This is not a veiled insinuation against Apple. It's just a question/thought.
With the modem being integrated into the SoC, it's not something that can be easily removed. Many IoT vendors and automakers have been adding modems and such that keep your device "always connected" and in a way that bypasses your home internet (where people can filter, log, block ads, etc).
Is the possibility of future surveillance a concern for people?
They currently get a pass on the “trust us, everything is end-to-end encrypted” without providing open access/verifiable toolchains. They are large and high profile enough that the public can trust that there are enough experts and nerds keeping an eye on them to hold them to their promises.
Adding a data exfiltration radio has some of the same verifiability, in that you could put an antenna next to the device and verify that it does/does not send signals. However it is only a matter of time before the radio cannot be fully disabled for some reason or another (oh we just turn on the radio to get guaranteed network time as part of our Trusted Cloud Experience that we secure you with!). Once that ship sails the devices will no longer be owned by the users and cannot be trusted.
>However it is only a matter of time before the radio cannot be fully disabled for some reason or another (oh we just turn on the radio to get guaranteed network time as part of our Trusted Cloud Experience that we secure you with!). Once that ship sails the devices will no longer be owned by the users and cannot be trusted.
Couldn't this same concern apply to Wi-Fi chips? I fail to see how cellular would change much here. If any company (Apple or anyone else) wanted to do something nefarious like this, they could already do it today.
But (while you're at home) you control the WiFi access point and so can still ultimately control the traffic. That isn't the case for cellular. Though I think that's ultimately a relatively minute difference. Once you're in that adversarial of a position with your hardware, you ought not trust it.
This has been discussed even on HN; a quick search would have answered your question. Just because your community can afford it doesn't mean everybody can:
> More than 83% of people in the U.S. access the internet on their smartphones, tablets, or other mobile devices. And these devices are the only means of internet connection for 15% of Americans. In general, because mobile access and wireline connections offer different speeds and functionality, consumers tend to view the two types of service as complementary and subscribe to both if they have the means.
A govt report (based on older data) points out that 20% of households have no household connectivity, and while various reasons are given ("don't need it" "can't afford it") the unconnected households tend to be the poorest, suggesting cost is a barrier: https://www.ntia.gov/blog/2022/switched-why-are-one-five-us-...
One of the reasons for going mobile-first, though these households have less spending money.
One of my co-workers who teleworks. He's in an apartment where they gate keep internet access with ridiculous fees. It's way cheaper to use his phone, so he does. And since he's in a dense urban area with ample 5G coverage, it's probably faster than the building provided internet.
> But (while you're at home) you control the WiFi access point and so can still ultimately control the traffic
Is this meaningfully true for anyone? Most people can’t view activity at all or block anything, but even people who have some of the skills aren’t going to be able to keep up with the flood of activity on a household network.
This is also a fool’s errand if you’re worried about the OS vendor. They have a ton of ways to bury the data (would you know if time.apple.com was getting your data one packet at a time?) and could subtly compromise other things (is this connection to an ad server snuggling out data in the TCP source port or cookies?). I think your last sentence is really the final word here: auditing can help, regulation can help, but I don’t think traffic monitoring is giving more than false confidence for this kind of advanced attack.
To both of your points, I think there are two different scenarios for which there are two very different answers.
For the those who are concerned about mass surveillance, tracking, etc, the fact that those of us who can view activity or block things don't see suspicious traffic is almost as valuable as doing it yourself. Kinda the same "many eyes" theory that applies to malicious code in open source, even if you can't check it yourself you benefit from those who can existing.
For those who are concerned about being the specific target of a government or major data company, if you don't have all the skills you're probably best off living like it's 1995.
If we're going full-on moustache twirling evil here, why would they use _your_ wifi?
Of course they know which networks are yours and you control them and might monitor them.
Your neighbour doesn't care about your data, nor the Starbucks you drive past to get to work. They could make the system connect to one of those and send its Secret Data Exfiltration Package using them.
Samsung has already done this with their TVs. If you don't connect it to a wifi,
iIt'll just find an open one and connect so it can load ads.
Almost every cable company has open wifi networks on their customer equipment. Right now I can see three such devices in my wifi. All Apple has to do is contract with Comcast, Cox, etc. and bam - as long as your wifi can see one of those companies open networks, the device can connect to these widely distributed wifi networks. Heck I'm pretty sure more than a few smart TVs already do this.
I’m staring at this POS fibergateway router modem with ISP locked down settings with permanent open public Wi-Fi access to ISP subscribers and fixed DNS IPs, who knows what else they can do remotely…
I think that's the future Apple sees and I agree with it. WiFi is an outdated technology with security flaws. Cellular is encrypted and maintained centrally. For indoor access all you need is an AP repeater and daisy chain that, unlike Wifi which needs to be configured, goes down, etc.
Wifi is in the same boat as the 3.5mm headphone jack
Excellent in what context? Cellular does more or less what WiFi does, but better. Connections are encrypted and centralized without a local network, less risk of security flaws and hacks, your security is not subject to the firmware and setup of the wifi router you are currently on.
I easily see this being a thing at some point where we discuss WiFi like its the fax machine. There's absolutely no need for WiFi if you have cellular + internet, it does everything better with less cost and maintenance. Makes no sense to have two chips doing the exact same thing on space-premium hardware such as iPhone
> the devices will no longer be owned by the users and cannot be trusted.
Apple has been moving in that direction for years though. In my humble opinion, I don't own any of my Apple devices since I can't even choose which version of Apple's OS to install, let alone install any software of my choosing, or third-party OS. They are proprietary appliances whose very usage is subject to Apple's continued blessing. Not that they're that different than any of their few competitors in these regards.
