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Everything has 5G now. When will it be the Mac's turn?

Macworld

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June 2022

A MacBook with 5G would make a lot of people happy.

- ROMAN LOYOLA

Everything has 5G now. When will it be the Mac's turn?

Sometimes I like to spend the morning working at my local coffee shop (fave.co/3LuUIYW). The atmosphere is nice, the owner always greets me with a sincere "Hello, my friend, it's good to see you!"-and it's a lot warmer than my garage office at home.

The problem is, the internet connection isn't great. The streaming background music in the shop acts as an audible network connection monitor-every so often you'll hear it stutter and pause as a sign that the connection has gone wonky. When that happens, the Wi-Fi in the shop stops working-most of the time, it's just for a moment, but it's a flag that gets raised, and it means I need to be aware of something I really shouldn't have to pay attention to at all.

Free Wi-Fi isn't too difficult to find in places like San Francisco, but free reliable Wi-Fi is. Even paid or registration-required Wi-Fi (like at a hotel) is flaky. We can't do anything to fix it other than complain to people who already know, but there is something we can turn to as an alternative: the cellular service we already subscribe to on our iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches.

But there's a problem with that too: The Mac is missing from that list. It's about time for Apple to change this, and with the rumored redesign of the MacBook Air (fave.co/3MveUtQ) seemingly imminent, I hope we start to see Apple equip its laptops with the overdue ability to connect to cellular networks.

Macworld

This story is from the June 2022 edition of Macworld.

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