represent your cliched views of the overall state.
The US companies that have foreign manufacturing had better move it back to the USA soon or they will be in a world of hurt. The Russian Federation is already now accepting payment for its oil and gas in Rubles. The Chinese are doing deals with Iran and Russia to buy fuel. If they switch to using another currency than the dollar then the dollar will no longer be the worlds reserve currency. All OPEC needs to do is accept other currencies and the value of the dollar will crash. The Arabic nations, Venezuela, and Canada have no real reason to drop the dollar as the world reserve currency, yet. Any big problem with Israel again and they might do it to weaken the USA.
All it will take is for the gigantic oil users and producers to agree on payment in Yuan or Rubles not tied to the US dollar and suddenly everything manufactured in China will cost people in the USA three to ten times more than they do now. Apple would lose a gigantic amount of money in North America and Europe because of the new prices. The Euro is closely tied to the dollar.
Russian isn't too happy with the USA right now. The Chinese would be happy to buy fuel if it cost them less in Rubles or Rials. Right now moving manufacturing back to the USA is a really smart thing to do for the preservation of any US company. Apple will still be able to sell products to the remainder of the world at whatever rates they feel works. When the valuation of currencies switches around during such a big change in reserve currency, the dollar will be the biggest loser.
Do you have that quote?
I already posted it as well as linked to it.
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/180499/tim-cook-lauds-american-manufacturing-expertise-during-visit-to-texas-mac-pro-factory#post_2546933
Yep $15/hour to say "so you want to SuperSize that order" has nothing to do with greed.
Any new products would be nice. Everything built now is a tad stale.
Hear that everyone? The new Mac Pro, iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina display, iPhone 5s, etc are all "stale" products. These are all breakthrough, critically acclaimed products that did not even exist until a few months ago, and with no current equivalents on the market. This is the level of pathetic ADD and entitlement this generation has.
That's Windows 7 actually. Either way, WTF is Windows doing in a Mac factory?!
It's a damn factory- it's probably using very custom software, that has to interface with a variety of systems and machines, that is not available for Mac OSX. It's not that shocking. I'd be shocked if computers in an assembly line are running OSX. It probably would not be the best setup for the tasks.