We’ve all come to expect the same label from all Apple products: “Designed by Apple in California… Assembled in China.” Only now,
Image via CrunchBase
some customers are reportedly seeing something entirely unexpected etched into the aluminum of their new iMacs: “Assembled in the USA.” From iFixit, to Fortune, to 9to5Mac, readers have noted finding this surprising sentence on their computers.
Does this mean that there’s a hidden Apple manufacturing plant buried somewhere beneath Cupertino? In the past, many suspected that rogue “Assembled in the USAs” found on boxes referred only to refurbishing, but people have also found it on totally normal, no frills, iMacs bought from the company website.
The machine can still contain foreign parts, but 9to5 Mac points out that the requirements for using that label are still a little rigorous. From the FTC:
A product that includes foreign components may be called “Assembled in USA” without qualification when its principal assembly takes place in the U.S. and the assembly is substantial. For the “assembly” claim to be valid, the product’s last “substantial transformation” also should have occurred in the U.S. That’s why a “screwdriver” assembly in the U.S. of foreign components into a final product at the end of the manufacturing process doesn’t usually qualify for the “Assembled in USA” claim.
Example: All the major components of a computer, including the motherboard and hard drive, are imported. The computer’s components then are put together in a simple “screwdriver” operation in the U.S., are not substantially transformed under the Customs Standard, and must be marked with a foreign country of origin. An “Assembled in U.S.” claim without further qualification is deceptive.
So what’s going on here? Is this a trick of Apple’s legal wizardry, and this computer is “Assembled in the USA” in name only? Or is there an iMac assembly plant somewhere in the US? Maybe it just makes a small number of them? We’ve reached out to Apple for clarification, and will update.
