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    Apple brings Mac mini production to America from Asia


    With M4 and M4 Pro, the new Mac mini brings incredible performance and connectivity in a design that’s small enough to fit in your hand.

    Apple on Tuesday announced a significant expansion of factory operations in Houston, bringing the future production of Mac mini to America for the first time. The company will also expand advanced AI server manufacturing at the factory and provide hands-on training at its new Advanced Manufacturing Center beginning later this year. Altogether, Apple’s Houston operations will create thousands of jobs.

    Currently, the strong-selling Mac mini is assembled in Asia, primarily in China and Vietnam.

    “Apple is deeply committed to the future of American manufacturing, and we’re proud to significantly expand our footprint in Houston with the production of Mac mini starting later this year,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “We began shipping advanced AI servers from Houston ahead of schedule, and we’re excited to accelerate that work even further.”

    In Houston, workers assemble advanced AI servers, including logic boards produced onsite, which are then used in Apple data centers in America.

    For more than two decades, users around the world have relied on the incredibly popular Mac mini for the tremendous power it packs into its ultra-compact design. With its next-level AI capabilities, it has become an essential tool for everyone from students and aspiring creatives to small business owners. Beginning later this year, Mac mini will be produced at a new factory on Apple’s Houston manufacturing site, doubling the campus’s footprint.

    Apple began producing advanced AI servers in Houston in 2025 for the first time, and production is already ahead of schedule. Servers assembled in Houston — including logic boards produced onsite — are used in Apple data centers around the country.

    Beyond production, Apple is investing in the workforce that will drive American manufacturing forward. Later this year, Apple’s 20,000-square-foot Advanced Manufacturing Center is scheduled to open its doors in Houston. Currently under construction, the dedicated facility will provide hands-on training in advanced manufacturing techniques to students, supplier employees, and American businesses of all sizes. Apple experts will teach participants the same innovative processes that are used to make Apple products, allowing American manufacturers to take their work to the next level.

    Apple’s 20,000-square-foot Advanced Manufacturing Center opens later this year, and will provide hands-on training to students, supplier employees, and U.S. businesses of all sizes.

    Since announcing its $600 billion commitment to the U.S. last year, Apple and its American Manufacturing Program partners have already reached several milestones:

    • Apple exceeded its target and sourced more than 20 billion U.S.-made chips from 24 factories across 12 states, including those of partners like TSMC, Broadcom, and Texas Instruments.

    • GlobalWafers has begun production at its new $4 billion bare silicon wafer facility in Sherman, Texas. At Apple’s direction, wafers produced in Sherman will be used by Apple’s chip manufacturing partners in the U.S., including TSMC and Texas Instruments.

    • Supported by Apple’s investment, Amkor broke ground on its new $7 billion semiconductor advanced packaging and test facility in Peoria, Arizona, where Apple will be the first and largest customer.

    • Corning’s Harrodsburg, Kentucky, facility is now 100 percent dedicated to cover glass for iPhone and Apple Watch shipped globally, and by the end of this year, every new iPhone and Apple Watch will have cover glass made in the state.

    • In 2026, Apple is on track to purchase well over 100 million advanced chips produced by TSMC at its Arizona facility — a significant increase from 2025.

    • Apple opened its Apple Manufacturing Academy in Detroit, which is already supporting more than 130 small- and medium-sized American manufacturers with hands-on training in AI, automation, and smart manufacturing. The academy recently expanded with new virtual programming, giving businesses across the country on-demand access to the curriculum developed by Apple experts and Michigan State University faculty.
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    Tariffs have a funny way of turning “Made in China” into “Made in America” virtually overnight. Apple may even get a mention in the president’s State of the Union speech tonight — the timing of this American manufacturing acceleration feels almost too perfect to be coincidental.

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    Source link: https://macdailynews.com/2026/02/24/apple-brings-mac-mini-production-to-america-from-asia/

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    Apple set to introduce touch-screen Mac laptops this year

    Apple is set to introduce touch-screen Mac laptops, a move that will bring significant updates to macOS, including the integration of the iPhone’s Dynamic Island feature, Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg News, citing people with knowledge of the plans.

    The first touch-enabled Macs, expected to launch this fall, will feature the Dynamic Island centered at the top of the display, the people said, requesting anonymity because the information is not yet public.

    Apple is updating its 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models to support touch input, equipping them with the same OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display technology currently used in iPhones.

    Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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    Apple is announcing new products, including Mac updates, during the first week of March, but the touch-screen MacBook Pros won’t be part of that rollout. Those models, code-named K114 and K116, are slated for release closer to the end of 2026.

    Even with the new display, Apple won’t position the MacBook Pro as an iPad replacement — or describe its interface as a touch-first experience. Instead, the idea is to let customers use the touch input as much or as little as they’d like,

    To that end, the new MacBook Pro looks similar to the current model, including a full keyboard and large trackpad. Still, the Mac will gain a refreshed, dynamic user interface that can shift between being optimized for touch or point-and-click input, said the people.

    The display on the MacBook Pro will have the same standard touch features as the iPhone and iPad, including fast scrolling and the ability to zoom in and out of images and PDFs.

    The touch-screen launch is a major shift for Apple, which for decades had criticized the idea of touch laptops. Co-founder Steve Jobs famously called such an experience “ergonomically terrible.”

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    Since we’re perfectly fine with using mice and trackpads, we’ll continue to keep our Mac displays free of greasy fingerprints, even if Apple releases touchscreen Macs.

    Do you really want to smear your fingers all over your MacBook Pro’s display?

    Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical. After an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. – Steve Jobs

    For many years, every MacBook Pro has offered a built-in multi-touch-capable Force Touch trackpad.

    Does it make more sense to be smearing your fingers around on your notebook’s screen or on a spacious trackpad that’s designed specifically and solely to be touched? … The iPhone’s screen has to be touched; that’s all it has available. A MacBook’s screen does not have to be touched in order to offer Multi-Touch. — MacDailyNews, March 26, 2009

    I think anything can be forced to converge. The problem is that products are about tradeoffs, and you begin to make tradeoffs to the point where what you have left at the end of the day doesn’t please anyone. You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, remarking on the idea of a converged Mac and iPad, April 25, 2012

    We really feel that the ergonomics of using a Mac are that your hands are rested on a surface, and that lifting your arm up to poke a screen is a pretty fatiguing thing to do. I don’t think we’ve looked at any of the other guys to date and said, how fast can we get there? — Apple SVP Craig Federighi, June 5, 2018

    [Y]ou get this in-between thing, and in-between things are never as good as the individual things themselves. We believe the best personal computer is a Mac, and we want to keep going down that path. And we think the best tablet computing device is an iPad, and we’ll go down that path.

    iPad benefits because we assume that you need to be able to do most everything with touch, and we don’t have to trade off on that experience. Mac assumes you want to do most everything with a keyboard and mouse input. We don’t have to trade off on that path. You can look at some of the other products that will try to go halfway between the two. They end up just compromising experiences. That’s not good. – Apple SVP Phil Schiller, November 13, 2019

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    Source link: https://macdailynews.com/2026/02/24/apple-set-to-introduce-touch-screen-mac-laptops-this-year/