Xed

lukevaxhacker said:

Very simple in concept: return production to the U.S., although hasn't been done for years. Remember the Fremont plant…

Simple to write doesn't mean it's simple to do, and if you actually thought about your comment for a minute you'd realize that if you were to try to produce and assemble every part of an iPhone from only within the United Staes and its territories you'd find that not only would it, likely be impossible without major changes, but also cost prohibitive.

For example, where are getting the rare metals that go into producing the internal components? All from recycle? I can tell you that the US doesn't have vast amounts the way that other countries do. How about the alkali-aluminosilicate glass? I think Wisconsin is the only decent source of low-iron silica in the US, but I don't know how much they have compared to other locations around the world, what the comparative quality is, or how much it costs compared to other sources. How about lithium for the batteries? A google search tells me that the Albemarle Silver Peak mine in Clayton Valley, Nevada, is the only currently operating lithium mine in the United States. Is that enough for all the batteries that Apple uses for all their products? What about every other company that wishes to sell in the US?

Here's the most recent conflict mineral's report from Apple to the SEC...

https://s203.q4cdn.com/367071867/files/doc_downloads/2024/04/Apple-Conflict-Minerals-Report.pdf

What about tantalum? I see that "mining for tantalum in the United States has not occurred since 1959." Is that not a problem? Does the US  have an inexhaustible stockpile of tantalum right now? How about tin? Google says that stopped in 1993? Can that start back up with reasonable results? How about tungsten? No active mining today, but google does suggest that "significant tungsten deposits occur in [12 states]" so why isn't the US currently mining it? The reason is cost, but is that a minor cost or high cost to get that up and running again? BTW, that was had from a single page on that PDF (above).

https://s203.q4cdn.com/367071867/files/doc_downloads/2024/04/Apple-Supplier-List.pdf

When you look at this supplier list (above) how do you recreate all of that in the US?  Even the camera is a component that isn't even Apple's IP. I believe that's still being provided by Sony. So even if you get all the components shipped to the US and pay American workers $25+ an hour to do final assembly you're still looking at massive assembly costs and tariffs that make the notion of your "very simple concept" a more costly and complex endeavor than simply using the current partners.

Finally, we may bel living in an Orwellian 1984, but it's not longer the year 1984 when Apple's Fremont plant started. Jobs tried it but it still wasn't the correct move 40 years ago with the small number of computers Apple was producing with nearly all US component and materials sourcing. Don't believe me? How about a former Apple engineer who worked there?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/business/apple-california-manufacturing-history.html

aslam said:

The top of the article says that prices would rise in the US and elsewhere. I’m struggling with rationalizing the “and elsewhere” part of it. I see how prices would have to rise for American consumers because tariffs would apply on products produced in China, but why would prices rise for those outside of the US? If I’m not mistaken, most of Apple’s product like iPads, Macs and iPhones are assembled in China with parts manufactured entirely outside the US. So that product, when sold to a Canadian or European, should cost the same as before, should it not? Canada hasn’t levied new tariffs on Chinese-made products or on parts from India, Taiwan, etc., so shouldn’t the price remain the same for Apple to produce the product in China and then sell it in Canada or Europe? Maybe I’m missing something or some element of the supply chain. Can someone elaborate on this for me?

One reason I can think of is to help balance the revenue and profit by raising the MSRP across the board so that it doesn't make sense to, say, drive to Mexico or Canada to get a new iPhone thereby allowing the unit sales to still be inline for a given country as well as balance the financial hit Apple would otherwise endure.

Additionally, Apple is a US company so a tariff may be added to goods entering, say, Canada, despite the product having its finally assembly and shipping in China.

Luis.A.Masanti said:

Why do people… almost always… expects ‘others to be fired’? (Obviously… never they.)

That people… posible… made a mistake, or even a lot.
Then… you want them to be fired. So, the company must hire new people…
…How do we assure that they won't do the same… or even worser… mistakes?
Maybe the only thing that is needed is a clarification or redefinition of the goals, timeframe, and controls.

Of course, we all remember that after the failure of MobileMe's launch Steve Jobs fired the team.
In the Maps fiasco… the —maybe only— person fired was because he did not want to sigh the apology.

And the real solution after those debacles was a change in the head of the project… Eddy Cue took the internet services.

Life is to have experiences. If the experience turns out as we expected, we call it ‘success,’ otherwise we call it ‘failure.’ But they are only experiences!

The only ‘real’ failure is to not learn from experience.

It's often scapegoating. Even if the problem stems from management if you fire the people doing the work you can try again with management knowing what didn't work before (i.e.: knowing what mistakes they should avoid making again). If it is successful then it's easy to to 1) take credit for fixing the problem (even though they caused it), and 2) being able to point the finger at the previous team that can't defend themselves.

For example, MobileMe had issues, but one of the biggest issues was out of the gate when Steve Jobs said it would be available to everyone at once. They should've done it in stages, first with .Mac users that wanted to try it out. This would allow them to gauge usage needs for both processing and bandwidth as well as work on bugs. To make matters exponentially worse, MobileMe went live the same time as the iPhone 3G, iOS 2.0, and App Store. The stupidity of this move meant that countless people are now also trying MobileMe all at once. I certainly tried to test the fuck out of MobileMe on that day since it was new and it basically didn't work for an unknown number of days. For this I blame Steve Jobs, not the engineers. If not for that boondoggle of a launch we may still be using MobileMe in name right now, instead of the renamed iCloud that came the next year.

michelb76 said:

>The folding screen will have no creases

Interesting, because the only Samsung tech that exists on the market definitely has creases. Unless Samsung created something entirely new for Apple.

Lmao at the price-point, I hope many people will buy it though, so the price could come down, unless Apple wants to anchor the foldable at that price, which I think is insane.

The only way I can see it done with known technologies is that is that the center is thinner than the edges of the "wings" so that when folded the casing is mostly equal thickness. This could allow a radius of the screen bend that doesn't lead to a fold. Although I would still be concerned that the folding the digital matrix thousands of times would lead to degradation of the substrate.

jpellino said:

Keeping servers in the states makes a lot of sense. They wouldn’t have them in China. They would never have them in Russia. And housing them anywhere in the EU means that they’d have to be subject to their laws. If the servers are in the United States, they can shut off any access to them based on laws and regions. I’m a little worried about the Houston installation because Texas’s grid is so unpredictable / unreliable.  

Apple also has data centers in China, Denmark, and Ireland, at the very least.