And once some sort of secure boot chain of trust verifies the radio component at startup time (just in case you're using a "modded" device), you won't be able to do even that.
If that's a concern for you: Most Apple devices already do this to some extent today, via the "Find my" network and Bluetooth LE advertisements – even if your device is "turned off".
There's nothing technical stopping Apple from transmitting all kinds of stuff over that interface, to their or somebody else's OTT network:
Amazon's Sidewalk network (originally based on LoRa, but it now also seems to support Bluetooth LE) supposedly covers 90% of the US population [1]; there's also the blockchain-based similar Helium Network, and probably some more I'm not aware of.
In other words: In my view, the ship of not having to trust a device vendor (or at least not as much) if it's not connected to the Internet has sailed.
I find those roughly equally dystopian, but there is something grotesque to me about my devices (hypothetically, since I don't have any) talking mesh with my neighbor's devices, and using his internet connection to exfiltrate the data about me since I blocked it with my router. They're both pretty gross though.
Hard to answer this question with specifics as sidewalk is still in development. Observations are my own, from when I developed devices using LoRa and nbiot.
In general, NB-IOT is operated by the cellular companies and has associated reliability expectations. Additionally the cruft leftover from it being a cellular product really added to complexity and cost to implement.
Unlicensed spectrum has much lower reliability, and I would expect them to charge less accordingly.
I don't think this is Apple's plan. It's more that Apple has been developing in house modem technology for years (they bought Intel's modem division in 2019) because they are reliant on Qualcomm for them in iPhones.
Once they have the capacity to build great modems and add it to their vertical integration/SoC process, it's another no brainer thing to add that makes their laptops best in class.
However, if it gets picked up by other tech companies then yes, expect your device to be always connected, even if it's against your will.
Yes and no. So on one hand you'd have to trust the vendor to allow you to control the connectivity (this is likely going to be the same model as iOS and watchOS devices -- unless you add a subscription it doesn't connect). On the other hand, you'd have to trust the vendor anyway, unless you diffuse and package your own silicon and write your own bring-up code and bootloader and OS, there are a rather lage amount of manufacturers you have to at least trust a little bit to get a functional experience.
I think the big difference here is that with a Car, you're primarily buying a device for driving yourself from one place to another, and everything else is extra. With a computer, you buy a device to compute, and with that is practically always some internet-connected requirement. Buying a Car without internet, or radio, or infotainment is fine (if you can find one) because the primary reason you want the thing is still intact. A computer without computing and without internet isn't very useful.
Depends on the type of device you're talking about. The company I work for installs batteries and solar on homes as part of its business and we were surprised to find cell modems starting to come installed inside the battery system we use most often - with no notice to us or apparent change in how the system operates. It's not for customer-accessible statistics/usage information, those still require a hardwired connection. We haven't been able to get a good answer from the company about why they started being installed.
Do you have any data on the costs? I can't find it now, but I remember seeing an estimate at around $5 per IoT device, which for some devices might double the cost but for others could easily pay for itself in delicious, nourishing data that can be used or sold for other things. I'd really love that number to be way lower than reality though.
Maybe the modem costs $5 but the service will be much more. These costs are negotiated and the people who get good deals won't talk about them so it's hard to say.
What's the difference? Your phone has all this stuff and most people have plenty of sensitive information on that and may even use it as their primary computing device.
At this point one wonders if there isn't some secret regulation that classifies computers as some kind of weapon and maybe these surveillance technologies aren't appearing in consumer devices, even being pushed on consumers by the media, as a random happenstance?
Tbh I don't expect a huge increase in surveillance ability. A computer is pretty useless these days when it's disconnected from the internet even without a 5G modem.
> Is the possibility of future surveillance a concern for people?
Yes! I keep my personal MBP unconnected from the internet most of the time using a physically separate computer acting as firewall, and allow only traffic from Firefox, Electrum and command line utilities to reach the Internet.
Integrated mobile internet in the laptop is convenient in a lot of cases, but for me a dealbreaker.
I think probably for a lot of the audience here they may keep sensitive stuff off their phones or not use them for "serious" computing but looking around that's not really where the market is.
New Kindles (those built in the last 3 or 4 years) don't have cellular connectivity as an option anymore. And owners can turn off the wifi at any time (commonly used to prevent libraries from ending the loans on their books).
I've had a laptop with a cellular modem for almost 4 years now and there's zero chance I'm ever going back to a laptop without one. Maybe framework next time around, if my laptop had some GPIOs too!? Heaven.
Why? I had it as well and never used it. Smartphones have much better reception, it's always there, press of a button to share the connection. When no smartphone, a tiny sim modem costs peanuts. You also need a separate data plan, for many carriers not so obvious or not really worth. I don't get sim trays in laptops.
Others are rightly pointing out "laptops are bigger so should have better reception" (assuming it's physically taking advantage of that, which most built-in do) but the modems in most laptops have been historically bad with the modems in phones top of the line (as well as often refreshed more often).
That's of course not a requirement, Apple could choose to put in the greatest modem they can make. That combined with good antenna design in the MacBooks should lead to significantly better reception. The limit of this is how good the modem is. Given how long they've let it slip my guess is they won't release it until it's very competitive, similar to how long they took to dump Intel despite the iPhone processors being competitive with the likes of the Intel m3 well before that. Time will tell on that one.
The other half of the story is Apple has already ditched SIMs for eSIMs in the iPhone. It'd be extremely odd if they then went backwards on this to put a SIM tray in the MacBook, a device they are regularly reluctant to include more than a couple of connectors on in the first place.
This. Zero friction, though I wouldn't say I'm a casual user, there's no way I'm setting up a tether on a 8 minute Uber. With my laptop I just pull it out of my bag and go.
