Americanpoet

welshdog said:

Texas is an odd choice, Houston even moreso. I guess the manufacturing at this facility will be so basic and simplistic that interruptions from Houston's increasingly extreme weather won't matter. If I were situating factories I would not be putting them in areas of current and woresening extreme weather. That just seems unwise. Now Apple of course is known for using renewables and such to power their facilities so maybe they are planing a large stationary battery farm to go with it. Hmm another thing I just thought of is the stupidly high HVAC costs this facility will have compared to other more mild regions. I guess like others have said, this is being done just to please Trump and his pet Texas red monkeys.

danox said:

avon b7 said:

rob53 said:

Why in Texas? People thought Apple's products were getting too expensive, just wait for products coming out of Texas. They will break everyone's budget. Who in Texas will actually work at this manufacturing facility? Will everything be automated? Where will the people for these 20K come from, India? Who's going to build the facility? Not the hardest workers from south of the border. trump made sure of that.

The servers aren't for sale so that isn't a factor in that particular regard. They are for in-house use so Apple can swallow the costs. They were built outside the US previously for good reason. 

Now, with tariffs and all, and also federal or state incentives, it probably works out as acceptable to do the manufacturing on US soil. 

Reducing supply chain external interplay (and possible interference) is also becoming a hot topic so the more manufacturing is done at home makes sense as long as it doesn't break the bank to do so. 

I agree that 20,000 jobs is a drop in the ocean but anything is better than nothing. How many will go to US citizens is another matter but I'm sure that Cook pushed back on Trump thinking in that regard in their meetings in order for Apple to be able to hire whoever is needed with little red tape.

Most of this announcement is probably not really Trump related. The server farms (Apple manufactured or not) were probably in the final stages of planning before Trump got back into the White House. 

Good news today from Apple and good news from Merz in Germany. On the tech side of things it’s very good news for Apple to design/engineer their own servers, and hopefully they will stop leaving money on the table in this area of computing, not a direct competitor yet but Nvidia is currently building barn burning high wattage solutions which will be unsustainable going into the future, hopefully Apple will be able to take advantage of that shortcoming in time.