{"id":13913,"date":"2016-03-19T11:08:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T15:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=13913"},"modified":"2026-01-27T11:25:03","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T16:25:03","slug":"why-dont-we-have-cellular-macbooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/19\/why-dont-we-have-cellular-macbooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Don&rsquo;t We Have Cellular MacBooks?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/atp.fm\/episodes\/161\">Accidental Tech Podcast<\/a> has a good discussion about this. I think this would be a very useful feature. It&rsquo;s great that I can tether my iPhone, but that has so many drawbacks compared with built-in support. And, presumably, a Mac could have the space and power for a better antenna, offering better reception.<\/p>\n<p>There are a number of ways that Mac OS X could be made more friendly to cellular connections. In my view, this process should have been started years ago, even though there were\/are no cellular Macs. The same issues apply to tethering, probably moreso, so the lack of cellular Macs is no excuse. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.relay.fm\/upgrade\/79\">Apparently<\/a>, recent versions of Apple Mail are getting better in this regard, after regressing.)<\/p>\n<p>Adding a cellular Mac would encourage both Apple and developers to make their software work better with cellular connections, which would also benefit tetherers and (potentially) those with slower non-cellular connections.<\/p>\n<p>Update (2016-03-19): <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/geoffhackworth\/status\/711213118467260417\">Geoff Hackworth<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/geoffhackworth\/status\/711213118467260417\"><p>I may be wrong, but I think <a href=\"http:\/\/cpip.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Mallinson-Busting-Smartphone-Patent-Licensing-Myths.pdf\">3G\/4G patent licensing<\/a> is percentage of product price, so too costly for laptops.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Accidental Tech Podcast has a good discussion about this. I think this would be a very useful feature. It&rsquo;s great that I can tether my iPhone, but that has so many drawbacks compared with built-in support. And, presumably, a Mac could have the space and power for a better antenna, offering better reception. There are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-01-27T16:25:05Z","apple_news_api_id":"0f259cce-b6f7-4932-ab73-f4bda1ca9f75","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-01-27T16:25:05Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/ADyWczrb3STKrc_S9ocqfdQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[397,986,30,1199,1155,100,476,40,2878],"class_list":["post-13913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-antenna","tag-cellular-data","tag-mac","tag-mac-os-x-10-11","tag-macbook","tag-macbookpro","tag-networking","tag-patents","tag-tethering"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13913"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13921,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13913\/revisions\/13921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}