Tethering on macOS is super easy, your phone is just in the list of WiFi access points at the top. Not any harder than picking a WiFi AP. Kinda prefer being in the loop here since cellular data is usually metered - and as another post said, it's also nice to have a single plan instead of dealing with separate billing.
I tether my iPhone to my macBook several times a day (going to and from work on the bus). I don't know if anyone else has this experience, but my laptop will instantaneously find 30+ WiFi access points I don't care about and never use, but can take up-to a minute to find my iPhone, sometimes even with repeated 'prodding'.
> there's no way I'm setting up a tether on a 8 minute Uber.
I swipe down my quick settings bar and tap the button labeled "Hotspot". I don't even have to unlock my phone. If I have time to get my laptop out I have time to do a single swipe and tap on my phone too.
For one, you don't need to have a SIM tray, many carriers offer eSIM and the number is only going up. Also, smartphones having better reception makes little sense. They're smaller and hence have smaller antennas, if you design a laptop with similar design principles in mind it will have better reception no questions asked simply by virtue of having a bigger antenna.
Maybe your smartphone has better reception than whatever laptop you had with a cellular connection, but generally a laptop should be able to get much better cellular reception than a smartphone since there is so much more space, and potentially energy budget to work with.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. I concur 100%. Everybody has a smarthone with a SIM card already in it and carries it around all the time. Connecting your Macbook to your iPhone is one click in your menu bar. Why do you need a SIM Card in your Macbook?
I mean, there might be some business (niche) use cases, but other than that?
It's the friction of the thing. Phones have a trash UI, I can just pull my laptop out of my bag and shitpost on hacker news whenever I want at 90wpm, you think I'm going to bother tethering just to reply to a HN comment on Caltrain? The UX of an always on the internet laptop is unparalleled.
sure, but I mean, we're just shifting the battery drain to the laptop now
the laptop has a bigger battery, obviously. but i'm trying to understand the Venn diagram of people who are willing to tote around a laptop, but not an external hotspot or extra battery pack to offset the extra battery drain on their phone, and need to do this for hours at a time with no AC power available, and are also willing to pay $20 a month for it or whatever the carrier charges
all I can really come up with is "businesses who issue laptops that need to stay connected to the internet and it's not feasible to expect employees to use their phones as hotspots"
and maybe "people doing mission critical shit who want the laptop cellular modem as a backup in case something happens to their phone or whatever"
It’s probably because he said phones have better reception; it’s almost impossible for that to be true unless the laptop takes pains to have just as small as an antenna as a phone would.
juggling? like you're walking around and using the laptop while physically tethered? that's unwieldy for sure!
but how often is that?
any time i've used my phone as a hotspot i was not walking around.
i'm not arguing that nobody ever needs this. i bet some do. also if cost is no obstacle of course it's better to have multiple options. i'm mostly responding to the commenters above that are aghast that there still aren't modems on Macbooks in 2023. i feel it's a very niche feature!
> When no smartphone, a tiny sim modem costs peanuts.
But it's also another device I need to keep charged, packed in my backpack etc.
I don't use one myself since I'm mostly using my laptop where there's Wi-Fi, so I only use my phone for tethering very rarely, but even then, the battery drain is somewhat annoying.
A neat idea for a Framework expansion module would be a little cell modem with SIM tray. Not sure how to do the antenna, though, since the area is mostly surrounded by metal. Certainly could have the module stick out or have a detachable antenna, but that's ugly and annoying.
> Users who exceed 50 GB of data usage (across all their devices) will have their data speeds slowed to 256 kbps for the remainder of their billing cycle, unless they opt out and choose to be charged for additional full speed data usage at $10 per GB.
According to Google, it looks like that "unlimited" plan is 50 GB and then slowed to 256 kbps (basically useless). It isn't unlimited with lower priority after 50 GB. It's basically just limited to 50 GB given how useless 256 kbps is.
It's not common with mainstream US carriers on phone plans. It's common with MVNOs (virtual network operators).
On phone plans, carriers generally let a customer use unlimited low-priority data. If it's 3am and no one is using the network or you're in a location with plenty of capacity, your speeds are good. If there's a lot of people using the network, your speeds can vary since others get priority over you.
There's a big difference between "we prioritize other customers before you" and "you'll never exceed 256 kbps." The first kind still feels like unlimited for most people. It might mean getting 5 Mbps instead of 25 Mbps when there's a lot of network congestion, but most of the time you're just getting regular speeds and don't notice anything. I'd certainly notice 256 kbps.
MVNOs often throttle connections because they're usually paying for data on a per-GB basis from a network. Carriers can give their customers as much data as they want when the network isn't congested because it doesn't really cost them anything if you're using what would otherwise be unused bandwidth.
Are you using a socketed WWAN card? You could probably fanangle that into an M.2 slot (or god forbid a Framework expansion card) with a little bit of software tinkering.
> I've had a laptop with a cellular modem for almost 4 years now and there's zero chance I'm ever going back to a laptop without one.
As others have already said, why ?
For me and most other tech-savvy people, the order of preference for connectivity will always be:
- Ethernet cable
- WiFi
- 4G/5G Hotspot
WiFi will generally always be faster and less-contended than a hotspot because the speed of the WiFi connection is almost always only constrained by the speed of the local internet connection.
However, as anyone who spent time during COVID working off a hotspot will tell you, mobile networks are unpredictable. Speed varies depending on how many people are using "your" mast. And then if the emergency services turn up in your area, you'll be automatically kicked off because their SIM cards give them priority over other network users and the network infrastructure will automatically kick off other network users as the emergency services demand ramps up.
