“Apple Inc. will take orders tomorrow for the new Mac Pro personal computer, which is being built in Texas with components made domestically as part of Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s $100 million Made-in-the-USA push,” Peter Burrows reports for Bloomberg. “‘We have begun manufacturing the Mac Pro in Austin,’ Cook wrote in a posting today on Twitter. ‘It’s the most powerful Mac ever.'”
“The cylindrical machine, which runs on Intel Corp.’s latest Xeon chip, will be available to order at a starting price of $2,999, Apple said,” Burrows reports. “Cook said in an interview in October that Apple is manufacturing — not just putting together — the Mac Pro’s metal parts in the U.S. ‘The difference with us is that we’re taking a bottoms-up approach,’ Cook said at the time. ‘We don’t want to just assemble the Mac Pro here, we want to make the whole thing here. This is a big deal.'”
We have begun manufacturing the Mac Pro in Austin. It’s the most powerful Mac ever. Orders start tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/Jrd1Gic3Ya
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) December 18, 2013
“Apple executive Phil Schiller said in October that more than 2,000 people in 20 states were working on the Mac Pro,” Burrows reports. “The Cupertino, California-based company released a video of the highly automated processes used to build the machine.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
All new Mac Pro available on December 19 starting at $2999 – December 18, 2013
Why Apple’s powerful new Mac Pro shows a real commitment to creative pros – November 27, 2013
3 reasons Apple’s powerful new Mac Pro is ultimate choice for video professionals – November 18, 2013
Apple’s entirely unnecessary but very cool method of making the amazing Mac Pro – October 25, 2013
Apple’s new Mac Pro desktop powerhouse not aimed at consumer crowd – October 24, 2013
Apple redefines pro computing with all-new Mac Pro starting at $2999 – October 22, 2013
December 19. Still better than 11:59:59 December 31 as one cynic predicted.
You have to realize where the naysayers are coming from. The last significant update to the Mac Pro was 2006, with relatively minor bumps in 2010 and 2012. That’s 7 years between major architecture upgrades. Darn right people are impatient.
Also, there’s a big difference between “available for order” and actually taking one home. There may be only one family with a newly purchased Mac Pro under the tannenbaum, and it’s a $1million red one.
Still, it’s great to see that the long wait is finally drawing to an end. Let’s hope Apple rediscovers its long-suffering Pro users with a lot more new Mac hardware and software improvements in the next year.
And so on December 19th, 2013 it became a joyous event spread all across the land and professionals did rejoice and say “Hallelujah!”
A big offset to the china delay.
It’s fascinating that we are at this moment: manufacturing returning to our shores. While the Mac Pro, once the bellwether Apple product, is now but a smaller minority of the company’s sales, it speaks to a larger trend: the onshoring of American manufacturing.
That is not to say we will see a wholesale reversal of the loss of manufacturing jobs to other countries. But given the dollar’s status and rising manufacturing costs in nations such as China, it is quite a development. No doubt, there is a political debt being paid here too, perhaps more than I can comprehend. But it is a fascinating development.
Automation may also play a significant role. Machines don’t go on strike, demand higher wages or take lunch breaks. Increasingly, it means the people tending the machines are more skilled, which lessens the need for the extremely low-cost laborer being part of the equation.
Just a few years ago, pundits wrote about the end of oil and natural gas. Today, we are discovering vast stores of it beneath the grasslands of the Dakotas, western Wyoming, eastern Colorado, the Permean Basin of Texas, beneath farms in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York State. In fact, the world’s second largest oil field (shale oil) is in Texas. The United States produced more oil and gas last year than either Saudi Arabia or Russia. Within five years, the US could be a net exporter of oil and gas, instead of importing much of the energy we consume. Solar and wind power, which currently supplies but 2-3 percent of our domestic energy, could grow significantly in the coming decade. The growth of 3D printing could alter the balance of manufacturing as we know it today.
Leave it to Apple to be at the forefront of a significant trend. We do live in interesting times.
Since the 2007-8 crash bottomed out the US has been gaining manufacturing jobs for the first time in 2 decades. Last numbers I saw are over a year old but show more than 500,000 new manufacturing jobs in the USA.
