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A Tiny Screw Shows Why iPhones Won’t Be ‘Assembled in U.S.A.’
- mwexler 8y agoWhile I'm sure the requirements of the engineering required custom screws to meet size and scale needs, I sure hope this doesn't turn out to be a "protection scheme" making custom screws to prevent user repairs. While an old article, it reminds us that Apple seemed to really love this approach, at least in the past: https://www.wired.com/2012/08/if-theres-a-screw-theres-a-way-custom-screws-wont-stop-the-diy-community/ https://www.wired.com/2012/08/if-theres-a-screw-theres-a-way...
- javagram 8y agoIt was for the Mac Pro trashcan which was a compact design. Although Apple uses odd security screws in all their products, their pursuit of thinness and compactness also probably leads them to need precisely manufactured small parts. Of course if the Mac Pro had just used the old Mac Pro design or the previous Power Mac tower designs, perhaps the parts for a tower case might have been easier to find...
- TheForumTroll 8y agoThat screw is no more compact than a normal screw.
- floatingatoll 8y agoSecurity screws don’t prevent repairs. Glue prevents repairs. iFixit has been releasing screwdriver kits for Apple for years, but the hardest part of taking apart modern Apple is dealing with the glue. Hair dryers, putty knifes, and forcing things that feel like they’re going to snap.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoSecurity screws do inhibit repair (in general), certainly have prevented me repairing things in the past. I've seen "head stripping" too, damaging the head to prevent removal (stopped me replacing my multimeter battery - hugely immoral). Tri-screws (Nintendo), were one of the first things I had to buy "single-use" screw-drivers for.
- justtopost 8y agoI tend to drill them out and replace them with standard fasteners. Ends up cheaper than having 3 trays of obscure bits that still somehow don't fit. Pay close attention to length however. Some laptops will ground out with a screw 1 thread too long.
- JohnBooty 8y agoAnecdotally, I've been told that the real reason for many "security screws" is that they simply facilitate higher-speed automated manufacturing -- the standard cross/phillips head isn't great for that. This makes sense to me since "security screws" are an almost entirely useless form of tamper prevention or tamper evidence. However I've no idea what the real story is. I'm wondering if somebody with knowledge can chime in....
- leakybit 8y agoyea, but there already exists a standardized 6pt screw design called Torx screws vs Apples 5pt screw.
- writepub 8y agoYou better believe Apple intentionally curbs the ability to repair outside it's stores. The "right to repair" movement and subsequent legislation was squarely pointed at Apple. There's simply nothing Apple won't do to stymie user rights, from purposefully forcing app-devs into the app store by crippling the iOS browser, to retroactively modifying app store rules to kill competition (as with Steam), to making it next to impossible to repair hardware outside their store
- swalsh 8y agoNow imagine we went to war, and China was not on our side. We have the headstart, but if we needed to start manufacturing more equipment, we're at a disadvantage. I think this kind of supply chain issue is a national security concern.
- javagram 8y agoMilitary equipment is manufactured in the US or allied countries to avoid this concern I think?
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoEquipment is. Components and parts may not be.
- atonse 8y agoThis is one of the concerns with Huawei networking equipment. It’s used by many US gov agencies and they’re now waking up to the risks posed.
- PKop 8y agoJust as one example, China has massive dominance in "rare" earth elements which are components of many different military and communication devices. Check this out for full scope of current disparities [0] [0] https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/05/2002048904/-1/-1/1/ASSESSING-AND-STRENGTHENING-THE-MANUFACTURING-AND-DEFENSE-INDUSTRIAL-BASE-AND-SUPPLY-CHAIN-RESILIENCY.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/05/2002048904/-1/-1/1/ASS...
- artificial 8y agoWith regard to Batteries Rare Earth is anything but, it’s more messy than anything and China wins on price. The States has plenty of capacity in that regard and a mine just recently reopened in California. Borderline Slave labor, lax environmental laws and state subsidized shipping make for a much lower price.
- deogeo 8y ago
- TheForumTroll 8y agoWhat complete and utter propaganda. >"“China is not just cheap. It’s a place where, because it’s an authoritarian government, you can marshal 100,000 people to work all night for you...”" It has nothing to do with China and everything to do with The US. Workers work night-shifts all over the world and on-call workers are also everywhere. It has nothing to do with the type of government and everything to do with the US workforce and Apple being too cheap to pay the cost.
- 21 8y agoAs long as they remain "Designed in California", the feel-good is still there. You are not buying cheap Android China shit.