Finally the places where you actually NEED a hotspot are decreasing by the day. Cafés, libraries, train stations, etc. etc. .... they all have WiFi these days. It is now rarer to NOT have in-flight WiFi than it is to have acces to it. And in some countries (e.g. Japan) you have WiFi on all long-distance train services.
I suppose maybe if you are a salesdroid or an engineer and frequently visiting third-party premises where you may or may not have guest access to the WiFi ... that's probably the only real need that will consistently remain. But even then, your employer probably pays for your work smartphone already, so you could just use the hotspot like everyone else and not require your employer to have a second SIM card subscription.
I'm in one of the techiest cities in the U.S. Public Wi-fi is widely available. I don't use it due to friction. Here's what has to happen at a cafe in my neighborhood if I wanted to use their Wifi:
1. Ask for the password (sometimes it's on my coffee receipt, sometimes not)
2. Open laptop, logon to Wifi, enter password. (if not already saved from last time; but every new location has a different password so you end up having to enter passwords anyway)
3. Open up Cisco VPN (because Wifi is not safe, especially those open ones without passwords).
4. Start browsing (and discover that Wifi is pretty slow in some shops because they misconfigured their router or there are too many people on Wifi. Public Wifi is iffy in many places like on Amtrak trains or in US airports).
What I actually do today: (anywhere, car, coffee shop, random location in middle of nowhere with cell signal)
1. Open laptop, click connect to iPhone (unlimited plan), get 5G speeds, no VPN needed. I would need to carry a phone charger or battery pack because tethering mode drains my phone quickly.
Easy. Business people, who travel a lot and need their laptop to always be synced and connected 100% of the time, and not waste time dicking around with hotspot tethering which nukes you phone's battery life or looking for some shabby public wifi hotspot.
Time is money and the zero friction and the confidence your machine is always online is a huge point to the suits (or other professions who need travel on-site like inspectors, engineers, architects, etc).
And as I said, WiFi is fast reaching the point where it is as ubiquitous as running water.
And as for "shabby public WiFi", if you are referring to security then that is what VPNs were invented for (and 4G/5G can be monitored too). Also quality wise public WiFi is not as "shabby" as it used to be.
As I also made clear, 4G/5G is not a magical panacea, it is subject to variable speeds, contention and you being kicked-off by the emergency services.
I'm not saying I never use hotspot. I'm saying I find myself using it far less then I ever used to. Indeed on my last business trip I didn't have a need to use it at all because the WiFi everywhere was so good.
You're talking from a pretty biased pov of a bubble.
Public wifi is definetly not ubiquous everywhere in every country, and even when it is you need to have the right credentials or it has annoying dark patterns requiring you to click through various steps before you can get online (if it works reliably in the first place), and there's a niche of people for whom such friction or issues are unacceptable from a business standpoint and their company is more than happy to pay a second SIM to ensure their laptop is always connected the moment the lid is opened to save time and friction.
I get it it's not for you, but it's definetly for other people who values it.
For example on the train network in my country, there's free wifi but it's so overloaded that using LTE tethering is much faster and reliable, and having that built in the laptop is even better for work, and that's why many business people get this feature on laptops.
Imagine you are late or miss your important online call/meeting/presentation because you were faffing about with flaky public wifi instead of having built-in LTE connectivity.
YES, hot-spot from your phone is a thing, but that's an extra annoying friction: Do I have enough battery on my phone to use it for the next hours? Did my hotpsot turn off automatically before and I need to restart it?
> You're talking from a pretty biased pov of a bubble.
You are in danger of crossing the line into personal insult territory there.
You don't know me. You don't know my travel patterns. You don't even know what my line of work is. So I suggest you don't accuse me of working in a biased bubble.
Nah. You need to take into account other factors for real-world usage.
First, their use of a modem is not 'a hotspot' so your comparison (and personal pain points) aren't really comparable.
Some reasons for preferring cellular modem on laptop:
- battery life drain on the phone/hotspot device (and if plugged in, reduces ones ability to freely use the phone)
- security issues of cafes and other public wifi
- no need to turn off/on hotspot
- Your personal experience about emergency service use of local cell or availability of wifi on transit is different than others
- an additional SIM isn't necessarily a subscription but just from the same pool of data
How is ethernet preferable to wireless unless just speaking of speed?
My experience with public WiFi is that it is universally garbage.
Tethering to my phone I get around 150-600 Mbit, a solid connection.
Public Wi-fi is usually like... 10 Mbit. And then after 30 minutes suddenly the traffic stops, breaking what I was doing and I have to click some usage agreement again.
Lots of public Wi-fi in smaller cafes/bars and stuff now is actually just backed by a 5G hotspot now as it's cheaper (no installation fees etc) so it's strictly worse than using my own plan.
I don't even try with Wi-Fi anymore outside of the home. I use about 70 GB/mo on my unlimited data plan.
Naw, I'm just a freelancer. It's simply that convenient that it's worth $30/mo, I often find myself using it in places where there's WiFi because it provides a much more consistent experience than public internet, especially what's available on transit. I don't use it for any business reason, I just like the UX of a computer way more than a phone, and I find the internet useful, especially when accessed through a real computer and not the abomination that is a mobile OS in 2023 (or any previous year).
Wild takes coming out against this, like bruh, I made this choice and I am posting about how much it's useful. You're not going to facts and logic your way into me being wrong about my subjective experience of a product.
With another mandatory $30/mo data plan I'm sure. You can already tether to your iPhone from the Mac with a single click, so I won't be running to buy this just yet.
