Comment by cmiles74 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmiles74 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think the change is that Apple isn't closing the plant all-together.

"Apple made the previous Mac Pro in Austin, Texas, beginning in 2013. But with the new Mac Pro unveiled this month being made in China, Apple is "shifting abroad production of what had been its only major device assembled in the US as trade tensions escalate between the Trump administration and Beijing," The Wall Street Journal reported today."

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/06/apple...

That said, this all feels somewhat self-inflicted. One wonders if the tariffs on imports from China hadn't been put in place, perhaps Apple wouldn't have wanted to move production of this model out of the US.

I mean it has to have been all but closed for years right? The only thing they ever made was a giant flop that never got a meaningful update. What could they possibly have been making for the last several years?

The old Mac Pro was never updated, but they never stopped production of them.

Yes, my point is how many units could they possibly be making. Even when it was new it barely sold, how many units could they be making today? Dozens a month?

Macstadium buys hundreds of them every month.

https://mobile.twitter.com/brianstucki/status/11334877389156...

Fascinating thread with pictures, thanks man!

Probably more like a few hundred a month. But still, I can't imagine it employing many people at all unless they also used for overflow assembly or something.

Do you have a reference for that? I assume they sold about as well as past MacPros, which would also be much smaller volume than iMacs and MacBooks.

Anecdotally, I've literally never seen a trash-can Mac pro outside an Apple store (and I even have friends that work at Apple).

That a huge change from a decade or more ago, when Mac pro towers were under every desk on designer teams and ubiquitous at Mac developer shops. The MBP laptops just didn't have enough grunt at the time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com