- justtopost 8y agoExcept you really are.
- pulse7 8y agoAndroid is also "Designed in California"...
- detaro 8y agoOn the other hand, Apple is one of the companies that could make a dent in the other direction (if they thought it made sense financially and overall): They have the cash reserves and the option for long-term planning that they could e.g. have financed better-suited machinery for the screw-maker as part of a long-term contract (if there's really not enough manufacturing capacity for custom screws around). They'd probably be able to set up an apprenticeship program training the numbers of employees they need, with more pull over other, less well-known companies. Of course for that for that to make sense, they'd need to commit to building something long-term, and can't just access an existing pool. (Although I'd assume they spent lots of effort getting the flows at Foxconn et al worked out properly too) And I suspect scale matters here a lot, so a relatively small experiment is going to have supply issues where a large project would create enough demand that investing to fill it makes sense.
- leereeves 8y agoAbsolutely. Manufacturers sent manufacturing jobs overseas thirty years ago, so few Americans learned manufacturing skills for thirty years, now manufacturers use the effect to justify the cause. But of course the real reason was simply that they didn't want to pay American wages. If manufacturers brought the jobs back Americans would learn the skills.
- lallysingh 8y agoI agree. I think we'd have to make that fiscally worthwhile (large tax carrot/stick) to make that happen.
- pfortuny 8y agoExactly. I mean: you can build a complete screw-making factory for just change (for Apple). But no: just close the smart card division.
- hourislate 8y agoSo Dell can make Laptops in TX, Nokia ran the largest Cell Phone Factory in the world in TX (Alliance Corridor). You have Texas Instruments and probably dozens of more high tech electronics manufacturers and Apple can't build it's Macbooks or whatever in the USA because it can't get enough screws, really? Most of the parts for Apple devices are not made in China. https://www.lifewire.com/where-is-the-iphone-made-1999503 https://www.lifewire.com/where-is-the-iphone-made-1999503 China is basically an assembly location since slave labor can be used to maximize profit. Another trash article from the NYT's.
- lmilcin 8y agoThe headline, as usual, is wrong. The tiny screw shows not why it won't be assembled in USA but why it should be assembled. Making a phone or laptop requires an entire industry to back it up. Making those things in US makes it possible that these industries will come back. Also, just for US security it is probably not important that the screws are imported. What is important is that the electronics are not handled outside US and US retains its ability to make practical electronics and not rely 100% on China.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- onion2k 8y agoMaking those things in US makes it possible that these industries will come back. Isn't that a chicken-and-egg scenario though? The industry won't come back if manufacturers don't bring production back, but manufacturers won't bring production back until there's a local industry to bring it back to.
- lmilcin 8y agoThere is an important incentive to manufacture some category of products that are necessary for security. How do you feel about EVERY single non-trivial chip and piece of electronics manufactured outside US? Can you, currently, buy ANY kind of computer that is not being handled in China? It sure will cost more, but the industry does not grow overnight and people do need time to get experienced and I think it is vital that some country other than China supplies electronics, too.
- shaki-dora 8y agoThe title uses the screw to illustrate a larger problem. You don’t give any argument why the case the article makes is wrong. Your alternative even supports it, and only adds the sort of grand political viewpoint people usually accuse the media of.
- exabrial 8y agoThe engineer in me is judging them... why the heck did you make a design that required 3 weird screws? Screws are standardized parts; creating an esoteric hardware design in a vacuum with an "oh we'll fix that in production" [literal meaning of production] seems to be the actual problem.
- Nerdfest 8y agoYou just used Apple and the word "standards" in a sentence without the requisite "eschews".
- mitchty 8y agoI voted you down, your comment seems to think that the engineers couldn't possibly have a reason for custom screws. Without knowing the requirements, you'll never know if they had a good reason for custom screws. As such this comment is not constructive at best, and just standard "apple is bad cause no standards" drivel at worst.
- freehunter 8y agoNot to mention Apple's non-standard-compliance is a notable exception, not the rule. The 30-pin connector and Lightning are basically the only proprietary connectors they've had in recent history, and one is phased out while the other is being phased out as we speak (for the standard USB-C, I might add). Firewire, USB-C, Bluetooth, POSIX, etc... Apple doesn't do as much non-standard stuff as people on the Internet would have you think.