For real, I'd love to have a cellular modem in my laptop/tablet but the hassle and high cost of adding an extra "line" to my already expensive cell plan for something I only want to use intermittently has always turned me off. I could go prepaid, but then I have to worry about that on top of it also being expensive and convoluted. Tethering to my phone is gonna win every time when those are my options.
I'm not the OP but I guess that if you buy an iPad with a modem you do actually want to use said modem otherwise you'd just buy the cheaper WiFi one. Hence the data plan.
Though I always use prepay on them.. for a tenner you get a month's worth with 50GB here which is more than sufficient for a holiday.
IMO Apple needs to become a MVNO and offer a combined device plan that connects all your devices. $70 a month or something for unlimited voice, data across all device, and AppleOne for every device would be amazing deal and the lock in effects would be tremendous
That’s the thing, besides the hardware, there would need to be a lot of work in the OS (and maybe apps to some extent).
The assumption of unlimited data transfer is pervasive on non-mobile (we need a better name for that, something that encompasses desktop and laptop. PC?)
That work was all done around 2015 or so. MacOS has had the concept of a Metered Connection for many years now. The first party software all behaves as you would expect, and there are APIs that expose the information to third party software as well.
Can you elaborate? Never heard of such a thing. If anything, macOS seems to be loosing network features, such as the network location casualty in the recent System Preferences -> Settings reboot.
I don't know if that will be enough, though. iOS has more granular settings for cellular data than a simple toggle. How will it reduce data usage? What services are allowed?
There’s a low data mode which is supposed to prevent it from downloading unnecessary stuff until you’re on an unmetered connection, but I have no clue how well supported it is, especially by third party software
Depends on what you do. When I'm out in public on my laptop, I'm not browsing the internet so much as I'm coding, and I only really use the internet to google things and use ChatGPT
On a desktop OS software is more likely to try to auto-update large software packages in the background (think auto-updating the 6 GB of Photoshop, 100 GB games in Steam...), whereas software on a smartphone OS is more aware of what is a "cheap" data connection or an expensive one. macOS does have this concept but I would be that most third-party software doesn't check.
I'll just say, I've had my laptop connecting to my phone on tethering 24x7 for years now, since before the pandemic, on a relatively low cost unlimited data contract. I use cellular for both my home and office internet connections, as well as when travelling. My Macbook knows to connect to my Android phone automatically.
Latency isn't great, but everything else works pretty well. I've done a few remote jobs and contracts just fine since using this setup. All the usual daily video standups, meetings, Git, remote builds, etc. No other internet unless there's something convenient where I travel to. At home I terminated the ADSL I used previously, because its bandwidth was worse, usually, and I decided it wasn't worth the cost of the line. I miss the better latency though. At the office I tried to get ADSL (actually FTTC), but the providers were unable to offer above 17 Mbit/s despite being a town centre building, compared with 90 Mbit/s over cellular on a good day, so I stayed with cellular for the office too.
Tethering is so automatic and convenient nowadays that I relate to the folks who don't see a point paying for a second cellular contract just for convenience. I never have my Macbook without my phone nearby, and connection is automatic. There are occasions when a large antenna might work better, though, if the laptop is well designed.
Someone wrote an interesting point that phones get newer cellular standards more quickly than laptops in practice. This is surely true when using very expensive Macbooks! I can imagine having great cellular connectivity in a laptop when it's new, and five years later finding the same laptop communicates over tethering faster than natively. I've seen enormous variation in the bandwidth achieved by different devices already: ~90 Mbit/s on my last phone, vs ~18 Mbit/s on a dedicated 4G hotspot of the same era.
You make a good point about cellular tech moving quickly especially given how long people keep laptops (5-7 years) vs phones (2-3). The average laptop will be paired with 2-3 phones.
On the other hand antitheft or protection against loss is a useful add-on and a contract to enable it might cost apple little as it would see little use per unit.
Given that Apple has struggled to get modems working (while avoiding qualcomm's patents) this is still pie in the sky, much as I would appreciate this.
I have hotspot on my phone and it’s handy, but has some friction. Computer and ipad go into “limited data” mode when using it. Also, unlike my phone data, I am only given a finite allotment and when used up additional amounts are quite expensive (USA - AT&T).
A couple of months ago I was on a trip and signed up for mobile service for my ipad, for these reasons. It is so much more convenient that I renewed the subscription. I’d do the same for my computer just for the low friction, if I can get an unlimited tariff like I have on my phone and watch.
It might be easier to install their modem to the Mac than iPhone. Higher power consumption is acceptable. No need to phone call (including emergency call). No need to support 3G/2G.
3G/2G is still needed to get coverage in many areas here. Especially 3G. 2G is so slow that it's hardly better than no data (all apps start pumping data and overload the connection).
2G won't be phased out here due to millions of electricity meters using it. In fact there's talk of phasing out 3G and keeping 2G :)
It's better to have 3G/2G than nothing for a phone especially for calling, but perhaps it's reasonable to omit 3G/2G for a Mac for average use case, though it may be fine for reading HN.
Analog is hard, especially when connecting to other devices not made by you. Plus they have to invent solutions that don't infringe on Qualcomm patents.
For some reason Apple bought Intel's modem division that had also failed and added it to their team. I'd have understood if they'd bought just Intel's IP portfolio, but no, they took the whole team and added them to a project in process. It's hard to see how that could speed anything up.
I agree the M series is great. In fact Apple's silicon story for the last 15 years has been quite good -- in contrast to their 80s/90s silicon efforts (apologies to my friends who worked there then).
Why do I want this? I can tether my phone already. Building in a modem just gives cell networks another chance to charge you for another data plan (when I already have unlimited on my phone). Am I missing something?
> Building in a modem just gives cell networks another chance to charge you for another data plan
Google Fi, at least, doesn't charge any extra for a cell modem: you can get a secondary SIM card and it gets billed exactly the same as using data on your phone.