There is an integral cohabitation in product development between what you can conceive and the tools & machines you must design & program to make the product to be able to do cutting edge work.
Companies are being led by Steve Jobs concepts and realizing you need to understand & control your manufacturing just as well as the designs if you want to be #1 or #2 in your industry.
So true. I teach design risk management (in my spare time) and I can’t remember how many times I’ve said the same thing. You cannot design something truly wonderful without understanding the manufacturing processes that you can or you could possibly use. Design drives manufacturing – manufacturing enables design.
We are not even close to where we were in ’07 (literally millions from) and no that wasn’t the bottom of the manufacturing crash in the US. the bottom was in2010 and we are still pretty much in the bottom of that hole. (only slight gains between 2010 and 2012)
Washington post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-claim-of-500000-manufacturing-jobs-month-after-month/2013/06/07/a16c03cc-cfb9-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_blog.html
Industry week:
http://www.industryweek.com/the-2000s
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/feb/12/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-us-has-created-half-million-manu/
Two of these are left leaning and the other is a manufacturing trade press (so they would all be painting this in the best light possible)
The WaPo was senter Left back in the 1970s, but has been a center Right Paper for a very long time. Under Bezos it might get better, we will have to wait.
I subscribe to the WaPo, the NYT , The LA Times, The Guardian, The FT and The Economist. The WaPo is anything but left leaning. The myth of liberal bias in national media is just that- a myth.
To be fair, Mac Pro is elite high technology (hi-tech) product with limited production and high manufacturing costs. With most of production being in USA, Apple hardly makes much money or at all.
This fact would not be seen in quarterly reports exactly because professional business for Apple is so small. Mac Pro sales would be really huge, then you would definitely see that this is low margin product, despite relatively high entry price — even despite cost reductions due to bigger scale. The reason for that USA’s workers get $2500 per month or more versus ten times less in China.
Correction: “If Mac Pro sales would be really huge, …”
DeRS, Actually you are forgetting that much of the work is done by machines.
Creating the frame and heat sink is mostly machine.
Making the PC boards is mostly machine.
The major chips are a large part of the cost but they should drop over the next few years.
Just a thought.
The same is fair for China, so the only factor is difference in wages: USA’s workers are ten times pricier than Chinese.
There may be savings on the major chips because they don’t have to be shipped to China for assembly. The iPhone and iPad Systems-On-a-Chip are currently fabricated in Austin and shipped across the Pacific. I don’t know where Intel has its Xeon fab, but it has to be closer to Austin than China.
None of which matters to Apple. That’s thinking too direct, too short term. What matters is that it’s just beginning — it’s Apple getting US manufacturing legs back. If the quantity is going to be so low, watch the video again and look at the size of the facilities. This is not about the Mac Pro. This is about bringing manufacturing close to consumption. If you reflect on Tim Cook’s strong points, shortening the chain is something he is really good at. For many decades European keyboards and paper kit have been produced in Ireland. This is a natural extension. All those machines that are making the Mac Pro are setting the stage for making Mac minis — you wait and see. Then I expect the iMac will follow and lastly the laptops. But that’ll just be for “Americas” distribution or whatever logically makes sense where duties and such draw unnatural boundaries around geographies.
>pundits wrote about the end of oil and natural gas.
Just a reminder that fossil fuels release CO2 when burned. So having more is not really a cause for celebration.
You know, life is based upon many chemical reactions, and the chains of chemical reactions known as photosynthesis are the BASIS OF ALL LIFE. Photosynthesis involves the input of CARBIN DIOXIDE and water with radiant energy and the presence of a catalyst called chlorophyll. The outputs are carbohydrates and oxygen.
Now then, if there was no CO2 in the atmosphere, what would the plants eat? Just saying. Perhaps we should be discussing how best, and more efficiently utilize the new energy finds so that future generations can benefit from those resources as much as we did. And let’s face it, that energy is the only thing saving our nation’s bacon. It is the only hope we have to pay for the horrendous debts incurred by this administration and others.
