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4G MacBook
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ATT blocks the feature and will not unblock it on unlimited data iPhones. Even with my iPad data plan I had to ask them to unblock (which they did).
Of course it would be great to have this option like we have the choice for a faster cpu or a bigger storage so you pay $100 extra and you get the cellular Mac.
I don't think is going to happen, but it would be good.
I wouldn't buy a 4G Mac since I can share the connection from my iPhone, but I like choices
I don't think is going to happen, but it would be good.
I wouldn't buy a 4G Mac since I can share the connection from my iPhone, but I like choices
what you mean they unblocked your iPad data plan???
i have a unlimited iPad plan too, but now it seems i have to use a mifi device with my macbook, which sucks and is risky.
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it's not seamless.
with iPad, when i wanna check something online, i just flip the cover, launch safari or whatever, and here we go. i can finish the entire process and be reading contents in less than 5 seconds.
with macbook, i gotta flip it open (which is the same), check wifi connection, wait a second for instant hotspot to pop up, and wait another 5-10 second for it to connect to my iPhone. and only then i can start to browse the web.
of course you can say this extra 10, 15 seconds is nothing, but it's just the different between immediate and after-a-while. definitely the experience on iPad can be called 'seamless'.
simply put, it's the difference between i AM connected and i CAN BE connected.
In my opinion it would be a great option. But i have accepted long ago that apple probably played with the idea and then decided that they will not offer it on notebooks. And why would they? If you're a normal apple customer you will have one or more iPhones and hopefully an iPad or two as well which can serve as your hotspot. If not you should buy those items anyway.
Personally i would love to have an international 4G option on the rMB and would have ordered it that way.
Personally i would love to have an international 4G option on the rMB and would have ordered it that way.
Why? You can easily just turn your iPhone in to a wireless modem or use a 4G dongle/modem.
If you add cellular to a laptop, battery life will be reduced, you'll require further aerials and much more. Unnecessary.
Besides, nearly everywhere I go these days you can easily find some kind of access to wifi.
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/1...macbook-pro-with-integrated-3g-cellular-data/
Never say never
They thought about it at one point!Quote from that article:
"One of the most requested features for Apple's MacBook Pro line has been for the integration of some sort of built-in 3G cellular data to allow for anywhere wireless connectivity. MacBook Pro users presently need to purchase a separate Mi-Fi or 3G USB Modem in order to keep their machines connected to the internet when not near a Wi-Fi hotspot."
One of the most requested features back in 2011. surely still is?
I appreciate OS X is not optimised for mobile broadband and would chew through data, but I cling to hope we will see a 4/5/whatever G MacBook in the future. Pardon my ignorance, I didn't realise this topic had been discussed in such depth before.
And looking really far, won't mobile broadband replace wired internet/cable/wifi one day anyway?
"One of the most requested features for Apple's MacBook Pro line has been for the integration of some sort of built-in 3G cellular data to allow for anywhere wireless connectivity. MacBook Pro users presently need to purchase a separate Mi-Fi or 3G USB Modem in order to keep their machines connected to the internet when not near a Wi-Fi hotspot."
One of the most requested features back in 2011. surely still is?
I appreciate OS X is not optimised for mobile broadband and would chew through data, but I cling to hope we will see a 4/5/whatever G MacBook in the future. Pardon my ignorance, I didn't realise this topic had been discussed in such depth before.
And looking really far, won't mobile broadband replace wired internet/cable/wifi one day anyway?
i don't think so. even with 5/6/7/8g, the cell should always be connected to backbone network via wired fiber. wired connection, say fiber, is always more reliable and faster then wireless technology. so when we get to the time of say 8g, the wired home broadband would still be there and be much faster than cellular connection.
It's interesting that some people say of course it's a good idea, while others say it is a rediculous idea and will never happen
And yet the naysayers still haven't given a logical conclusion as to why Apple still actively chooses to omit such a highly requested feature.
If the iPad has one, why shouldn't the MacBook? You could say that you could just use your iPhone for you iPad...
For one, I don't like interacting with one device just to be able to use another. You can't just leave the iPhone's hotspot on - it has to be unlocked and on that screen for you to connect it (not seamless at all). Two, there may be situations where conserving phone battery is more important than conserving laptop battery. Three, people will obviously pay for it.
I'll admit I own a Verizon iPad Air that I don't have a data plan with. I find it unnecessary as my iPhone does 90% of what I'd do on my iPad, so my iPad rarely even gets taken anywhere anyway. But, I could see myself getting much more done on a laptop than my phone so I would welcome all connectivity options.
Well, 4G is already way faster at peak than most household's ISP internet connection.
So I don't think that argument holds water.
I'm still thinking that the reasoning behind the long term decision to not have it as an option is usage patterns, and OS.
By usage patterns I mean form factor and usage. With a laptop, when you open it you typically aren't just grabbing it to check something quickly, you are likely settling in for a more engaged and focused or prolonged session, and you are much more likely to either be sitting down somewhere stationary, not on your feet.
With the iPad, and even more, an iPhone, your interactions are typically much shorter, more casual, and instantaneous, so your connection needs to be too.
In addition you've got OS X that is not optimised at all for mobile data - it would absolutely chew through a typical data plan, and probably irritate the heck out of people.
I don't know, take it for what it is, but I think as far as Apple goes, they've made their decision on cellular capable Macbooks for the foreseeable future.