Yeah, I'm also on Google Fi and I'd get this just for the convenience factor of not having to turn on tethering on my phone and not burning its battery down while I'm connected.
(That depends on how much it adds to the purchase price though. $100? You bet. $300? Nah.)
Last I checked (over a year ago) I think Google Fi wasn’t fully supported with Apple devices? I can’t recall the details, but I distinctively remember being disappointed the service sort of had a “for best experience, use an android device” component to it.
Their service doesn't support 5G on any Apple devices. My kids only have LTE on their iPads despite the modem having the capability.
I will say that tethering on my phone works in a situation where LTE doesn't work well. However the convenience of not having to worry about connectivity is worth the extra cost for the cellular iPad. I never wanted to be that parent, but it is the path of least friction since my oldest has a lot of acronym mental health issues.
You might not want this but businesses might. Rather than have to reimburse an employee's phone or provide a phone they can provide a cellular equipped device for users that regularly work outside the office but still need internet support.
My companies entire sales force, some thousand-ish so of them. They have laptops and iPads, but we don't issue phones. They just get plan reimbursement.
It's so you don't have to tether your phone. It might cost you another data plan, but it makes it very convenient to just open your laptop and start browsing the internet in the train or something.
This sounds a lot like naysayers when Apple decided to ditch the audio port on iPhones. Why would I want bluetooth audio, I can connect my headphones to my phone already. Of course, there are people out there who still prefer that, but most people these days use bluetooth headphones/earbuds.
I don't see the comparison here. You had bluetooth audio + the headphone jack. Then they took away one of your options. In this case they are adding an option and not taking anything away.
This may be true technically, but it's also pretty irrelevant. You can step into any gym or what have you and regardless of whether they're on Android or iPhone, most everyone uses bluetooth audio.
I wonder the same thing about cellular iPads sometimes because I have a hard time seeing a case where you'd have an iPad with you but not your phone to make some connection sharing. My supposition is that this might just for convenience: no need to worry about your phone battery life, for instance. I'm also curious about whether I'm missing something tho.
Most people barely understand the differences between WiFi and cellular, and the number that can start a hotspot and connect without it being a 'stressful computer problem' is a lot fewer than you would expect. Like, painfully fewer.
If we're talking about the Apple ecosystem, you don't need to start a hotspot.
When you have an iPhone and MacBook nearby that are on the same Apple ID, the Mac shows a little notification "Connect to the Internet through <phone name>?" with the default button being OK, which instructs the phone to turn on the hotspot and the Mac to connect to it.
The phone also just shows up as another Wi-Fi network in the Wi-Fi menu alongside all the other networks, even if hotspot isn't on, using the same mechanism of letting the Mac remotely configure the hotspot.
You could say this about any component of the laptop. "I can connect a USB webcam. Why do I need a camera built-in." Convenience, compactness, cost, battery life, reliability, etc.
Tethering doesn't always work. I've experienced numerous failures even trying to pair a Macbook to an iPhone.
Besides that:
Phones will turn off tethering if they think the connection is idle, to save battery power. iPhones are very aggressive about this when the client device is not an Apple device.
Some cell networks don't support simultaneous voice and data usage, so a phone call will kick you offline.
It adds latency.
Some network operators charge for it because they can distinguish the tethered traffic.
Latency is lower with a built in modem. IME the lag that a phone wifi network and an extra layer of routing adds is noticeable for certain things like RDP.
Yes, you're missing convenience. Tethering my phone to my laptop is possible, but annoying to set up, debug, etc. It also burns the battery of the device with the smaller battery, which is the opposite of how it should work.
This is another one of those "Dropbox is just rsync+cron" takes: convenience, ease and integration are worth a lot to people.
Convenience matters only if it's a worthy goal in the first place though. A cellular connection just sucks compared to wifi, so whenever possible one wants to be on wifi. It's totally reasonable for "the inferior option in case of emergency" to not be very convenient.
It can be nice for carriers that don’t allow/support tethering under some circumstances. Google Fi for example says that tethering won’t work internationally in some cases, but offers free data-only SIM cards which works around that nicely.
It’s also just nice to not need to break out a cable.
A built-in cell modem in Macbooks also means additional partnerships with telcos like with the iPhone, iPad, and Watch. Right now there's a clear line between a telco and an Apple laptop. With cell enabled devices, telcos can sell a lucrative "subsidy as a lock in" discount.
Essentially everything in my home and office is an Apple product, but it is rather surreal that this isn't already a baked-in option on Apple laptops in the year of our lord 2023. I think an employer first handed me a mobile plug-in card for my laptop in about 2007, which worked surprisingly really well given the technology of that long-ago era. Given that this is a company that is one of the dominant players in phones and that they long ago put the same technology in iPads, it just seems like a huge oversight.
It is not an oversight, it is a hard technical problem if they want to avoid paying Qualcomm. Which is not worth the cost right now because most people have wifi or phones they can tether to.
Maybe in 10 or 15 years when Qualcomm patents expire, it will be cheap enough to add as a feature.
It is extremely sad how few laptops and mobile computers in general have modems. I'm hoping that Apple doing this in their laptops will push more PC laptop manufacturers to do it, since they have a penchant for copying Apple for some reason.
P.S.: Dear Apple, please make sure the audio routing works too, so it can make phone calls. That's the part that people really need to copy.
My understanding is that Qualcomm charges a percentage of the total device price and tries to bundle sales of other components, too. That would really discourage designs with integrated modems unless you were certain a large percentage of buyers would want to pay a premium for that feature.
