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.'"

Why, that's a nice gift horse

[Criffer]

Why, that's a nice gift horse, mind if I take a look at it's teeth?

Laptops with 3G aren't new, but now that Apple is (maybe) planning on adding a 3G capable radio chipset (to add to the bluetooth and wifi 2.4/5GHz radio chipset), it's just bringing "more problems"?

Well, if you don't want to use it, that's fine, but I would be happy with a laptop which is able to talk to the world outwith the confines of my home or work wifi networks.

Off-topic - How do I fix the front page?

[commodore64_love]

Can someone tell me what the hell's wrong with Slashdot's front page? I want my low-bandwidth, dialup-friendly version back but despite changing my preference multiple times, I'm getting some frakked-up yellow-and-white monstrosity.

Landlines anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

"most of us have gotten accustomed to the idea of one Internet connection per household" - why does this sound familliar?

Re:Why, that's a nice gift horse

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:Why a peripheral?

[MichaelSmith]

A friend of mine who lives in a country area in Australia has a device from Telstra which talks 3G to the phone network and wifi locally. It also has a normal telephone socket so you can use it to make voice calls. Taken as a package (broadband plus voice) it is actually a very competitive service, considering his location.

Re:Off-topic - How do I fix the front page?

[value_added]

Can someone tell me what the hell's wrong with Slashdot's front page?

No, but I suspect you're preferences include one of the "beta" options. If you uncheck those, you're probably fine. I guess the operative word in this day and age where UIs evolve into unusable states is "Classic Mode". While I'm at it ...

Disabling javascript goes a long way to making Slashdot more usable, irrespective of your connection speed.

Opting for "Plain Old Text" is will go a long way to ensure your posts are actually readable by everyone else. The only benefit the HMTL option offers is numbering/bullets.

Re:Why, that's a nice gift horse

[PenguSven]

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.