Macs With 3G — More Connectivity, More Problems

narramissic writes "In a recent blog post, Josh Fruhlinger muses on the possibility of 3G radio receivers turning up in future Mac notebooks (as foretold by Apple job postings and the mention of WWAN hardware in Snow Leopard beta releases). 'At first glance,' says Fruhlinger, 'this seems like a reasonably awesome idea.' But will the target market be willing to take on the additional telecom charge? 'And, more to the point,' he says, 'most of us have gotten accustomed to the idea of one Internet connection per household, shared with a wireless router. The latter idea could be covered by a router that connects to the Internet over a 3G connection — something like the MiFi hotspot. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple had such a thing in the pipeline, an Airport station (Airport Mobility?) that didn't need to be plugged into the wall. That would explain the search for 3G experts, anyway.'"

Comments

Why, that's a nice gift horse

[Criffer]

Why, that's a nice gift horse, mind if I take a look at it's teeth?

Laptops with 3G aren't new, but now that Apple is (maybe) planning on adding a 3G capable radio chipset (to add to the bluetooth and wifi 2.4/5GHz radio chipset), it's just bringing "more problems"?

Well, if you don't want to use it, that's fine, but I would be happy with a laptop which is able to talk to the world outwith the confines of my home or work wifi networks.

Re:Why, that's a nice gift horse

[Darkness404]

The problem mostly lies with the way that a lot of companies (more than likely Apple included) would sell them. For example, you would get the laptop for cheap, say $500, but then you would be tied in a 2 year contract with AT&T (or some other cell provider) to get "unlimited" data that really isn't unlimited, costs you a fortune, and theres no other way to buy the laptop.

Its been happening to cell phones for ages now, and starting to happen with netbooks.

Re:Why, that's a nice gift horse

[PenguSven]

No way will Apple force people to buy their laptops through a phone company. Steve Jobs stated that they didn't put WWAN into the MacBook Air because he didn't want customers tied to a single Telco.

Re:Why, that's a nice gift horse

[pisto_grih]

And then Steve Jobs comes to your house in the middle of the night, and drags you kicking and screaming to the store and forces you to buy it with a gun to your head... oh wait...

Re:Why, that's a nice gift horse

[jabithew]

I know I find it confusing that my MacBook has both bluetooth and wifi. It also has an ethernet port! All these network connections are confusing my poor Mac-addled brain.

Or, you know, you could turn the 3G off if you didn't want to pay for it? Like MobileMe.

Nothing new here...

[badasscat]

The submission makes it sound as if there's some big mystery about adding 3G to a laptop that Apple has to solve. But there are other laptop makers out there besides Apple, and almost all of them have been putting 3G in their notebooks for years now. This is a feature that Apple is just behind on, and especially if they want to keep *any* semblance of a business market (and designers and photographers run businesses too - and a lot of them are freelance, working outside), then it's something they really need to catch up on.

It's a big and obvious mistake to suggest that 3G connectivity is meant to replace wi-fi. 3G connectivity is meant to replace, well, not having any connectivity. Laptops are meant to be portable, and they can go lots of places where wi-fi doesn't exist.

I can't believe I actually even have to explain this.

Re:Nothing new here...

[TheRaven64]

It also seems weird to overlook the fact that:

• Apple makes mobile phones - is it too much of a stretch to imagine that a job posting related to mobile phone technology would be connected to this?
• You can connect to the mobile network from OS X already with either a 3G phone that supports bluetooth or a dongle. The OS already has drivers and higher-layer support for these technologies.

And let's not forget that 3G is a marketing term, not a technology. Do they mean UMTS, HSPA, or LTE? Adding 3G support to a laptop intended for worldwide distribution is likely to cause difficulties as different countries (and even different states in the USA) have different levels of deployment of 3-4G technologies.

Re:Nothing new here...

[blackest_k]

I'm not sure if i'd want a 3G modem built in, it becomes a little harder to get the modem in position for good reception. I'm happier using my HSPDA modem outside of my laptop.
plus with a pay as you go contract i'm free to use the thing or not as required. There is also an issue of roaming which is quite easy to encounter at which point the data plan goes out the window, and you pay through the nose.

People are being fooled a little into thinking a mobile internet connection will only work for one computer
for Linux users its pretty easy to share it /etc/sysctl.conf change this line to net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
and the following
ifconfig eth0 192.168.2.1
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ppp0 -s 192.168.2.0/24 -j MASQUERADE
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i ppp0 -p tcp --dport 3074 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.2.254
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i ppp0 -p udp --dport 88 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.2.254
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i ppp0 -p udp --dport 3074 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.2.254
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i ppp0 -p udp -m multiport --dports 88,3074 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.2.254
iptables -A FORWARD -i ppp0 -d 192.168.2.254 -p tcp --dport 3074 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i ppp0 -d 192.168.2.254 -p udp -m multiport --dports 88,3074 -j ACCEPT

can be run as a script by root.
all you then need to do is connect eth0 on the to the wan port on a router and set the wan port to a static address of 192.168.2.254 and a gateway of 192.168.2.1 set dns to 192.168.2.1

and now you have a lan using a 3g interface, incidentally tethering a mobile will use ppp0 so once you can connect with the tethered mobile you can do the same.

