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Comment by molf | Hacker News Reader

It's only a matter of time before laptops get 5G. Macbooks have been rumoured for a while to get cellular modems. [1]

This will probably help adoption. On the one hand it will generate more IPv6 traffic. On the other hand it will expose more developers to IPv6; which will expose them to any lack of support for IPv6 within their own products.

[1]: https://9to5mac.com/2025/08/14/apples-first-mac-with-5g-cell...

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Dell, HP and Lenovo have had laptops with cellular modems for maybe 15 years at this point.

I can confirm this. I work at an e-waste recycling company, and the vast majority of my inventory is corporate IT decommissioned gear. About 1 out of 10 laptops I tear down has a cellular modem, going back to about Intel Core 5th gen.

I've had laptops with cellular modems built in going back to Pentium IIIs. The Compaq N600c had a "multiport" bay on the lid, one of the options was a GSM modem.

Jesus, what a waste

*A few select models got celluar modems.

I have owned several Dell, HP and Lenovo Laptops in the past 15 years and I have never had a cellular modem.

When Apple makes a change like that it impacts a lot of customers because they have way fewer skews.

I've never had a modern laptop with a cellular modem, but every one I've owned has supported them internally. Even when they aren't provisioned with them, they're usually still supported as aftermarket options.

Yeah, but any given technology hasn't been invented yet, until Apple releases it.

| Macbooks have been rumoured for a while to get cellular modems.

Maybe they are finally coming, however the rumors are older then the iPhone. Example from 2008: https://pcr-online.biz/2008/11/03/3g-macbooks-on-the-way/

> It's only a matter of time before laptops get 5G.

So you want laptops to cost <whatever the laptop costs> plus a measly 19.99/month for internet connectivity?

What's wrong with just tethering to my existing phone?

Thats quite surprising thing to me and weirdly obvious.

If you are single, have a phone contract, you would need some extra contract for a landline internet and wifi router because thats what a lot of people just do and now they can just add an esim and pay a little bit more.

Interesting that this sounds/feels a lot more right or useful than it did 5 years ago.

5G services all give you an ipv4 too, so devs won't be exposed to lack of v6 support.

I can't imagine a worse privacy nightmare. Always on backdoored baseband in 5G with a unique permanent IPv6 address assigned to the machine. Okay, maybe it could be worse if each user account is assigned its own unique IPv6 perma-cookie.

As if people doesn't already carry always online machine in their pockets

You're thinking of MAC addresses. Machines don't have permanently-assigned v6 addresses, rather the IP is assigned by whatever network they're currently attached to and will change based on that network's whims, just like it does in v4.

> Okay, maybe it could be worse if each user account is assigned its own unique IPv6 perma-cookie.

They will. One from facebook, one from google, one from tiktok, several from Palantir and its partners...

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