MacBook Air hacked with internal EV-DO -- finally lives up to its name

One of the most surprising things about the launch of an ultra-portable laptop dubbed "Air" by Apple wasn't its thinness but the lack of an embedded WWAN radio. No more, at least if you're not intimidated by smoldering solder and warranty violations. Jordan Bunnell has posted a step-by-step of his success at integrating a Verizon USB727 Aircard into the MacBook Air chassis thanks to the MBA's previously unused USB controllers discovered on the system board. While the EVDO signal (and speed) has appreciably degraded from its externally attached origins, Jordan is still pulling 1,400 to 1,700kbps downloads and 380kbps uploads -- something which might be improved with antenna tweaks. Regardless, those speeds are significantly faster than the 0kbps stock MBA owners experience.

[Thanks, Tom]

[Lein @ Apr 29th 2008 8:25AM]

That's pretty neat. If only they'd mass-produce it and give you the OPTION to select between the three major wireless data providers like Dell does.

I still can't get over how Steve says they didn't include it because "they didn't want to lock anyone into a specific carrier." Well... he seems to have no qualms about doing that for other products they sell. Oh wait, I forgot, AT&T is kissing Apple's ass every month when someone pays their bill.

[Geir E @ Apr 29th 2008 10:32AM]

@mark

Great, keep playing! Whatever keeps you off the internet is good.

[Alexander @ Apr 29th 2008 11:24AM]

@Mark: And stay out of my genepool. Lousy kids...

[Kizorblade @ Apr 29th 2008 8:34AM]

"Regardless, those speeds are significantly faster than the 0kbps stock MBA owners experience."

It's infinitely faster actually... even if he got 1kbps

[Kurian @ Apr 29th 2008 8:44AM]

Degraded?? I play a lot per month for a pathetic 30KBps connection.

[Derk @ Apr 29th 2008 9:01AM]

What's the deal with the "Read" link? I don't think getlistedlocally.com has anything to do with voiding a MacBook Air's warranty.

[Connor Milligan @ Apr 29th 2008 9:03AM]

Yes, it is the correct URL, however the site is extremely slow for me so i cant get it to load fully, but from what i have seen it is a MBA guide

[coffeedragon @ Apr 29th 2008 9:07AM]

Agreed, it appears that h4xorz have hijacked the interwebz. I beez sitten on urz keebordz senden uz to othr webzites.

[Flashpoint @ Apr 29th 2008 9:09AM]

Mac Book Air is an absolute WASTE of money.

Apple reps came to my school and offered us a deal if we purchased 10 MBA's for the administrative staff. I flat out turned them down after they allowed me to use a model with the SSD.

First of all, this thing needs to be treated with baby gloves - Education professionals don't treat their devices very well and this thing would have been a WASTE OF EDUCATION FUNDS AND TAX PAYER MONEY considering it barely does enough to replace the regular IBM laptops and Lenovo tablets we have.

Addding high speed broadband wireless to this thing only makes it a faster web browser. You could get a lenovo tablet with wireless broadband built in alot cheaper (I order them all the time since I'm administrative staff/server technician and ordering).
I refuse to order tech gimmicks for the staff because that money is better spent ordering things we need and saving money for student educations.

I also cost those apple reps a 20 iphone contract - and refused to buy their Time machines since they were useless (compared to the 3 servers we have in my building) and because they are only desktop grade hard drives - rather than server grade.

The "deskstar" hard drive is not fit to backup education records.

[dys @ Apr 29th 2008 9:14AM]

I still love mine.

[johnwiles @ Apr 29th 2008 9:34AM]

@ Flashpoint

I think you need to relax mate, sure macbook air's are not for the money conscious, that's well known.
Sure the sales guys will try and sell it, thats expected too.

The only unusual thing to note here is some moron who runs a schools IT purchasing having personal anger issues and taking it out on Apple who make genuinely good products.

If its not for you, no need to get upset about it, I'm sure the Air suits many people of which probably don't mix with you!