- berbec 8y agoI agree with all your points, but have you ever disassembled an iPhone or an aluminum Intel Mac? Everyone has them now, but when they started producing them, no one had triwing, pentawing or those microscopic torx bits. And let's not even start on bricking items repaired by non-"apple-approved" shops months later.
- ataturk 8y agoI simply don't trust the NYTimes to not inject their own buffoonery into a story. So they think China can make better tiny screws than some US company? WHY?
- sct202 8y agoThey really don't need this level of customization, but manufacturing in China lets companies do things like this for components that probably could just use standard sizes.
- kevin_kroe 8y agoDid anyone thought about using simpler screws or will we pretend it's okay to invent am an annoying screw and get it done somewhere just 'cause you want it? apple always fucks up on that, even usb extensors can have a "dent" so it doesn't fit regular usb cables. that part of apple is the most disgusting.
- pjc50 8y ago> “China is not just cheap. It’s a place where, because it’s an authoritarian government, you can marshal 100,000 people to work all night for you,” said Susan Helper, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and the former chief economist at the Commerce Department. “That has become an essential part of the product-rollout strategy.” Never mind the screws, it's the humans which are important here.
- Nasrudith 8y agoThe screws has to be one of the weakest claims for several reasons. It is more a "we suck at planning" story on several levels. Even if they went with Chinese screws doing it in advance and in large numbers would give them the best price per unit. This isn't even a "we accidentally made it an antenna" screw up but a "we failed to do basic math and planning ahead".
- scarface74 8y agoYes because the Tim Cook of all people doesn’t know anything about supply chain management and producing at scale.
- Nasrudith 8y agoFair point. I guess he shoukd have hired someone from a supply chain industry for that.
- Shivetya 8y agoto be honest, this whole article smacks of public relations defense of Apple's continued manufacturing in China regardless of all the human rights issues, spying, and trade secret disputes. sorry, but their actions in support of charities and other rights issues world wide will always be tainted by their association with the Chinese government. they are there only because its cheaper to operate and its only cheaper to operate simply because you have a government which does not respect rights, property, personal, and in many cases intellectual.
- kevin_b_er 8y agoWe exported all our manufacturing overseas at the behest of the masters of business administration as a matter of pure cost cutting. It isn't coming back easily.
- timbit42 8y agoIt may require federal regulation.
- fxfan 8y agoI am okay with giving trump his stupid wall if he can successfully bring back manufacturing from china. So far the only issue I can support him on is his (long overdue) war with china.
- DeonPenny 8y agoYeh, China is starting to scare me the more I read. I don't feel good buying their products.
- everdrive 8y agoI find it absolutely depressing that we end up being fixated on such useless problems. Why does Apple need a non-standard screw? We can safely assume that helps the phone be cheaper, (cheaper being relative, of course) or lighter, and/or thinner. (since these considerations underpin anything to do with its design.) Why do these things matter? Because consumers like lighter & thinner phones I guess? But although consumer preferences (mostly) direct what people can sell, it doesn't mean that consumer preferences are actually good, useful, sensible, or anything else positive.
- samirm 8y ago>“China is not just cheap. It’s a place where, because it’s an authoritarian government, you can marshal 100,000 people to work all night for you,” I don't understand how she came to that conclusion or what this sentence even means really.
- DeonPenny 8y agoShe means the government can force people thousands to work for foreign companies cheaply because XI is a dictator. For example, if you need to churn out thousands of custom screws. She came to the conclusion because the CCP has done just that for 30 years.
- rbanffy 8y agoErm... Why not use standard screws?
- noisy_boy 8y agoDisclaimer: optimistic wishful thinking ahead I think the scenario is: - China has tons of cheap labour - manual manufacturing in US is expensive - most companies have the problem of over-reliance on Chinese manufacturing - Apple has tons of reserves I see this as an opportunity for Apple to invest in more and more sophisticated mechanization driven by the smarter robotics. It may be difficult for a machine learning algorithm to tell a bird from another but equipment/machines are much more defined than fuzzy. Further, Apple being a sought-after employer in general shouldn't have problem attracting top talent for this exciting and growing area of work (with all its issues, US still attracts the best minds it needs for such research). If they invest and get to a state where they are not only making phones but smart machines that can make machines that make phones or whatever, they will open up a new world for themselves and can solve a problem much bigger than making phones cheaply (while still making phones cheaply).
- shaki-dora 8y agoAs the article illustrates, it’s not labor cost that drives manufacturing to China, but competence, or network effects. Robots may well be coming, to a factory in China.
