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The Nursery of the Mac – Apple Computer factory in Cork, Ireland (1996)
- secondcoming 2y agoI 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.
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoIs the purpose of the Cork office taxation related?
- Supernaut 2y agoWhich office? The article concerns a factory that built the computers for Apple's European market, during the '80s and '90s.
- sourcepluck 2y agoUnsure 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-ireland-and-the-apple-tax-case/ https://www.rundale.org/2024/09/26/colonial-mutations-irelan...
- aosaigh 2y agoAny other good resources on this? Interested in learning more.
- jdietrich 2y agoApple, 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 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_gross_national_income
- Supernaut 2y agoWhy do you say that the presence of these companies' EU headquarters in Ireland is "entirely due" to the country's corporate tax rates?
- sourcepluck 2y agoThere'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 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.
- piltdownman 2y agoConor 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 https://www.connollybooks.org/product/sins-of-the-father
- sourcepluck 2y agoAnonymised 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/ https://conor-mccabe.com/about/
- biorach 2y agoThe 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.
- beAbU 2y agoApple's European HQ is in Cork, but I'm not sure if it's the same location as the original factory.
- Cumpiler69 2y agoIs the Apple factory in Cork still operational today?
- xattt 2y agoThere’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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- roomey 2y agoYes 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!
- Cumpiler69 2y agoYeah but what are they building there? There's no Made in Ireland Apple products anymore AFAIK.
- esskay 2y agoMost 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.
- Cumpiler69 2y agoThat I know, that's why I asked if the factory specifically is still operational.
- handelaar 2y agoThey 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).
- vr46 2y agoWhat 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.
- Supernaut 2y agoSales, logistics, technical support, administration and accountancy for the entire EU market. Software engineering and some R&D.
- piltdownman 2y agoWalk 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.
- wkat4242 2y agoIreland 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.
- harha 2y agoThey'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.
- wkat4242 2y agoIt'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 :)
- RickarySanchez 2y agoPretty 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
- piltdownman 2y agoComplete 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?
- Cumpiler69 2y ago>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.
- sourcepluck 2y agoHere's an interview with an unsettlingly fresh-faced Pat Kenny: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=8nLMTmm08o8 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!
- piltdownman 2y agoPer 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.
- leoh 2y ago… the latter which ironically used what would become ARM chips
- kamaitachi 2y agoThis 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.
- raffraffraff 2y agoWell 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.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoI 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.