With Apple poised to drop a cool $100 million in US manufacturing in 2013, theories about just what a modern Apple factory could look like. As Macworld reports, the early money appears to be on intelligent machines, and lots of them.

The idea behind having an Apple production facility in the United States is to cut back on things like shipping costs and, of course, delays between the creation of each product and its eventual sale. To do this, some analysts are suggesting that the company would likely rely on the power of robotics to build its products fast, with precision, and at a relatively low cost.

But whether the new plant employs living, breathing workers or a slew of robotic assembly wizards, Apple's investment in US manufacturing is big not only for the company itself, but also as a trend-setting move that could help bring more jobs to the US economy. That is, of course, if those jobs are made for humans, rather than Terminators.