[m0zg]

There's not a whole hour of labor in each iPhone. Not even close. Humans just put together robot-assembled boards, screens, and so on. If this is re-shored, it wouldn't be that difficult for Apple to reduce manual labor even further than that, possibly to near zero. I've tried to repair an iPhone PCB once where an SMD resistor fell off. I couldn't do it, even though I have a hot air workstation and a bench microscope. Humans can't work on SMD components you can't even see without magnification.

And I'd like to understand how it is that an M1 Pro die, which is manufactured _solely_ by robots, and can't even use human labor would cost $100 per unit more here than anywhere else in the world. Heck the chip itself likely costs less than that to manufacture (do remember that we're excluding the design cost, which is the same).

This is quite literally the case of big businesses selling their (for some tenuous definition of "their" - they don't much care where they are situated as long as they have access to US market) country out for a buck.

[Teever]

> an M1 Pro die, which is manufactured _solely_ by robots, and can't even use human labor

I was not aware that there were no employees in modern chip fabs. They must require some sort of maintenance cycle, how often do humans come to modern chip fabs?

[m0zg]

"Maintenance" won't add $100 per die like GP is suggesting. There are hundreds of dies per wafer, and thousands of wafers within maintenance interval. We're talking a very small incremental cost. And it too could be reduced to account for more expensive labor.

I'd like to pose a better question: why do you voluntarily carry water for Apple? If you are in the US (or in one of its allied countries), on-shoring advanced semiconductors, and other types of advanced manufacturing is 100% beneficial to you no matter from which perspective you consider it.