[zosyn @ Apr 29th 2008 9:37AM]

Repeat again... you do all the educational buying at your school
I dont think you stated it enuf times in your post

[superpotential @ Apr 29th 2008 10:20AM]

@johnwiles

i disagree, apple does NOT make good products. they decrease the intelligence of society by making computers that are both (1) oversimplified to the extent that, like the novel 1984, nobody gets to know what computers really can do, and (2) inhibiting for any advanced user as well as any potential young advanced user to even get to know the field, (3) extremely difficult to deal with when there is trouble because of proprietariness, lack of user servicability, and expensive support, and (4) not propagating open source and patent-free standards as well.

iPods can't have their batteries easily changed by the user and cannot play .ogg files. that's enough reason for me to hate them, period, although i could list a number of others.

[John Stracke @ Apr 29th 2008 10:24AM]

I agree that the MBA would be a silly thing for a school to buy, but that doesn't mean it's a bad product. For people that have heavy business travel, paying extra for an ultralight computer can be worth it.

[Scott Miller @ Apr 29th 2008 10:46AM]

@ Flashpoint

"Education professionals don't treat their devices very well and this thing would have been a WASTE OF EDUCATION FUNDS AND TAX PAYER MONEY"

If educational "professionals" (aka. role models for our youth) "don't treat their devices very well", is that Apples fault. By your own words (HINT: first 8 words of the quote above), who's wasting the tax payers money? So, you buy a PC for half (unlikely) the price, but twice (likely) as often. Right? You just won't tell the taxpayers that part.

@ superpotential

Your joking right?

[Nick M. @ Apr 29th 2008 11:31AM]

@ Flashpoint

I have to admit that after been doing a lot of traveling for work recently that a small compact light laptop would be nice compared to this PowerBookG4 that starts to feel like a 40 lbs weight after having to carry this thing through all these airports along with all my other bags. If I was a full time traveling business man I would look into it. For education professionals.. well it never was created for your customers, Apples just trying to unload some extra units onto who ever will take them.

If you are backing up educational records why would you have even entertained the the thought of using a consumer WiFi Router HD combo instead of keeping with servers that you can monitor more closely?

I think we took care of the Deskstar argument back here.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/28/how-would-you-change-apples-time-capsule/

@superpotential
What were you smoking this morning?
So I'm guessing Linux is much better for non-tech literate people cuz then they have to go in through command line and load in drivers...and Windows is so much better cuz everything is strewn all over the damn place that most basic users dont know where stuff is.
Apple is built ontop of UNIX. I think that advanced users would crack open terminal and be learning and messing with UNIX. In which case I think they might do pretty well for themselves in the industry.

[XGM @ Apr 29th 2008 6:16PM]

Your comment was a waste of my time...

[Esse @ Apr 29th 2008 9:52AM]

Don't cry about the lack of an optional WWAN-card on the MBA - they would probably charge you $700 for it and you would have to send the Air back to Apple if you would want to change the SIM-card.

Thanks for making choosing easy, Apple! After all, a laptop is only as potable as the number of external devices you don't have to bring with you! :-)

[BigBloke @ Apr 29th 2008 10:08AM]

Intend on cooking your Air or drowning it in water do you hmm?

[danny @ Apr 29th 2008 10:25AM]

Too bad Verizon doesn't use SIM cards...

[Graham @ Apr 29th 2008 9:59AM]

@Flashpoint

Amen, Save the money and buy Lenovo tablets...

If the great and all mighty apple, had been acutally thinking about what consumers really needed, they would have made a tablet rather than the Mac Book Error.

This is still a pretty cool achievement, wish Apple would have done this from the get go, like oh... Just about every other manufacturer on the planet.

Apple makes a lot cool stuff... But the Mac Book Hot Air, isn't.

[superpotential @ Apr 29th 2008 10:24AM]

agreed. i think linux is the best choice for schools, actually. it's free, it's already pretty far along with usability -- i would say that ubuntu takes a reasonably knowledgeable person to properly set up but any stupid joe can then use it without a problem from there. it's also a good choice for students to learn more about how computers work, something which i think is important in this day and age in the education system.

apples simply do not permit intelligence to be developed -- they are too simplistic and try to make things easy to the extent that they bar advanced tasks from being done. take for example, just for real simplicity, having multiple CD-ROM drives. in windows or linux it's easy: pop the CD in, hit the button on the case or rigth-click somewhere and press eject. easy, right? now on apples -- the case is usually stupidly designed, there is no eject button on the CD-ROM drives, no pinhole, and the unexpandable single eject button is on the freaking keyboard !! argh.

