The Nursery of the Mac – Apple Computer factory in Cork, Ireland (1996) | Hacker News Reader

The Nursery of the Mac – Apple Computer factory in Cork, Ireland (1996)

rgaros.nl

70 pointsLammy43 comments

I think a lot of people in Cork would have had a stint in Apple at some point. It’s a massive employer in the area.

I worked shifts there for a few months, responsible for installing the motherboards into the G4’s being made. There was a problem with some where the motherboard would seem to be seated correctly, but actually wasn’t and so the audio jack would pop out. I did my best, honest.

I also remember someone in Switzerland spending something like $15k for a 32GB machine.

Ireland is Apple's European Headquarters (also in Cork). Yet Apple cares so little about Ireland that they don't even bother to make a real apple store available.

The only thing they care about Ireland for is tax avoidance.

They're running a business.. it's not like you can't buy any Apple products in Ireland, running a retail store is likely not worth the hassle.

As for taxes that's on the EU and member countries for having such a complexity that only massive corporates can benefit, rather than simplifying and making it worthwhile to operate for businesses of all sizes.

It's not really about buying, it's the support. It's much worse through the incompetent resellers they have in Ireland.

But the tax dodging should be eliminated completely, not expanded to smaller businesses :)

Pretty sure the reason they don't have stores in Ireland is due to taxation agreement with the government. Similar to the Shannon airport thing that started it all

Complete nonsense.

Their tax minimisation structure involved one Apple company paying royalties to another Apple company for access to IP. How on earth would the retail business, another separate entity, have any impact?

>But the tax dodging should be eliminated completely, not expanded to smaller businesses :)

Tax incentives should be awarded to smaller businesses though while mega-corps should pay more. We can't be surprised that we don't have any great SW giants in Europe when Ireland awards these generous tax breaks to US giants but small EU companies get the full shaft.

We have progressiver taxation for income, why doesn't that apply to corporations as well? I mean we do, but it functions the exact opposite of how it should, favoring the giants and strangling the start-ups.

And I'm not even a socialist, but the current system is ridiculous.

>As for taxes that's on the EU and member countries for having such a complexity that only massive corporates can benefit

Isn't Apple a massive corporation? I don't think I understand your argument here.

The parent post argued Apple only cares about tax benefits in Ireland. To me it’s a perfectly valid reason to operate in a country, it’s on the countries to provide an environment where local businesses benefit from low taxes, and not only large corporations like Apple.

Ye gods, the usual racism and xenophobia from the peanut gallery across the Atlantic.

Apple cared so much about Ireland that they had several licenses grandfathered in for the likes of CompuB, eLara and Mactivate as Apple Resellers. There's also Select Ireland chain which act as the premium reseller equivalent @ https://ie.selectonline.com/

There's also an Apple store in Belfast fwiw.

But Belfast isn't in Ireland. Belfast is in Northern Ireland which is part of the UK, and a separate entity to the Republic Of Ireland.

Saying that, the new Apple store in Belfast is nice, much bigger than its previous spot in Victoria Square

Fair, but its an hour commute from Dublin. For most of America, what's the average commute time to a Genius Bar from the suburbs? My general point is that it doesn't really discommode anyone in Ireland not having 'branded' Apple stores in the Republic.

So, like Bono, then?

This is kind of a ridiculous expectation. Next we’ll be expecting an Apple Store to be built in the lithium mine where they get their batteries.

The reasons to hire in a locality are almost entirely detached from the reasons to sell a product there.

And we can complain about tax avoidance we want, Ireland is getting exactly what they wanted out of their tax policy.

What a lovely memory, and I think my first mac, a PB 180, was Irish, but if not, the accessories certainly were. And I wonder if the doorstop of a Powermac 8100 still at my childhood home was Irish too.

A different world, though. You couldn't find an Apple Mac most places, and I think I possessed the only Mac laptop in the whole of my university.

I wonder what Apple Ireland do now, apart from make nefarious plans to avoid tax and make orphans cry.

Sales, logistics, technical support, administration and accountancy for the entire EU market. Software engineering and some R&D.

Walk onto the UCD and Trinity Campuses tomorrow morning, go into the Newman or Phil buildings. Count the Macbook Airs and iPads in lectures, generally coupled with both an iPhone Pro model and an iWatch. Only the grant students are using DELL Laptops through the University schemes.