I mean, getting an unlimited data cellular plan in America can be less than $50/mo. I think Simple Mobile (an MVNO of T-Mobile) offers a decent plan at around $30/mo. Maybe it's far cheaper elsewhere, but that honestly doesn't seem too unreasonable to me. (Also, my current cellphone plan offers multiple data SIMs for free with my regular plan.)
In London, with few exceptions, the cellular connectivity is better than whatever horrendous WiFi your hotel/restaurant/train/etc. has. The only time WiFi is sometimes better is in cool underground bars and such where there’s no cellular signal whatsoever.
Hell it’s better than most people’s home internet. My home internet is 1.1Gb/s at the wall, but once you factor in the WiFi in a dense urban environment with a brick wall house, I’m lucky if I get 150Mb/s. Meanwhile 5G from my bedroom easily clears 500Mb/s.
WiFi isn't available everywhere. Even when it is, it can be pretty unreliable or require you to enter information into sketchy captive portals. In general, for a mobile computer, mobile data is quite useful.
If you only use your laptop at home, then it's not terribly useful. But then at that point you might be better off with a desktop computer.
Qualcomm charges licensing fees based on the price of the device being sold. This has been the source of Apple's issue with them for years now [1].
If Apple were to package their laptop line with Qualcomm powered cell modems, I have to imagine the prices required would really take people aback, hence why they're so steadfast in trying to create their own modem.
As for why it's better than tethering, it just works without having to do anything. For some users who are always on the go, that's a huge convenience. Also, tethering eats at the cellular device's battery, which is usually a lot smaller than the battery we lug in our laptops.
I don't think satellite comms are on any sort of track to meaningfully replace cellular ones. Everything I've seen in that vein is more supplementary to the existing networks, rather than trying to completely replace it.
The sticking point is paying Qualcomm for the modems, because their terms take a % of the total device sale for each device sold with one. When you're talking about $5000 laptops that's a huge amount of money.
That doesn't seem to stop more cost sensitive manufacturers like Dell. Maybe other manufacturers just make an SKU for an NGFF module and Qualcomm's cut comes from that?
That's just a part. You can also buy a USB-C modem for a MacBook.
And being cost-conscious is part of what makes it affordable to sell the integrated machine, since you're paying a % of the product cost. The total take for Qualcomm is smaller, and Dell can still make money selling device management solutions to its customers.
At the heart of the Apple-Qualcomm dispute was the no-license, no-chips policy where Qualcomm won't give you their chips if you don't agree to their license terms. If you want FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) license terms, you don't get Qualcomm's modems. Apple needs Qualcomm's modems for their phones. Dell doesn't have a phone business so they can just use the Intel modems. As an aside, it does look like the laptops which have the modem as an option are $2,000+ for a laptop inferior to what Apple sells for $1,800 (slower processor, less hard drive space, same RAM, garbage 250 nit display).
It's always hard to tease apart enterprise deals since everything is negotiable. Maybe Apple struck a deal with Qualcomm that they'd agree to no-license/no-chips for the iPhone and iPad, but it excluded other categories like laptops. We simply don't know.
LTE/5G laptops are a small segment and data plans are still very expensive. Maybe a few people have gotten a nice unlimited deal, but carriers generally don't want people using lots of data at this point in time. Consumers generally don't want to be spending another monthly fee on their laptop either. It's a bit of a niche market at present. Maybe Apple is hoping to grow it out of a niche if they're able to do it cheaply. Maybe carriers are telling Apple that they are feeling confident about their network capacity in 2028 so it makes the most sense to launch then.
If Apple is launching a 5G laptop, they are going to want to do it with carrier partners who have an easy plan ready for consumers. If that plan is "50GB for $50/mo and then you're throttled to an unusable speed," that isn't something that Apple is going to want to promote to their users. If we're talking about 2028, carriers might feel differently about their network capacity.
Companies like Dell often target niches that Apple doesn't target. Apple creates a select few high-volume configurations. Right now, few people want a cellular modem in their laptop.
There's also a lot more room, heat, antenna routing, and power budget in a laptop. They can have something functional, but just generally less efficient (for assorted values of "efficiency") that will work fine in a laptop, but not necessarily in a cell phone form factor.
> What's the advantage over just attaching to one's cell phone?
Drains the phone battery for one.
The real target of this is enterprise customers. MacBooks are expensive. Being able to track them (oh, while adding that many devices to the FindMy network) would be a win for the companies investing in them.
The closest thing I remember to this is during COVID lockouts, the schools would have WiFi in the parking lot so that kids without internet at home could be driven to school and work in their cars. Never made good sense to me, if a family doesn't have internet at home how likely are they to have an adult with a car who can sit with a kid in the school parking lot all day?
Given schoolwork is now done so ubiquitously on a computer/online, and especially after the pandemic, a lot of districts/schools have had to present solutions for connectivity for families, because of financial need and otherwise. Source: am school tech admin
For sure, that makes sense to me, but it seems like Chromebooks have cornered the market for this kind of work by being cheap, easy, and targeting this demo.
Kids also don't have a great reputation with treating tech that isn't their own with respect, based on my experience in high school.
Isn't buying each student a connected macbook and data plan kind of pricey? Most school already suffer from poor funding/low budget, this seems like it would be painful.
Our school district has an in-between approach: they buy cheaper devices (ChromeBooks and iPads) without cellular connections but they have Wi-Fi hotspots they’ll give to qualifying students who wouldn’t otherwise have access.
My hope is that more voters will see municipal Wi-Fi as a valuable utility since we have dark fiber all over the city because they’re choosing not to compete with Verizon.
The hybrid phone-table-laptop takes another small step. I've been expecting this feature for a while. Our phones are becoming tables. Our tables are becoming laptops. Our laptops are becoming mobile.
