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Comment by mcculley | Hacker News Reader

I just bought an almost completely maxed out MacBook Pro and it annoys me that every other Apple product brags about having a cellular modem and no matter how much one is willing to spend, one cannot have a cellular modem in their power user laptop offering.

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If you have an iPhone, the Personal Hotspot integration is surprisingly seamless, albeit not ideal.

I have had an iPhone since 2012 and an Apple laptop since they were called PowerBooks. I am often in road warrior mode. No, it is not seamless. I have to restart it quite often. It is nowhere near as convenient and always on like it is with my Apple Watch and iPhone and iPad. And it burns two batteries at once.

I am convinced that it is the Qualcomm royalty situation that keeps Apple from shipping a cellular modem like Dell does.

Really? Man, I hate to say this, but how long have you been restoring your iPhone and Mac when you replace them? Maybe you are importing a bug with your settings/environment. I've literally never had to restart my hotspot for my Mac in using both for over 10 years, at times as my daily driver for the internet. Has it gotten worse in the last few years? I haven't been using it as much lately, but 2015-2019 that was basically my main way of browsing the web on my Mac. Worked flawlessly the whole time, kinda amazing to be honest.

I have experienced this flakiness using Migration Assistant, using restores from backup, and with fresh installs. Many people do. I believe that it works for some people who don't need it very often. I am happy for them.

I have an android... and the hotspot integration (with my mac) is as simple as "click the hotspot button and everything works". Seriously wondering what you think "ideal" looks like if not that.

Well the wifi burns extra energy, but there's also the "plug them together with a USB cable, hit the USB tethering button, and everything works" option.

On MacOS, your phone automatically appears in the Wi-Fi menu and clicking it immediately starts a Personal Hotspot on the phone and connects to it. Disconnecting from it also stops the Hotspot.

In my experience, it appears sometimes. Opening the Personal Hotspot settings pane on the iPhone may make it appear on the Mac. Maybe not.

It'll only appear automatically w/o the Hotspot pane if both devices are on the same iCloud account.

I am well aware of how it is supposed to work. All of my devices are on the same iCloud account. Have been since there was an iCloud. It still is flaky for me and many others.

(Even if it was reliable, I would rather not have to click anything and pass every packet through another radio powered by another battery. I want my laptop to have my emails downloaded when I open it, just like the more "consumer" devices Apple ships.)

Every android device I've owned in the last decade has had a wifi hotspot feature that 100% of the time just works.

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