early versions of macOS tried to "simplify" things by making modal dialog boxes that not only froze you from accessing the application launching the modal dialog box but from other whole applications as well. so you couldn't hit file->save as and then switch to your e-mail to cut and paste a certain required filename or whatever. don't know if this is still true or not.

there are those power user people that say "...but macOS is just BSD! that's awesome!" well, give me a break, just use BSD then. i'd rather not have to use an OS that i have to install all kinds of bazillion things to figure out how to launch X applications. it's hard enough to figure out how to launch a terminal because there is no icon for it anywhere to be seen, and ctrl+alt+F1 doesn't work either.

also there's the one-button mouse thing. advanced users say "but you can just install another mouse and it will work!" no thanks, i like my multi-button mice *integrated* with my laptop. and on my desktop i use an 11-button mouse, i'm happy with that shall we say?

[Richy @ Apr 29th 2008 10:27AM]

Yup, because consumers have been creating a stampede to get their hands on those Tablet PCs.

Oh wait...

[Aaron @ Apr 29th 2008 10:40AM]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa...whoa...whoa superpotential.

Part of your point is that it has -hard- to launch X applications in OS X and that you can't find the terminal because the icon is in a subfolder? I don't even know what to say to that.

And then the CD drive ejecting? There is a keyboard shortcut and a drag-drop method to eject a CD, you can also do it from the keyboard, or by holding the mouse button during boot.

And... two fingers + click = right click.

Thanks, try again.

[Blaktornado @ Apr 29th 2008 10:49AM]

@superpotential

tl;dr


Oh and what you do read of it is misguided nonsense.

[ill trooper @ Apr 29th 2008 1:14PM]

Wow, 'superpotential' (misnomer?), you sure have a lot of time to type all of that vitriolic crap. I understand: You not buying Apple products is simply not enough. You are looking out for the good of society, and this drives you to plead to the masses that Apple products are garbage, one long, confused post at a time. When will we ever learn? Who knows. But you obviously have nothing better to do with your time, so keep up the good fight, little insignificant soldier.

[Ed @ Apr 29th 2008 5:09PM]

Indeed, superpotential. Linux is clearly the best choice of OS in an organization where I constantly see students, teachers and administrators cluelessly struggling to do anything further than "do Microsoft Words!"

[AirMod @ Apr 29th 2008 11:20AM]

The GetListedLocally read link is correct, it's been updated now (in the last 10 min) with smaller pictures hosted on a faster server, so it's running MUCH better!

[tnkgrl @ Apr 29th 2008 1:12PM]

It's unfortunate about the WiFi and BT - but really, kudos on this mod!

I don't have the guts do to something like this to my MBA despite doing some crazy mods myself: http://tnkgrl.wordpress.com/2007/05/07/oqo...l-02-hsdpa-mod/

[AlphaTeam @ Apr 29th 2008 2:17PM]

Very nice. Now I just need to integrate one into my MBP.

[AirMod @ Apr 29th 2008 2:22PM]

The InsanelyMac thread linked to on his site has a bit of a discussion about integrating one into the MBP

[Matthew @ Apr 29th 2008 2:49PM]

Linux on the desktop - it's coming soon!!!! LOL!

Computers don't *have* to be difficult to use, and anyway you shouldn't have to learn how to use the computer or the OS at all! You might have to learn the application, but there should be a minimal buffer between you (the user) and what you actually want to do (use an application to do something useful). Most geeks forget that most users are not interested in configuring the OS, or understanding the internals. It's not interesting to them and it's not going to help them in their job or at home. It's just friction.

Whenever some Linux zealot talks about how Ubuntu is easy to use, or one of the other Linux distros, it just makes me sigh. "RTFM! RTFM!", they cry, as if people *want* to read a huge freakin manual before they can actually do something.

I'm a software guy by trade. I've used Linux since 1994 or so, and developed embedded and server products on Linux. I'm highly familiar with it and know how to use it and develop on it. For most people, though, it's way too much. Too complicated, too much choice for things most people consider to be pointless choices, and it kinda looks crappy and disjointed.

In an educational establishment, students should be using tools and systems that they're likely to encounter in "real life". If you get into the work-force these days and can't use Windows (or Mac stuff, depending on industry), or MS Office, you're at a big disadvantage.