They have a much better chance to do this in their walled garden environment of iPhones and iPads rather than on OSX where they face competition from other vendors.
They have no incentive to make it easier to be mobile on your macbook when they would much rather you be on your iPhone and iPad instead.
Someday they would really love for macbooks to go away and for everyone to use iOS for everything as they will own the entire environment and competition is much less.
In 2021, the gross margin percentage for the services segment was nearly 70% as compared to the 35% gross margin percentage from the products segment.
https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/technology-media-an...
it's a longer jump to get a cellular capable antenna complex in an all metal (think semi faraday cage) aluminium unibody.
point is, it's historical artifact originally.
now, a decade later, perhaps the BOM thing is just enough motivation to not do it, or the ubiquity of "hotspots" via cellular lessens the appeal at scale.
Its arguably an even shorter jump between iPad and MacBook Pro today - the architecture of both products is incredibly similar now.
> it's a longer jump to get a cellular capable antenna complex in an all metal (think semi faraday cage) aluminium unibody.
You mean just like the aluminium bodies already present on the cellular iPads? Or several generations of iPhone? This excuse doesn't hold either.
ipad and iphone also have antenna designs integrated with the body design, which currently is only true for wifi and bluetooth in the above mentioned laptops.
are you wanting a plastic band atop the laptop closing screen, to get a cellular capable antenna in an otherwise metal body? perhaps that's just not a priority with enough customers.
I'm almost certain Apple's world class hardware team can integrate a cellular antenna to an aluminum laptop in a way that is visually pleasing, yes. This isn't some insurmountable problem we are positing here.
Why? Anyone can see the large number of aluminium cellular devices already on sale, including from Apple. There is nothing magical about a laptop form factor. Would a different design from the non-cellular supporting MacBooks we have today be needed to acommodate antenna windows etc? Sure probably! But to sit here and argue it's not possible is patently silly when we already have aluminium devices with cellular you can own.
Would attaching a hinged keyboard to a cellular iPad prevent its cellular connection from working? No, of course not. The same is self-evidently true of incorporating antennas to the lid of a refreshed MacBook design.
Having built 5G systems for hobbyist computer boards (Pi etc), the antenna required is not so very large either.
A MacBook is not and has never been a seamless block of aluminium - there are plenty of design choices to be made to help hide or minimise any antennas.
My 2020 ipad pro 11” does not have that unsightly plastic band, nor the iphone 15 pro.
As far as aesthetic elements, these enclosures appear essentially as metal and glass, an appearance not markedly different than existing macbook appearances.
Even the iphone mini 13 manages to fit effective cellular arrays in its compact form sans the big plastic bands on those ipads you mention. And despite its diminutive size, the mini 13 can still manage a reliable call over cellular for hours at a time. With the greater real estate offered by the macBook form factor, there are broader options for effective antenna arrays and also their power supply versus phones and tablets.
Is this why the LTE capable Apple Watch has a red ring on the crown? I assumed it was just a status cue.
Regardless, I would be completely happy with Apple having to make a compromise on the case like they do with the iPad.
it's a huge topic, antennas are tuned in physical geometries for wavelengths, etc.
this is a fun rabbithole
This exactly.
The iPad is already like a smaller MacBook without a built-in keyboard that runs iPadOS.
Tethering is flaky. I was trying to tether my iPad to my iPhone just last night, eventually gave up and just read my book on my iPhone instead. If I depended on tethering for actually getting my work done I'd have an aneurism.
That settings app is not a happy place.
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/14/photos-of-a-prototype-m...
Apparently not.
It's very unlikely that they were not able to, they could have done it the same we they did with other Apple devices that have a modem.
When a user takes the active step of tethering, they know what they are getting into.
If mobile data was built right into the computer you’d probably see headlines like “MacBook causes $2000 in data overages”
In order to be a market failure, a whole shitload of people have to want the feature in question, and yet although it could easily be made to happen, the feature is still not delivered. That's a market failure.
Give us a reasoned and researched piece of evidence as to how large this potential market is. Like, how many people would actually buy it, as opposed to all the people who say they'd buy it but then don't actually put up the cash when the feature is delivered.
If you can't prove that market is large enough, then it doesn't make sense for Apple to go to that expense.
For example, how many people would pay enough extra to make it profitable for Apple to include a 192GB memory option for the M2 Max laptops and desktops? The current top end model maxes out at 96GB. How many people would pay enough extra to make it worth Apple's time to double that top end RAM value? I'm sure Apple can do it, it's just a matter of including the next level of higher capacity RAM modules.