You’d get a little more traction with your argument if you could spell “Carbon”.
manufacturing the mac pro here …such an inspiring endeavor. loss of manufacturing intelligence and loss of old-world knowledge and experience with no apprentice to whom to convey had me and so many americans feeling a bit emasculated. overall, it’s been easy, though, to realize that with the opening of global markets, the standard of living across the trading entities had to begin moving towards some kind of center …ours falling, others rising. i guess. what do i know. like brian said, it’s fascinating. but for little brains like mine, it’s complicated especially when you have a federal reserve jacking with currency and politicians imposing lending laws and unethical wall street bundlers, greedy local mortgage brokers, mandated fannie maes, etc.
i wanna get a mac pro. i got mac pro fever. i wouldn’t be using for more than apple’s logic program, though. i do know, though, that if the current administration was in control of the mac pro distribution, i’d probably be required to make a simultaneous purchase of an unruly shar pei, two years worth of pampers, viagra for the impotent boyfriend i don’t yet have and a worthless blessing from the epa. yeah, sorry, i had to throw that in.
Japanese designer trashcan vs black painted oil filter. They really paid someone to design this thing?
Just dropped a USB 3 card into my Mac Pro Tower and will be going SSD for the boot drive as soon as the drives arrive. Already using Airport Express base via Ethernet to get faster WiFi (Airport card only supports up to g). Should keep me good for a season.
No question that the PCIe 3.0 and memory used in the new Mac Pro will be faster, but using last year’s Mac Pro with internal SSD drives would make for an impressive machine.
What I don’t understand is Apple’s strategy to drive people away from Apple hardware. Input devices aren’t included, as far as we know, there is no 4K Apple display (an certainly not a matte color-correct one), and any additional storage will rely on external thunderbolt or USB boxes that Apple doesn’t make. So how can the profit margins on the new machine be as good as the last Mac Pro?
Have you ever looked at the input devices pros use in pursuit of their work? The board with depressible buttons on it is only loosely close to a keyboard and the pointer control thingy is usually a ball with a gazillion buttons and pressure points surrounding it, or it’s a joystick or…
In other words, Apple knows who they are building this thing for and those folks either already have their input devices, will most certainly be getting them from a dedicated manufacturer, or have no problem paying Apple for a keyboard and mouse.
Why don’t you do yourself a favor & plug in your Mac Pro via Ethernet? It’s not like any version of Wi-fi will ever be as fast and reliable and secure as a cable connection — at least, not in our lifetimes.
My Mac Pro is 3 rooms away from my Cable modem. The N Network is sufficient fir most things. I have the improved antenna (N) Airport Extreme at the Cable modem and a current model Airport Express at the Mac Pro outputting through Ethernet. It gives me N speeds instead of the G speeds of the AirPort card.
Sure, but you can do better. It isn’t that hard to install Cat6 ethernet cable where you want it. Even if it takes a bit of crawling in the attic or overhead work in the basement, it’s a good investment in both speed and security — plus it’ll free up your Express for other duties.
Anyone else have problems reading anything on this site, with all the ad garbage? One of the worst I’ve seen.
I’m sure MDN will take down all the ads after Christmas.
I wonder how many of these they will sell in China? 😉
A lot. These baby supercomputers will be used in the Chinese hacker infostructure and by Chinese NASA to plan and execute thier manned space exploration.
None. According to analysts people in China can’t afford Apple products because they’re too expensive.
Almost no one likes a computer that looks like a trash-can or a an ashtray. I can’t imagine what runs through Jony Ive’s brain. I’ve always heard that geniuses try to shock those with average IQs. He certainly succeeded in doing that. He basically alienated a whole group of professionals who just wanted an upgraded rectangular box where they could fit all their older peripherals. It’s aesthetically pleasing to look at but if potential buyers hate it, then it won’t sell. Apple needs to be able to sell computers that people find practical and I’m not sure this fits the bill.
Once again, you forgot the sarcasm tag. *sigh*
I’m all for personal opinions, grotesquely anomalous or not … However, I think you’re shooting for the moon if you think you’re even up to an average IQ.
Let’s dial it back buddy…