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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.'"
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.
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
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.
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.
What is...?