My iPad connects to the internet quite seamlessly via bluetooth tethering through my iPhone, so I could cheap out and get the Wi-Fi model (and not pay for an additional monthly mobile plan). They could make this even more transparent and seamless, easily, why stick a piece of hardware instead?
Because their investment in acquiring Intel's modem division is resulting in an uncompetitive product and they need an excuse to pretend to use it?
Maybe they are targeting MacBooks as a warm up act?
If the chip consumes 3x as much power as a competing chip, it's more likely people won't notice on a laptop than a cell phone. If signal isn't quite as good, again people might not notice.
Only like 10% of these chips will ever get used at all, by anyone, if they are in laptops. Targeting laptops first seems like an obvious & lower risk choice.
I've been living the #vanlife for the past year and though this would be great for my MacBook, cellular Hotspot data plan caps (50GB usually) will need to be updated. I actually have two SIMs/phones to serve as hotspots because of this. If Apple does launch this feature, I would bet it comes with some special carrier announcements as well.
5G is truly like living in the future, but there's nothing like forgetting to disconnect and having your Mac think it's on real WiFi and happily download some massive update in the background using up a sizeable chunk of data, leading to the dreaded over the limit text message. Same for Office, Chrome and a bunch of other stuff I've tried to track down, but something always seems to slip through.
Here's a pro tip: Non-hotspot cellular data on AT&T is actually really unlimited without slowdown after 50GB, and doesn't contribute to the hotspot data cap. My 5G Samsung can cast its screen to laptops or a Samsung tablet (which I also have). I thus realized when I'm streaming movies at night, I can just do it on my phone using cellular data and cast the result to the larger tablet screen in full HD (like you can to a TV) and not worry about the data caps.
(BTW, there are Android hacks which try to get around the carrier hotspot flag/detection to avoid the caps, but the carriers seem to be packet sniffing so they don't really work.)
edit: i really think the only thing is perhaps monopoly or anti-trust questions. it just makes so much long-term sense. free streaming of apple music. an even more robust find-my network. free cloud backup. or maybe they'll just use all the interconnected devices to make some sort of p2p cell network.
Two reactions: on one hand, it's nice that I don't have to tether and waste my phone battery – it's a good use of Apple putting things on-die; on the other hand, I don't need another source of tracking. Perhaps I'd err on the side of caution and disconnect the antenna.
I have two free unlimited lines going unused.[1] It would be great if, once these MacBooks are available (hopefully sooner than 2028), I will be able to put one of those lines to use in one.
[1] Sprint/T-Mobile free line offers in 2020 and 2023
I'm very excited for this. Does anyone remember the Sony Vaio P series of laptops that had this capability? You had to insert those huge cellular adapters. It was such a dream of portability well ahead of its time.
I rarely do anymore. Everyone I know calls me on telegram or WhatsApp. And from 4G onwards phone calls are simply voice over IP too so why not. It's the same thing.
There are a lot of comments saying “but you already have a phone”, but if they (Apple) came out with a laptop that had good cellular service, I might just get rid of my phone. (Or maybe replace it with a dumb phone)
The reason I want this so much is so that I can leave my phone at home. If there's a reason to have Internet access, there's reason to have zero phone access.
I use my phone mostly for tethering internet, so being able to connect directly to 4G from the laptop or pass calls would be great for me (tho not on a mac)
Have any manufacturers shipped a (modern) laptop with an integrated modem? This seems like a feature that would have an outsized positive impact on UX, given how simple it sounds.
Today, I can connect to a person hot-spot or coffee shop wifi, but that's Another Step and many wifi hotspots like to boot me if I close the lid, even for a short time. Having a laptop that's seamlessly connected at all times would be seriously cool. Harder to lose when always connected (Find My), too.
Every Thinkpad I've bought in the past 15 years has had an integrated modem option. I don't travel much so I've never bought it, but it seems to be a common option for business laptops. I've definitely seen others using them.
WWAN on laptops? Sure. It's just an M.2 card, couple lines wired from M.2 to SIM slot, 2-3 extra antennas, and requisite radio certifications. Windows supports WWAN cards natively.
I think the two largest blockers to WWAN on laptops are: handling of SIM card, and complexity of setting up wireless contracts. Which aren't _that_ complex, but scary enough to make target demographic hesitate. Apple WWAN would use eSIM, and certainly an easy signup through an included assistant app that could change the equation.
> Have any manufacturers shipped a (modern) laptop with an integrated modem?
Still pretty common in a lot of business focused models. And I believe some big corps with a lot of travel & security concerns still have custom models made for them with specific cell systems built in and centrally administered. Saves ever having to answer the question : should I connect to this network....
The problem has always been that old cellular infrastructure isn't designed for having multiple devices on a single line. That is changing with the Apple Watch (which requires such technology) - but it's also why Apple Watch is not available on almost any MVNOs.
Not exactly related, but who is Mark Gurman, and how does he have access to all the information he leaks? High-level Apple exec, or assistant, or sysadmin? Or a puppet of Apple’s marketing department?
Apple acquired the team who made their in-house chips, PA Semi, back in 2008! Took quite a while to get good enough at it to go toe to toe with Intel and AMD. Even though they were able to license cores and designs.
[edit] Similarly, they acquired the modem business from Intel in 2019 (along with 2200 employees) so 'from scratch' may be a touch strong. [1]
With the modem being integrated into the SoC, it's not something that can be easily removed. Many IoT vendors and automakers have been adding modems and such that keep your device "always connected" and in a way that bypasses your home internet (where people can filter, log, block ads, etc).
Is the possibility of future surveillance a concern for people?