Then go down the docklands, walk into any incubator or start up lab. Hell, anywhere with a good load of contractors. It will all be Macbook Pro for IDE and Terminal work - the odd Thinkpad for the greybeards.

Here's an interview with an unsettlingly fresh-faced Pat Kenny:

https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=8nLMTmm08o8 -- title is "Steve Jobs opens Apple in Cork City, Ireland 1980", on a channel called CR's Video Vaults.

One claim in the video from the presenter is that Ireland had the highest density of Apple users in Europe at the time!

Per capita they're probably right. A huge amount of Irish schools were full of Apple IIs and then 68k Performas subsidised or donated by Apple.

The unlucky ones had very dated Acorn RISC computers from the 'computers for schools' voucher promotions run by Supermarket Retailers like Tesco.

… the latter which ironically used what would become ARM chips

This takes me back to my days in college. I studied Electrical Engineering in Dublin, and in 1983, we organised a tour of the facility. My hazy memories of it were it being just another factory. The real purpose of the trip to Cork was much more alcohol related.

Well you can't say Ireland+80s+student without having alcohol as a factor! I was exactly 10 years after you, and nothing changed, except the music.

I was in Cork with the wife on a personal vacation but got to pop up to the place because I was working with a few engineers from Apple, Cork at the time.

Ha ha, the thing that sticks with me though was that when I got up there, there was an encampment of "gypsies" that were on the next hill over. Or at least when I asked my host I was told that that was what they were.

Is the purpose of the Cork office taxation related?

Which office? The article concerns a factory that built the computers for Apple's European market, during the '80s and '90s.

Unsure why you'd be downvoted - yes, is the answer.

Conor McCabe has done a lot of work on the history:

https://www.rundale.org/2024/09/26/colonial-mutations-irelan...

Any other good resources on this? Interested in learning more.

Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Dell and Oracle all have their EU headquarters in Ireland, in addition to a number of very large pharmaceuticals companies. That's entirely due to an extremely generous corporation tax regime, which the EU has recently taken steps to curtail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

Ireland's GDP was so severely distorted by tax avoidance that the Central Bank had to devise an alternative measure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_gross_national_income

Why do you say that the presence of these companies' EU headquarters in Ireland is "entirely due" to the country's corporate tax rates?

There's loads yeah, and they're public, and in mainstream publications. The one I linked is very good, so I don't know why you're asking me for something I already provided - is there something wrong with the article above?

The article itself links to loads of serious primary sources on the matter, including the relevant US government reports and European Commission publications. Have you exhausted those resources?

Or maybe you mean a more mainstream publication, economically speaking. Here's a FT article from 2016 (the first one I see after a search that looks relevant, very easy to find) entitled "Apple tax deal: how it worked and what the EU ruling means":

https://archive.fo/gGC2C#selection-2204.0-2204.1

Here's a tidbit from it:

> 0.05%: Tax rate in effect paid by Apple in Ireland on €16bn profit in 2011

People can think that's economically and/or morally justified if they wish, but the U.S. government thought it was anticompetitive and the E.U. courts have ruled it was illegal.

Conor McCabe is a far-left fringe soapboxer, just for clarity.

If the anonymised wordpress site doesn't convince you, have a quick look at his bedfellows in Connolly and you'll get the picture very quickly.

https://www.connollybooks.org/product/sins-of-the-father

Anonymised wordpress site? It says "By Conor McCabe" on the rundale article I linked. I clicked on three or four of the other rundale articles then to see if that was what you meant, and they all had their author's names on them as well. Where is this anonymous wordpress site, am I missing something?

Being a research fellow in a University who works on issues like poverty, worker's rights, economic history, etc, makes someone a "far-left fringe soapboxer" now? Or do you know something about McCabe that isn't publically known?

Here's a list with links to his writing, for anyone interested in judging for themselves:

https://conor-mccabe.com/about/

The Cork campus is a significant support and administration hub.

Apple's corporate structure in Ireland is designed around leveraging tax law to its advantage.

It's unclear how much the former depends on the latter.

Apple's European HQ is in Cork, but I'm not sure if it's the same location as the original factory.

Is the Apple factory in Cork still operational today?

