Mac production (or at least some of it) will move to US, Cook says

Apple will move part of its production chain to the US next year, Apple CEO Tim Cook said this week. 

Cook, who took over from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011, made his comments during interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek and NBC. According to Cook, Apple will invest $100 million in moving some of its manufacturing from China to US. As we've noted in the past, Apple has long been under pressure to source its production domestically – the topic even came up during the third presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. 

"It's not known well that the engine for the iPhone and iPad is made in the US, and many of these are also exported-the engine, the processor," Cook told Bloomberg. (By engine, we assume Cook means the shiny metal guts that power the iPhone 5.) 

"The glass is made in Kentucky. And next year we are going to bring some production to the US 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." 

Cook did not further expound on Apple's plan, so we don't know which Mac machine will be produced here, nor where in the US it will be produced. What we do know is that the factories in question probably won't look anything like the old Apple plants of yore. 

In related news, in early November, the tech site DigiTimes reported that Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, which supplies parts to Apple, is already conducting "evaluations" in Los Angeles and Detroit, in advance of a possible factory opening here.  

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