4G faster than most people's internet? i don't think so.
first we have to be clear, how to define people's home internet? it should not be the speed of the plan they choose, instead, it should be the max speed available in their region.
why? because people sometimes don't use the fastest internet they can get for economic reasons. it's just the difference in ways how cable company and cellular carrier charge people.
if someone choose 10mbps instead of 100 which is also available for him, it's very unlikely for him to use LTE to replace his home internet.
so, after we clarify that, it's much easier to compare. the theoretical max speed for now, is 150mbps. while for home internet, there are even 2g connections. and even using traditional cable service, you get theoretical 300+.
also, we all know theoretical speed for wireless connection, no matter it's wifi or LTE or whatever, is very 'theoretical'. you're NEVER gonna get speed even near that. but for wired connection, gigabit for example, usually you get at least 900 or 950+ if you are using the right equipments.
also, wireless connection is very unreliable. for wired connection, you control how many users in your service area. say you have one small community, you know how many people will be there, and you build enough backbone network capacity for that. so no matter what people do, it's unlikely they will suffer from congestion. but cellular? you never know many people are coming to your area, because everything is mobile. so you either spend an excessive amount of money to build a super high volume network, or you have to suffer from network congestion sometimes.
at last, you know cellular is still connected to a wired network right? it's just like thousands of people sharing a giant 'wireless router', except it doesn't use wifi. so why not build wired connection to each houses, so the wireless connections are more reliable, and flexible.
simply put, if you are in some very remote areas, yes, wireless connection may replace your internet, because building a dedicate line just to your house may not be cost efficient. but cellular, or satellite? i don't know.
for towns, cities, and populated areas, wired connection is always superior than wireless (quality-wise)
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don't get me wrong, i wish macbook can have LTE connection, it's just i believe it's highly unlikely to happen.
just think, att changes $50 a month for 5g, seriously, what can you do on a mac for 5g?
and the only grandfathered unlimited data plan that can tether, was only offered for 39 days. how many of them are left now? hundreds?
A big reason is inventory. They need to have multiple variants to support different 3G & LTE bands in different regions: https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ - the phones have different baseband chips.
- They can provide multiple iPhone variants in part because of the volume of iPhones they sell and because well, they have to.
- They can do the same for the iPad because of volume
- Macs are a little harder. They sell FAR less Macs than iPhones & iPads, which means sub-variants (I count three) hugely complicate their inventory/supply management.
Look, I'm in the boat of "I'd love to be able to put a data SIM in my MacBook and avoid tethering" but at this stage they have some solid reasons for not doing so.
Thankfully, tethering to an iOS device is a lot better these days: if you leave Bluetooth on (BTLE sips power) your Mac can see it and tether within a couple of seconds, regardless of whether you have the Personal Hotspot enabled on the iOS device at the time. Saves a lot of back and forth between devices.
- They can provide multiple iPhone variants in part because of the volume of iPhones they sell and because well, they have to.
- They can do the same for the iPad because of volume
- Macs are a little harder. They sell FAR less Macs than iPhones & iPads, which means sub-variants (I count three) hugely complicate their inventory/supply management.
Look, I'm in the boat of "I'd love to be able to put a data SIM in my MacBook and avoid tethering" but at this stage they have some solid reasons for not doing so.
Thankfully, tethering to an iOS device is a lot better these days: if you leave Bluetooth on (BTLE sips power) your Mac can see it and tether within a couple of seconds, regardless of whether you have the Personal Hotspot enabled on the iOS device at the time. Saves a lot of back and forth between devices.
i believe inventory isn't that much a issue? the iPad air 2 has only one model number for LTE version. it supports all bands (i believe?)
as for tethering, first personal hotspot isn't that reliable. actually, I've tried that more than 20 times, only once i managed to connect to hotspot without opening the tethering page on my phone...
so i believe the problem is the price.
macs are meant for desktop pages, not mobile pages. and people are not used to monitor their network traffic on their computers (seriously, do you know how much data you used on you computer last month? your iPhone) and there are way more background stuff going on on a mac, like dropbox or whatever box you use. and like youtube or netflix, if you open up a 720p or even 480p stream on you iPhone, the screen is tiny so it won't be that much a issue. but on a mac? god, difference between 480p, 720p and 1080p is HUGE.
and the way company charges your cable broadband is basically an unlimited data plan. so only if you have a (cellular) unlimited data plan for your mac (like i said above, i believe there are only a few hundreds left with att, even fewer with verizon), it will still be a pain with a LTE macbook
Nope. Imagine how much it would cost to get the same amount of data on mobile broadband that you use on WiFi.
I guess it depends. Over here you cannot get (with very few exceptions) more than 100mps as home connection, and that only in larger cities, however LTE is available up to 300mbps. I have at home a 50mps connection and that is in fact slower than what i get on my iOS devices, however the landline connection doesn't have any limit on data usage whereas the wireless connection has a 2GB limit (could increase that to 10 of course if i pay). And of course the latency is faster on the landline with usually 10 to 20ms to most servers i use whereas LTE is around 45 to 60ms.
However, i would agree that the landline infrastructure is pretty bad here.
This is my absolute favorite feature on my Lenovo Carbon X1 and I REALLY wish Apple supported it. I have a wifi hotspot separately as well and hate carrying that damn thing around, charing it, turning it on/off (slow)...just sucks.
On the Thinkpad I pull out the charms bar and turn it on, BAM. No drivers needed for it in Windows 8+, no special software, no auth. Just turn on the network connection and you're going.
Even works under Ubuntu to my pleasant surprise. No need for me to drain my phone battery either or even worry about having to hop another network. I'll happily pay for it as well, even a premium. Just wish it would be offered, but I know better than to ever expect it from Apple.
On the Thinkpad I pull out the charms bar and turn it on, BAM. No drivers needed for it in Windows 8+, no special software, no auth. Just turn on the network connection and you're going.
Even works under Ubuntu to my pleasant surprise. No need for me to drain my phone battery either or even worry about having to hop another network. I'll happily pay for it as well, even a premium. Just wish it would be offered, but I know better than to ever expect it from Apple.