Apple plans to equip MacBooks with in-house cellular modems
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
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?
You might have to give up wifi and bluetooth if you cut that out, though.
If somebody wanted to know what you were doing on your MacBook, they would just attack your phone.
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.
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.
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.
Wifi is in the same boat as the 3.5mm headphone jack
Right, it's an excellent technology that Apple wants to abandon without any valid reason.
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
Most people cannot do this. Also an increasing number of people don't have wifi at home but just use their phones.
In 2021, 15% had access only through mobile devices (no wifi): https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-shee...
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing good can come from a device having internet access outside of your control.
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.
Fun, fun, fun.
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.
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.
A pervasive network that can be accessed with a couple dollar IC with minimal power that’s hidden from user would be much harder to escape.
Power hungry? Not anymore – I believe NB-IoT is already within an order of magnitude of unlicensed IoT (i.e. LoRa, 802.15.4 etc).
Expensive? That's relative, but what makes you think that Amazon is giving away Sidewalk for any less? AWS is not exactly known for their low prices.
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.
Sidewalk over BLE is a huge issue though. No way to block devices calling home :(
For me, personally no.
Of all the things I think about, the possibility of future surveillance is not one of them.
I wouldn’t argue for less privacy but I’ve already trusted Apple with a device that is with me even more than my laptop.
Great analysis. A+
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.
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.
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.
I mean, there might be some business (niche) use cases, but other than that?
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"
and of course people who won't blink at $20/month
I'm pretty sure that a significant part of the drain is having to run a Wi-Fi hotspot. Access points use more energy than stations (clients).
> and of course people who won't blink at $20/month
There's no extra charge for an additional SIM card with some phone plans.
To achieve the same result with 0 click
You say the press of a button, but having cellular in the laptop is zero interactions, which is great for casual users.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
I am one of those business people.
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.
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 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.
No further comment.
Oh no, anyway...
> So I suggest you don't accuse me of working in a biased bubble.
I wasn't accusing you of anything. Maybe don't act like such a sensitive princess making a big deal out of nothing, and look at the facts mate.
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.
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.
If I had a cell modem on my laptop:
1. Open laptop.
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?
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.
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?)
> macOS seems to be loosing network features, such as the network location casualty
That was an oversight (as it remained in other parts of the OS...) and came back on the next point release of the OS.
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?
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.
Mine doesn't, and I only work in places that have good Wi-Fi, but I bet there's more than enough people that feel differently.
After all, somebody must be buying these iPads with mobile data modems, or Apple would have discontinued them.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 :)
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.
(That depends on how much it adds to the purchase price though. $100? You bet. $300? Nah.)
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.
This is another one of those "Dropbox is just rsync+cron" takes: convenience, ease and integration are worth a lot to people.
Source: I work in IT
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.
Like an external separate USB-C ethernet adapter?
Even Macs have it now actually.
It’s also just nice to not need to break out a cable.
If you frequently use it when out, it would be significantly more convenient to just have the cellular built in.
Those people were, and are, completely correct. The 3.5mm jack is way better than Bluetooth for headphones.
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.
Maybe in 10 or 15 years when Qualcomm patents expire, it will be cheap enough to add as a feature.
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.
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.
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.
What's the advantage over just attaching to one's cell phone?
In 2028 is a cell modem still going to exist, or should "cell" be rethought as "satellite?"
https://www.amazon.com/Zopsc-Replacement-Wireless-DW5811e-Qu...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5X9ZZR9/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?ps...
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/how-qualcomm-sho...
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.
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.
- You have to unscrew the base to insert the SIM card.
- You need a more expensive screen because that’s where the antennae are.
- It’s 4G with no upgrade path to 5G.
It works fine but tethering is just easier.
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?
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.
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.
[1] Sprint/T-Mobile free line offers in 2020 and 2023
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.
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817890
With that said five years seems like a hell of a long time.
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.
Sure - just google "<vendor> 5G laptop" to find for example https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/sr/laptops/5g-m...
It's often found on business laptops given to service engineers and sales people, who spend a lot of time on the road.
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....
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.
That is a long way away.
I wonder if this is them desperately trying to make use of their acquisition of Intel's 5G modem buisness, which still hasn't shown up in phones.
[edit] Similarly, they acquired the modem business from Intel in 2019 (along with 2200 employees) so 'from scratch' may be a touch strong. [1]
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/8909671/apple-intel-5g-sm...