What is your provable Total Addressable Market? Startups do this kind of evaluation all the time, and they try to wheedle VCs out of money with those numbers. And VCs poke holes in those evaluations all the time. So, let's do the same thing here.
Obviously, Apple has decided not.
The irony is that I agree with you one the point that I'd like to see a MacBook Pro with an integrated SIM or e-SIM card, so that I wouldn't need to tether. Where we disagree is on what process Apple has gone through and what conclusions they have reached on whether they can make enough profit off that function.
Would someone like to bet against this? I would like to invest in a prediction market for this.
Apple thought that they had designed and built their own CPUs, GPUs, etc... so they could easily take this inferior product and turn it into something that was at least as good as what Qualcomm has. They were wrong. The problems they're trying to solve are partly patent encumbered, but only partly. It turns out that the same ecosystem advantages that Apple enjoys around some of their products are also the same effects that protect Qualcomm from competitors, and even as big as Apple is, they still can't break down those ecosystem barriers.
Since Apple is not willing to ship a markedly inferior product, that means they're stuck using Qualcomm modems, until their internal teams can deliver on what they promised. If they can deliver.
“Qualcomm licenses all its patents as a group. For a set fee -- based on the selling price of the end device” according to https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-and-qualcomm-settle-h...
When you squit out 50 models of something per year (like Samsung phones), you can afford for some of them to be more niche products that won't get as wide adoption. When you have only two or three variations on a single product for that year (like Apple), you can't afford that.
Instead, you have to make sure that all the features you offer are either used or usable by the majority of the customers, or that adding those features allows you to add enough to the price that the small number of people who would buy that product for those features will give you a sufficiently high return on your investment that you will be able to at least maintain your profit margin.
There just aren't enough people in the market like you who are unwilling to tether and that fact alone is enough to push them to hardware being made by a different company.
I want the integrated SIM or e-SIM myself, but I'm willing to tether if the integrated option isn't available. So, I'm part of the market that Apple is addressing. In contrast, you're not willing to tether, and so you buy hardware from a different company, and therefore not part of the segment they are addressing.
Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that there are segments of the market that they're not willing to chase, and this is one of those situations.
I use the tethering almost daily and hate it. I have almost every kind of Apple device. Many of them have modems.
I do appreciate your faith in the EMH.
Either that, or Apple gets fed up with the whole situation and just buys Qualcomm outright, then maybe strips the components and IP licenses they want, and then turns around and sells the dregs back to the market. But then that would endanger Apple to be the main target of those same kinds of antitrust laws.
Given as entrenched and both Apple and Qualcomm are, I'm not willing to make any bets between the Irresistible Force and the Unbreakable Object.
1. How much more profit can you show that they will make if they take the decision to implement your suggestion?
2. How will this help them better meet their regulatory requirements?
For #1, you don't really have an answer. You would be one customer who would be affected, and you might choose to buy their hardware instead. But how likely is that? Can you prove that? And how many more people are there in the market who feel the same way?
For #2, your suggestion actually makes the regulatory situation worse, since you're now adding a cell phone modem to what was otherwise "just" a computing device. And that brings a whole host of additional regulations into the mix, including import laws and tariffs. And any lawsuit that is filed against Apple that could involve protectionist measures against intrusion of external businesses into local cell phone politics would now be able to stop all imports of all laptops of this type, since any of them could presumably have a cell phone modem in them.
For Apple as a corporation, I'm seeing effectively no upside here, and all downside.
For you personally, there would be a lot of upside. And people like me would also benefit. I just don't see a compelling argument that would convince Apple.
As for the fear over regulation, why do Dell laptops and Apple iPads have modems?
Despite whatever you may think of me, I do hope you're right.
It seems to me that the current monopolies are the reason we don’t have an obvious feature.
If I had to guess, more enterprise clients that want it.
Seriously doubt it's individuals buying up enough to make it worth it. I mean you won't even buy one right.
In the iPhone days I "force" connected to the phone hotspot through the standard password required procedure and it did better than the other more convenient options.
The best explanation I heard is that the Apple deal with Qualcomm pays Qualcomm a royalty as a function of the price of the device and Apple does not want to give that much money to Qualcomm and/or raise the price of a MacBook Pro that much. Does anyone have any evidence on this topic?