This was interesting to me for several reasons.
First, there’s the opportunity to get to know Jeff Williams, to hear him talk, tell a story. Given that Apple Design now reports to Jeff, he has new importance in the product design side of Apple.
I also appreciated the anecdote at the heart of this video. It starts at about 50 seconds in. Jeff talks about Steve Jobs carrying around one of the original iPhone prototypes and complaining about the plastic screen getting scratched. The story is being told in the Corning factory where the iPhone glass is made.
Final observation, this factory is in Kentucky, and that’s Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to Jeff’s left (the right side of your picture). This was filmed in 2017, in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
Proud of Apple making this component in the U.S. Now if they could only figure out how to do the whole phone here.
If only we could figure out how to convince oligarch conservatives like McConnell to properly invest tax revenues in public education.
Fuck Mitch McConnell.
Fuck Mitch McConnell.
At the scale Apple is building phones, probably not. Too many components to be sourced. Too many workers needed, and cannot be found in US in one place. And nobody is going to move to a town to work at an Apple factory for low wage (even farmers can’t find people and those are smaller in scale). Now we can wonder how Apple once did make iMacs in the USA. Scale was much lower, only 1 million or less per quarter. Components were much simpler and back then many were still made in the USA. Design was also much simpler. With the Mac Pro trash can Apple could make in USA because of small scale, but they couldn’t even source the right screws in the US when they needed to. So it was delayed for long time because of it. In China Apple could quickly source everything they need. Apple does still assemble iMacs in USA and in Ireland, but assembling is not the same as made in the US or Ireland.
How generous of Leader McConnell to show up for an announcement in which he plays no role.
“I don’t know how we’re gonna do it but when it ships in June, it’s gonna be (xyz)”. Those were the halcyon days…