NBC reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook will announce during an interview airing on Rock Center tonight that the company is bringing some Mac production back to the United States.
In an exclusive interview with Brian Williams airing tonight at 10pm/9c on NBC’s “Rock Center,” Apple CEO Tim Cook announced one of the existing Mac lines will be manufactured exclusively in the United States next year. Mac fans will have to wait to see which Mac line it will be because Apple, widely known for its secrecy, left it vague. Cook's announcement may or may not confirm recent rumors in the blogosphere sparked by iMacs inscribed in the back with “Assembled in USA.”
“We’ve been working for years on doing more and more in the United States,” Cook told Williams.
Cook has more to say about the effort in a lengthy interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, noting that Apple is spending about $100 million on the effort.
It’s not known well that the engine for the iPhone and iPad is made in the U.S., and many of these are also exported—the engine, the processor. The glass is made in Kentucky. And next year we are going to bring some production to the U.S. on the Mac. We’ve been working on this for a long time, and we were getting closer to it. It will happen in 2013. We’re really proud of it. We could have quickly maybe done just assembly, but it’s broader because we wanted to do something more substantial. So we’ll literally invest over $100 million. This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people, and we’ll be investing our money.
Cook also addresses several of the challenges Apple faces in bringing production back to the United States, pointing out once again that the educational system is not producing the expertise needed for major manufacturing in consumer electronics, but he hopes that Apple's effort can help spur progress in that area.