There’s a campus but the results of a web search are vague about actual manufacturing. Can’t say I’ve seen any “Made in Ireland” Apple products.

Yes it's there. It seems to be constantly expanding actually, I can't remember the last time I haven't seen cranes there building more stuff.

The car parks alone seem massive!

Yeah but what are they building there? There's no Made in Ireland Apple products anymore AFAIK.

Most likely office space. Thee's a big customer support hub in Ireland. If you've ever spoken to Apple on the phone from the UK for example, it's almost always going to be to someone based in their Cork offices.

That I know, that's why I asked if the factory specifically is still operational.

They definitely do hardware R&D there [including on major recent launches] and a lot of product assembly. They also advertise production-line automation software gigs periodically for the plant in Little Island (the lesser-known site on the east side of the city which is neither of the offices everyone here knows about).

I think they have a big data center too but it's not like they have given me a tour there!

There's a 2018 Irish Times article, "Apple’s secretive Cork facility opens up – to an extent" https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/apple-s-secre... which includes this:

> Among the functions the facility houses are customer care, finance, localisation, logistics, manufacturing, finance, sales support and transport management. In more recent times, it has also taken responsibility for iTunes after the business relocated from Luxembourg.

> Apple organises the supply of products to more than 147 countries through Cork, either through online, retail or resellers. The company supplies more than 110 physical stores and 24 online stores, which typically chalk up more than a billion visits a year, as well as a large number of direct and indirect resellers.

> [...]

> Apple has been based in Cork since 1980, when it first opened a manufacturing facility with 60 staff. It now employs more than 5,500 people across sales, distribution, manufacturing and technical support across four buildings. Work on a new four-storey office block, which will accommodate 1,000 employees, commenced recently and is expected to be completed in early 2018.

> In addition to the main campus, the company also employs more than 500 other people at an office on Lavitts Quay in Cork city centre, which does work in a number of areas including customer services, finance, and operations. A further 1,000 people work remotely for Apple in Ireland, 700 of whom are working for AppleCare technical support.

Note that 'finance' is listed twice. ;) (That expansion was formally announced in 2022, now with a capacity target of 1,300 employees: https://www.idaireland.com/latest-news/press-release/ida-ire... .)

Apple's PR piece marking the 40th anniversary of the Cork campus https://www.apple.com/ie/newsroom/2020/11/apples-cork-campus... also makes sure to mention the "team of 20 to 30 manufacturing trainers". (Earlier there was also the famously snotty August 2016 "letter to customers" provoked by the tax controversy https://www.apple.com/ie/customer-letter/ .)

It's worth noting that even in 1988 the then Irish Minister for Finance wasn't very happy with the level of Apple's commitment to Cork https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/state-papers-... :

> He said Apple’s job targets had not been “remotely approached”, research and development facilities had not been located in Ireland and the skill levels of the workplace were “not particularly high”.

> He added: “The parent company has shown a lack of commitment to its Irish operation by opening a facility in Singapore [in 1981] which had a direct effect on performance in Cork.

The bottom line seems to be that Apple is going to get its manufacturing done where the serious mass-manufacturing capability is, and since the '90s that's been in China and/or South-East Asia. It wasn't always that way: back when the Cork plant opened, a meaningful amount of manufacturing which now would happen in Asia was taking place in Ireland (or in Scotland, in fact). As late as 1989 when Intel opened its first fab in Leixlip there was, IIRC, some kind of assembly plant there as well. But that's the way it is now. And on the other hand Apple seems more determined than ever never to let any of the Willy Wonka sh*t leave Cupertino, let alone for Cork specifically. So that leaves a mixed bag of "boring" functions, some of which are well served to be in a European branch office anyway.

But if you don't know what goes on in Apple Cork, don't worry, you aren't alone! Reposting part of an old comment of mine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12389869 :

> True story: in the mid-2000s I was in the audience at an Apple recruiting talk for H1Bs at a European university (including one fairly-well-known then-Apple dev/manager). It didn't go very well: the audience was oblivious and largely uninterested, the Appleers were tetchy, I asked an impertinent question involving HyperCard. At one stage the rambling audience Q&A turned to a long discussion of the hypothetical possibility of Apple opening a European office at some point in the future. Now granted these were SW dev types rather than QAs or whatever, but ... I didn't quite have the heart to tell them about Cork.

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