My setup goes one step further chaining a second router to expand the range using tomato firmware and wds +access point mode. Performance wise it seems reasonable, the Eircom adsl link I used before used to top out at about 300kb/s download - 3G hspda modem 222kb/s The relatively small cap of 10gb in 30 days is a bit limiting but I figure the last day of the month will be good to use up whats remaining of the cap.

If you don't want to tie up a computer sharing there are a number of routers available for about 100 which will do the same job.

Re:Nothing new here...

[Hal_Porter]

Actually OS X supports some 3G cards OK.

E.g. here's a guide to install OS X on a Dell Mini 9

http://i.gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook

Follow this tutorial to get your mobile broadband working if your Mini 9 has it. Network preferences should recognize it out of the box.

Now what's interesting about this is that the Dell 5530 wireless card is supported the bundled OS X drivers.

ASUS already does this

[YA_Python_dev]

I think many people are not aware that some ASUS EeePC netbooks already have an HSPA modem (a.k.a. 3.75G) builtin.

E.g. the model 901 GO sold in Italy or in Germany. They're pretty awesome, you can find them on Ebay and at least the Italian ones were sold by the operator TIM, but they are not locked in any way.

Not exclusive, stupid summary

[benjymouse]

I have a Dell XPS notebook with built-in 3G card. I also run it on wireless and even connect the ethernet port from time to time. I use the 3G modem when I'm in a train to/from work, waiting at the station, attending meetings, conferences or when I'm on vacation. Of course the data plan costs extra, but being able to connect at all times is really, really convenient. I can even share out the internet connection effectively letting my notebook act as an access point.

Summary makes it sound like this is exclusive or that there isn't a market for it. Of course there is. Having broadband/fiber connectivity in your home does not mean that don't need on-the-road connectivity as well.

One Internet connection per household...

[dadman]

is no longer the trend here in Asia, at least in HK, Japan and S. Korea where we have cheap, unlimited internet connection over 3G from the PC or Notebook, mostly via HSDPA (7.2/14.4 Downlink, see Smartone-Vodafone), HSPA+ (21Mbps downlink, see HK CSL)

Naturally, it would be much more convenient if this is built-in.

In fact, many netbooks are already has HSPA modem built-in, and some are already working at 21Mbps speed, such as this one.

--

Laptop seems more likely.

[Mike1024]

But will the target market be willing to take on the additional telecom charge?

Well, plenty of laptop computers have built in 3G modems, but inserting a SIM card and using the 3G connection is optional. And it's not like they found it hard to get people to buy the iPhone, even though there was a telecom charge involved.

'most of us have gotten accustomed to the idea of one Internet connection per household, shared with a wireless router. [...] It wouldn't surprise me if Apple had such a thing in the pipeline, an Airport station (Airport Mobility?) that didn't need to be plugged into the wall.

I think most people accustomed to one internet connection shared with a router already have a wired internet connection. Given that a 3G connection costs more per megabyte, and may be less reliable, I don't think many people accustomed to wired internet would switch to a 3G connection for their home internet connection.

Now, people who travel around with a laptop, I can understand. But why would such a person choose a 'personal hotspot' with its size, and its own battery in need of charging, when they could have the 3G modem built into their laptop?

Granted, there might be a market where groups of people were travelling for business, or for individuals who preferred WiFi to USB or Bluetooth as a means of connecting to a modem, but if I was Apple a laptop with a 3G modem in it would be a much more logical thing to release than what's being proposed here.

This is nothing new...

[warlock]

Apple has done it allready with the iPhone nearly 3 years ago!

My iPhone 3G prefers the available and configured WiFi connections at home and at work and falls back to 3G everywhere else.

I'm wondering why it took them so long to add this to their laptop range... it would be very useful to have connectivity everywhere.

In europe most 3G network operators have been oferring subsidised laptops (mostly 3G enabled netbooks from dell, hp etc) with 3G data contracts for over a year now.

Unfortunately said contracts usually come with low data caps (like 5 or 10GB) but the point of 3G is to complement WiFi access and not replace it -- meaning that they provide the reassurance that you will be connected anywhere, anytime, but you should plan to download gigs of stuff while on a WiFi network instead.

Re:Off-topic - How do I fix the front page?

[adona1]

Just grab the RSS feed. Sure, you don't get the summary immediately, just the headline. But then, by seeing that you've already read more about the topic than most of the other people commenting :)

Right...

[SmallFurryCreature]

Well, 3G netbooks are pretty common and you can indeed buy some tele plans with a netbook for free. Oddly enough, often ones without a 3G modem. I on the other hand bought my acer one with 3G just from a shop for 259 euro.

So what exactly is the problem? Only an idiotic laptop company is going to make their new laptop exclusive to a telecom. Phones, yes, they need a telecom. PC's don't.