Apple to spend ‘over $100M’ to bring some U.S. Mac production back in 2013

Even though Tim Cook was one of the driving forces in moving Apple’s manufacturing out of the U.S. to cut costs, the chief executive said today that Apple will spend more than $100 million to reverse those efforts next year.

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When asked about Apple’s U.S. manufacturing strategy In a lengthy interview with BusinessWeek, Cook notes:

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.

It’s unclear which Mac models will be made in America. The news follows reports from last week when some new iMac buyers noticed that the packaging on their new computers said they were assembled in the U.S. Those U.S. built iMacs seem to be originating from Fremont, Calif., according to 9to5 Mac.

Apple has caught plenty of flack for the working conditions at the Chinese Foxconn factories where the iPhone and iPad are built. Moving some Mac production to the U.S. is a good first step away from relying on Asian manufacturing plants. (Though building Macs likely isn’t as complicated as building Apple’s mobile devices.)

Via: 9to5Mac; Photo: Meghan Kelly/VentureBeat