- zelon88 8y agoOne notable fact that's missing from the article is that China will lie and bend over backwards to secure business. They have no problem telling a potential customer that they can meet specifications they cannot meet. They will greatly overstate their capacity and capabilities and then bullshit their way to success by "throwing a handful of shit and seeing what sticks." Meaning they will produce and produce and produce products, ship them to the customer, and accept whatever they get for RMA's. They barely do any kind of inspection. They just ship parts and hope not a whole lot will come back. Here in the USA our companies take liability into account. Our precision manufacturing sector is much older and more experienced, but also each entity is smaller due to America being truly capitalist. Apple is the kind of customer that small American companies don't want to deal with. Their buyers are demanding, uncompromising, and don't understand manufacturing. They want to buy 100,000 screws and cannot understand why they aren't already on a shelf somewhere waiting to be shipped. They don't care either, they just NEED the screws. If Apple is a customer of yours, you probably don't do business with many other companies. Apple deadlines and requirements don't specifically disallow it, they just don't leave enough foom for it. Just ask GT Advanced Technologies what it's like dealing with Apple as a supplier. They signed a contract with Apple, spent all their capital acquiring Apple approved manufacturing equipment, and then fought with Apple QC about acceptance criteria that their Apple approved equipment couldn't meet. They did this until GT ran out of money and went belly up. They spent so much resources trying to satisfy Apple that they couldn't satisfy anybody else.
- AKifer 8y agoCan some top notch hardware be made in USA ? For sure. Did someone made a top notch hardware, even some prototypes ? Please tell us who. Perhaps the real issue is that nobody is excited to make hardware anymore in the US as westerners expect to retain ownership of the working capital in the Chinese industry, which is getting less and less relevant when China is getting richer and richer. The western world needs a mental leap as Tesla did with the car industry if it wants to keep up with China in this ground.
- Simulacra 8y agoTiny screws for tiny hands. China’s child workforce is as strong as ever.
- tmaly 8y agoI know they 3D print some jet engine parts. Why could custom screws not be 3D printed?
- detaro 8y ago3D printing is generally interesting for things that are made in small quantities. Making many thousands of the same screw by printing is horrifically inefficient, and slower and more expensive than whatever they did to make them.
- Animats 8y agoApple only ordered 23,000 screws. That's not enough to justify making the tooling for production by progressive stamping. Caldwell Manufacturing has automatic screw machines. Those are general-purpose machines for making things out of wire and small rod stock. They do good work, but are slower and higher cost per unit than stamping. If they'd gone to a company that's primarily a screw supplier, like KD Fasteners or US Micro Screw, they probably wouldn't have had the problem. Apple has shot itself in the foot before by being too tough on suppliers. They want suppliers to invest in production capacity without guaranteeing a big buy. Remember the sapphire screen debacle.
- mercutio2 8y agoHave you actually reviewed the story of GT Advanced? Apple bent over backwards to forgive late delivery, and GT Advanced repeatedly lied about what they’d actually achieved. Apple surely turns the screws on it’s suppliers, but GT Advanced isn’t a very good example of this, the producers just lied about what their capabilities (and mid-stream accomplishments!) were.
- Animats 8y agoHave you actually reviewed the story of GT Advanced? Yes. They originally wanted to just sell furnaces to Apple, but Apple pushed them into a deal where GT Advanced took all the risk of making the end product. The management of GT Advanced should have rejected that deal, but they took the "fake it til you make it" route, and it didn't end well. There's still litigation underway involving Apple. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gt-advanced-tech-bankruptcy-apple/gt-advanced-says-fell-victim-to-bait-and-switch-by-apple-idUSKBN0IR2G220141107 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gt-advanced-tech-bankrupt...
- mikelyons 8y agoWhy does reducing the American cost of living never come up? American workers have just become too expensive in many industries, which is why immigrants fill whole classes of jobs. Or maybe that's just Seattle's homeless problem talking.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago> When Mr. Melo bought Caldwell in 2002, it was capable of the high-volume production Apple needed. But demand for that had dried up as manufacturing moved to China. He said he had replaced the old stamping presses that could mass-produce screws with machines designed for more precise, specialized jobs. this looks like yet another example of what US-based globalization promoters have been pushing as the "prosperous future" of the US manufacturing sector: custom, high-precision, high-quality, high-end etc. but this "plan for prosperity" has pushed high-volume, low-cost manufacturing capabilities out of the US. it should have been obvious to Apple beforehand.