We need those tiny fingers to put the iPhone together. The fat burger or hot dog fingers, not a chance
True that!!
Most if not all precision hand work, women are better, more detailed oriented.
We need those tiny fingers to put the iPhone together. The fat burger or hot dog fingers, not a chance
You can talk trash on Chinese manufacturing all you want, but I think they're quickly outstripping the rest of the world in small assembly manufacturing prowess.
Quantity manufacturing at a low price is what they are good at. Quality is sub par in CE gear emanating from China across the board. They routinely substitute cheaper, poorer components which result in companies with stellar reliability records getting trashed. Honestly, I don't repair any Chinese HiFi for anyone, it doesn't interest me on my bench, the construction, precision and basic designs are on the whole, rubbish. Where do you start with boards where every component is fake, from ST/Sanken/Toshiba marked transistors to Wima caps and every respectable electrolytic is a counterfeit?
McIntosh is synonymous with American made, just as Accuphase is synonomous with the best Japanese manufacture. It's a long term mistake to dilute and trash that legacy. Audiophiles have very long memories.
I can safely say that I do not own a single piece of serious HiFi that is made in China. With computers, I have no choice, they have to come from China (be it components parts or complete machines).
It makes me sad. There's just something really good about turning around your expensive product and seeing that is was made by your fellow countrymen, earning money, paying taxes and contributing to the country you live in.
Look at an iPhone XS and compare it to a Nokia from 20 years back and the difference in both complexity and fit and finish is enormous.
Ironically however, the 20 year old Nokia probably still works just as well as the day it was made.
(excluding the battery of course)
Better than the NMH days tho'.The same can be said of most of my smart phones. The last two or three I've ditched have all been because the battery was on the downhill slide.
Battery tech really is the Achilles heel of modern portable electronics. I'm hoping that the electric car thing drives some innovation there.
Blasphemy I tell you!So a 275 is 8 db or what ever noisier. As longs as you play music at average levels you will never hear the noise..
The same can be said of most of my smart phones. The last two or three I've ditched have all been because the battery was on the downhill slide.
Battery tech really is the Achilles heel of modern portable electronics. I'm hoping that the electric car thing drives some innovation there.
Chinese manufacturing and all of LCC (Low Cost Country, an industry term which includes Eastern-Bloc as well as far-east) can be fine. The difference is usually whether you own the factory. If you're apple, have a manufacturing plant in China and are large enough to make the rules and employ/train the best workers in the area, you can make good quality stuff. If you're McIntosh, and contract manufacturing and stuffing of your PC boards with a factory where you don't have control over training, hiring, Quality Assurance standards and procedures, manufacturing processes and standards, you will likely get crap.
I've been there and done this through much of my career with my designs being outsourced, fighting with the LCC manufacturer over stupid things like "you didn't specify that it couldn't be stored outdoors on the dock for months" (fictional, but not far from many stories I have) while you're out of parts and the only replacements are now on a boat just to be rejected when they arrive or reworked in hopes that they will not fail and cost you a customer (my customers were always large automakers, so losing a customer can be $50million/year or more). We had large buying power but still were constantly surprised with new failures that we would never even have considered even possible.
It's a lot like putting a 5 year old behind the steering wheel of a car. They might be able to steer it and not hit anything for a while, but eventually there'll be a problem because they really don't understand the concept, the design of the product, what the failure modes are, and probably never will. They just look at a print and follow the lines and words without any understanding of why or why not.
I'll try and stay off of my soapbox, and I do hope that Mc will keep their production in the US as well as understand how wrong it goes without any way to predict the weird mis-steps that the LCC manufacturers will make.
Best of luck McIntosh and if it doesn't say Made in USA on it, it is just another LG to me. I also don't buy Fords made in Mexico, Jeep with Italian joint-venture engines, ... but am quite happy with my USA built Mercedes. It's not the nameplate that matters, it's what is behind the nameplate.
China is also promoting independent inventors by providing funds for open prototyping shops. Places with laser cutters and 3-d printers and CNC machines where young entrepreneurs can work out and build new design.You can talk trash on Chinese manufacturing all you want, but I think they're quickly outstripping the rest of the world in small assembly manufacturing prowess. If Apple were to being iPhone production to the US, we'd see a huge cost spike not just because the labor is more expensive but because they'd have to pay for all of the training that doesn't exist here for that type of work and for all of the duds coming off the factory floor for the first few months or years.
Tim Cook said it himself in an interview a few months back. China has incredible manufacturing competence when it comes to knocking out huge quantities of very complex parts and assemblies.
We need more folks going to trade schools and learning how to actually build stuff, but that requires a. Trade schools that are more than profit generating schemes and b. a manufacturing economy that's competitive on price with the rest of the world.
The first would be easy with the right set of political circumstances. The latter is much more difficult.
That and watching for 3rd shift grey-market stuff going out the back door, trashing the company's good name. That is a real problem.I wouldn't trust a Chinese factory without my own reps there to verify quality, and I wouldn't just blindly trust their design work either. But the intricate manufacturing and design for manufacturing going into things like our cell phones and smart watches these days is insane. Look at an iPhone XS and compare it to a Nokia from 20 years back and the difference in both complexity and fit and finish is enormous.
I'm all for domestic manufacture, but I don't have to believe that Chinese manufacture is inherently inferior to want my countrymen to have good jobs.
From what I've heard, the only caveat is that any new patents developed become the property of China.China is also promoting independent inventors by providing funds for open prototyping shops. Places with laser cutters and 3-d printers and CNC machines where young entrepreneurs can work out and build new design.
Quite simply, if it wasn't for extremely low wages, even things like can openers and transistor radios would still be made in the US. When I was growing up, the only thing China was good at was making fireworks in Macau. I'm not in finance but It still amazes me that companies like Intel, etc. would build a 10 billion dollar fab plant in China that practically operates with 100 production people and an entire year's production can fit in one 747.There are some things that Chinese manufacturers excel at - otherwise your cell phone wouldn't be made there.
The same can be said of most of my smart phones. The last two or three I've ditched have all been because the battery was on the downhill slide.
Battery tech really is the Achilles heel of modern portable electronics. I'm hoping that the electric car thing drives some innovation there.