A brave MacBook Air owner (capitalizing on the Air's internal USB onnections we posted on previously) has embraced the wireless promise of Apple's ultra-thin notebook by installing a USB727 Verizon Aircardinside the Air. The hack involved disassembling both the Air and the USB EVDO modem and soldering it to one of the Air's internal USB connections.
Unfortunately, the hack also required removing the internal Airport and Bluetooth card (both to get the space and to use the Airport antennas), so I doubt most Air owners would be interested. Nonetheless, the end result is quite impressive and looks great. He has also started a forum thread to discuss the hack.
Thanks Amy!
Update: The hacker who put the EVDO card into the Air is not the same as the one who previously discovered the USB connections.
As I've often said right here at TUAW, I have a need for speed. I want my computers, my phones, and especially my Internet access to be as fast as possible. When I'm at home, secure in the knowledge that my Time Warner Business Cable connection is the fastest I can get (until FIOS comes to my hood), things are going well for me and looking good.
But what happens if I have to leave the house and go on the road as I frequently do? How can I possibly maintain my connection to the Internet while mobile and still get the speed I need? Fortunately, there a a few solutions to this problem such as using wireless "hotspots" around town or using a cell phone's data connection as a high speed modem for my Mac Book Pro.
However, for true freedom, a hotspot isn't the answer for me as you can't always find one when you need one or they cost too much money. As an iPhone user, the option to use my cell phone as a high speed modem was also out. So, that left one obvious choice for me: EVDO cards. Now that I had decided an EVDO card was the answer to my needs, several more questions immediately came to mind.
Which card should I get and from which provider? Would the cards work with my laptop of choice: the Apple Mac Book Pro? How much would the cards and data plans cost me? And the most important question of all: what kind of speed would I get?
Lo, and the cries of the Mac Blackberry faithful went up, and indeed they were a fractious multitude: "Where is our dial-up networking?" they wailed. "We are paying for data service on these things, and it's EVDO, and everyone else is doing it!" And they saw that those with Intel Macs could tether their Blackberries within Parallels or VMware, and did get online after a fashion, but they said "This is a silly hack, not good." And they saw that Pulse would give them a proxy server and Bluetooth, but they cried "This is slow, and we crave USB!"
And the developers of iMobimac did hear this loud kvetching, and did indeed release upon the multitudes a private beta of a new, USB-based DUN tool. No way to gauge final performance yet, and the beta release notes warn that Safari may not detect the proxy server running on your machine, but it's a start. You may sign up for the beta at the iMobimac site, and may the broadband be with you.
The guys over at EVDOinfo.com have discovered that current Intel Macs already support 3G EVDO cards. Basically what they did is rip the PCI Express Mini Airport wireless card out of a Mac mini and replace it with a previously activated EVDO PCI Express Mini card taken from a Novatel U720 USB EVDO modem. After installing the recent WWAN update (by bypassing the hardware check), the Mac mini recognized the card and established a connection to the Sprint network. They note that this makes the Mac mini an absolutely perfect carputer (except for some antenna issues).
They speculate that this should work on the MacBook (Pro) as well, but obviously nobody wants to lose Airport connectivity to gain WWAN support. However, this does seem to show that there's no technical limitation to adding EVDO connectivity to next generation Mac portables.
This week's Ask TUAW takes us into questions about Bluetooth File Exchange, 5.1 audio, VNC, getting Adium and Quicksilver working together, EVDO, automated file management based on label color, and more. As always, please leave your own comments, and ask more questions for next week either in the comments to this post or using the tip form. Now let's get to it
Ah, the open road. What's more American than being mobile, drifting along the highways and byways, traveling hither and yon, free as a debt-laden bird? While I try to rein in that derailed train of road metaphor, let's consider the options for Mac users and wireless data. Many of you would love to take your Internet access with you as you travel on family vacation or spring break; for others, terrestrial broadband (cable modem or DSL) is unavailable or prohibitively expensive at your fixed location. Good news for all: the choices on the wireless access front are better than ever before. We'll cover the US domestic options today, and hopefully get to Europe/UK and other international options sometime soon.
When the MacBook Pros were first announced people were perplexed by the ExpressCard slot. What are we supposed to do with that?!
Luckily, a number of ExpressCards have been released, and more are coming on the market all the time. Amongst the items one can now shove into one's MacBook Pro (without voiding the warranty) is the Verizon Wireless V640 ExpressCard which allows your MacBook Pro to suckle at the wireless broadband teat of Verizon's network.
How well does it work, you wonder? Derek at 5ThirtyOne got his hands on one and took it for a spin. He reports that OS X has all the native drivers built into it, so installation was a snap. Verizon even supports Macs with a utility that runs in OS X, though Derek recommends just using the builtin goodness since the Verizon app isn't all that great.
I happened by Om Malik's blog today and saw, as CTIA
winds down, he's caught wind of an EVDO card
from Novatel Wireless that's due in May. The best news is, it's going to
be an Express card, and it'll work in the MacBook Pro, no Windows partition needed. So what? Well I guess C.K. can
finally get back to playing World of Warcraft in Central Park (and freaking
out the squares). If you just can't wait until next month, when they are rumored to appear, you can keep an eye on this
MacBook Pro page on EVDOinfo.com.
Wireless is great, especially if it's everywhere. There is a USB EVDO device from
Novatel that'll be out "later this year."
Lo, and the cries of the Mac 
The guys over at EVDOinfo.com have 
This week's 
Ah, the open road. What's more American than being mobile, drifting along the highways and byways, traveling hither and yon, free as a debt-laden bird? While I try to rein in that derailed train of road metaphor, let's consider the options for Mac users and wireless data. Many of you would love to take your Internet access with you as you travel on family vacation or spring break; for others, terrestrial broadband (cable modem or DSL) is unavailable or prohibitively expensive at your fixed location. Good news for all: the choices on the wireless access front are better than ever before. We'll cover the US domestic options today, and hopefully get to Europe/UK and other international options sometime soon.
I happened by 
