Cook, in two interviews released Thursday, said one line of Mac computers will be made exclusively in the United States, but did not say which one, nor did he say where the manufacturing would be done.

The interviews with NBC News, to air later Thursday, and with Bloomberg Businessweek, were the first since Cook took the reins at Apple from Steve Jobs, who died last year from cancer.

"Next year we're going to bring some production to the US," Cook told Businessweek.

"This doesn't mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we'll be working with people and we'll be investing our money."

Cook told NBC one of the existing Mac lines will be manufactured exclusively in the United States, which appeared to confirm rumors on some Apple-monitoring blogs saying people had seen iMacs inscribed with "Assembled in USA."

"We've been working for years on doing more and more in the United States," Cook told NBC.

Asked why Apple would not move out of China entirely and manufacture everything in the United States, Cook told NBC, "It's not so much about price, it's about the skills."

Cook also told the broadcaster that he hopes the new project will help spur other US firms to bring manufacturing back home.

"The consumer electronics world was really never here," he said. "It's a matter of starting it here."