Suppliers say Trump’s promise of US-made Apple products impractical, as company points to US jobs

A piece in the WSJ outlines why president-elect Trump’s campaign promise to ‘get Apple to start making their computers and their iPhones on our land, not in China’ is impractical.

Tim Cook has previously said that the vocational skills needed for Apple manufacturing simply don’t exist in the USA, and suppliers have emphasised the sheer scale of the challenge.

When Jabil Circuit, the world’s third-largest contract manufacturer by revenue, needed to quickly ramp up production of its electronics components a few years ago, the company was able to add 35,000 workers in China in less than six weeks.

“In no other country can you scale up so quickly,” said John Dulchinos, vice president of digital manufacturing.”

Even if Apple were to appoint American companies as suppliers, that wouldn’t necessarily create U.S. jobs, argues the piece …

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Filed under: Apple

‘808’ documentary on influence of Roland’s iconic drum machine to be Apple Music exclusive [Video]

A documentary about the influence of Roland’s TR-808 drum machine on the development of music is to stream exclusively on Apple Music from December 9, reports CNET.

Simply entitled ‘808,’ the documentary premiered at last year’s SXSW Film Festival.

It’s narrated by Apple Music’s own Beats 1 DJ, Zane Lowe, and features a variety of interviews with the likes of Pharrell, Questlove, Rick Rubin, Afrika Bambaataa, David Guetta and more.

While a documentary about a drum machine may not sound immediately compelling, the trailer (below) does make it seem a lot more interesting than you might expect …

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ArsTechnica review explains why Apple had to use AMD GPUs in the 15″ MacBook Pro

One slightly surprising spec in the new 15-inch MacBook Pro line-up is that even the base model got an AMD GPU. Previously, Apple has offered only integrated GPU in the base model, reserving discrete graphics for the higher-specced models.

John Gruber noticed that the ArsTechnica review explains this: it was the only way to allow the machine to drive two 5K monitors. And the reason for that is that Apple had to use something of a workaround to achieve it …

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Apple 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar teardown reveals speaker grilles are only cosmetic, Touch Bar is hard to replace

With the new MacBook Pro now shipping to customers, iFixit have got their hands on the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and have disassembled it and completed their usual teardown. There are quite a few differences between this model and the cheaper 13-inch 2016 MacBook Pro that retains traditional keys; teardown for that model here.

Much of the internal component layout has been adjusted to accommodate the inclusion of the Touch Bar. Apple’s latest laptop scores just 1/10 for repairability as Touch Bar is difficult to replace and the battery is glued into the case. Interestingly, the new speaker grilles on the 13-inch model appear to serve no function and are purely cosmetic …

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Drop, a color picker utility for macOS, launches with Touch Bar support

Drop, a color picker for macOS, has launched today with support for the new MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar. Built by the Tapity app development team, Drop serves as lightweight tool allowing user’s to quickly select and grab colors on-screen, while also switching between a multitude of color formats. Colors grabbed can be added to the palette and automatically copied to the clipboard.

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Filed under: Apple