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Comment by cft | Hacker News Reader

Good point. Why doesn't every Apple M1 laptop have an eSIM and a 5G transiever?

Tethering to iPhone is extremely easy, what’s the point? You don’t even have to set it up, the system just suggests it as an option in the Wi-Fi menu.

And then they sell two devices.

On the other hand, from a user's perspective only one SIM card and data allotment is needed. I much prefer two devices that I would own anyway over two SIM cards with (in most cases) separate monthly subscriptions or data packs.

People won't stop buying phones because their laptops are 5G enabled. The laptop's eSIM would be on the same plan as the phone. It would help carriers to push more expensive plans with much bigger data caps, which is easy with 5G. To the point of eating some home broadband market share- I imagine some people canceling their home broadband like they've cancelled their phone landlines, which initially seemed unthinkable.

Of course they won't stop buying phones, but specifically Apple's phones work very nicely with MacOS.

Qualcomm modem license is relatively expensive for a laptop. I suspect that, once Apple is ready to launch their own modem, they will include that in their laptops, too.

What if I don't have an iPhone?

On Android tethering can be enabled with just a few taps.

I wonder whether this could be automated, e.g. you click on the macOS toolbar and a macOS app communicates with an Android app and the apps do the needed actions in the respective operating systems (enable tethering on Android, connect to the WiFi network from macOS).

There is a setting in developer options to automatically tether when connected to a PC via USB .

It disconnects whenever the laptop enters sleep mode, it causes the phone to run very hot and consume lots of battery and, yes, it requires manual intervention before it can be used.

I agree that overall these are probably small issues, but built-in mobile network access would have usability benefits

With a MacBook internal modem would you then have to purchase another 5G plan and a sim or pay extra for including that in your phone plan? I would imagine it’s not cheap

Yes, it ends up being very expensive. For an iPad, cellular costs $150 plus ~$20/month.

In my country there are plans that allow for multiple additional devices to be linked to an account.

I wouldn’t have to pay anything extra for a 5G MacBook.

Which of course makes total sense technically. Because for my mobile operator there’s no difference (bandwidth wise. And given the packet switched nature of LTE and later, that’s all that matters) whether I’m tethering or connecting multiple devices.

What manual interventions?

Qualcomm charges you a device price tax for each modem you install in a device. So Apple is understandably uninterested in paying Qualcomm that much. When Apple moves to its own modems, expect to see them appear in Macbooks.

Where is there market demand for that functionality in a laptop?

Commercial customers in the field. But this is also a market segment with basically zero Mac users. And small enough of a market that it's way off Apple's radar.

As someone with a spotty internet connection and who likes to work at coffee shops with annoying login prompts, I'd really appreciate a product like that. I can get a data-only sim from Google Fi for free so it'd be an easy purchase for me.

(I have no idea why my internet connection is so bad. I pay for 20Mb/s, and half the time it's like 200Mb/s and the other half I don't have internet at all.)

> I pay for 20Mb/s

Are you paying for 20MB/s or for up to 20MB/s?

Apple doesn’t want you to be able to purchase a device that bridges the gap between a MacBook and an iPad. That way more people need to buy both.

I have no idea why Apple laptops don’t have cellular but whatever the reason is, I’m pretty sure it’s not because of the BOM cost of the components.

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