Is a Cellular MacBook Air With M4 Chip On the Horizon?

Chalk this one up to idle speculation, but the current rumor is that the iPhone SE releasing next spring will have an Apple cellular modem in it. Apple’s been working on building its own modem for years now and it seems like the project is finally going to bear fruit.

But there’s another rumor about the spring. Specifically, we’re supposed to receive the M4 MacBook Air about that same time. If Apple can put their modem in an iPhone SE, why not a MacBook Air as well?

I have no sources or basis for this speculation except for the probable overlap in time. Over the years, I’ve heard from so many MacBook road warriors who desperately want a cellular-enabled MacBook. Wouldn’t it be nice to finally see Apple make one?

The Yule Playlist

It’s that time of year again. If you haven’t already subscribed to my Yule Playlist, you should check it out. I’ve been curating it for over a decade, and it’s full of excellent holiday music, primarily in the jazz genre. Over the years, I’ve received messages from people using this playlist for their holiday parties, while decorating the tree, and otherwise being festive.

I hope you are among them.

Get Organized with DEVONthink (Sponsor)

official application icon for DEVONthink

I often hear from listeners and readers looking for a research solution in the Mac ecosystem. My favorite app for this, without a doubt, is DEVONthink. DEVONthink is the most professional document and information management application for the Mac. It’s the one place for storing all your documents, snippets, or bookmarks, and working with them.

The integrated AI engine assists you with filing and searching, while the extensive search language includes advanced Boolean operators.

DEVONthink features a flexible sync system that supports many cloud services — or lets you synchronize over your local network — with everything securely encrypted. This gives you the choice for whichever syncing works best for you!

It has Smart rules and flexible reminders that let you automate all parts of your workflow and delegate boring, repeating tasks. Let DEVONthink automatically organize your data with rules you define!

DEVONthink’s AppleScript dictionary is one of the best on the Mac. There’s no part of DEVONthink that can’t be automated. Extend DEVONthink’s functionality with your own commands by adding them to its Scripts menu. Even templates can have scripts inside and you can set up new documents with data from placeholders, or inserted using your own AppleScript code.

DEVONthink just continues to get better. In the latest update they improved PDF annotation, Evernote import, Markdown functionality, and added even more AppleScript and JavaScript automation.

I find DEVONthink’s combination of innovative features and automation support irresistible. Interested? MacSparky readers can get a 20% discount on DEVONthink.

About that Rumored Apple Command Center

Rumors are percolating about Apple creating a home command center for launch next year. According to Mark Gurman, it’s roughly a six-inch square iPad that you hang on the wall, allowing you to control your HomeKit devices and other helpful home command center-y type work.

I’m interested if they can get it right. This also reminds me of my wish for something like this in the form of an Apple TV app, displaying the date, calendar items, the weather, and the like.

Every year or two, I look for status board-style applications in the vein of the now-abandoned Panic app, and to the extent there are any, they never seem quite good enough. If this were to work, I expect Apple would need to create it. If, however, they’re selling a separate product, I think the likelihood of that status board app for my Apple TV becomes even less likely.

Apple’s Too Conservative Approach to Text Intelligence

Apple is, understandably, taking a conservative approach to artificial intelligence. Nowhere is this more obvious and product-crippling than its text intelligence features. I am a fan of using AI for an edit pass on my words. Specifically, I’ve come to rely on Grammarly and its ability to sniff out overused adverbs and otherwise general sloppiness in my writing.

I’ve been around long enough to recall when grammar checkers first started appearing in applications like Microsoft Word. They were useless. It was comical how often their recommendations went against the grammar rules and made your writing worse. It wasn’t until the arrival of Grammarly that I got back on board with the idea of a grammar checker, and it’s been quite helpful. Note that I’m not using artificial intelligence to write for me; I’m using it to check my work and act as a first-pass editor. The problem I’ve always had with Grammarly is that it sends my words to the cloud whenever I want them checked.

Ideally, I’d like that done privately and locally. That’s why I was so excited about Apple Intelligence and text intelligence. It would presumably all happen on the device or Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers. Unfortunately, at least in beta, Apple Intelligence isn’t up to the task. That conservative approach makes Apple’s Text Intelligence useless to me in this editor role. While Apple’s tools can identify obvious grammatical errors, they fall short in the more nuanced aspects of writing assistance.

A telling example: As a test, I recently gave Apple Intelligence a paragraph where the word “very” appeared in three consecutive sentences — a clear style issue that any modern writing tool would flag. However, Apple’s text intelligence didn’t notice this repetition. That’s very, very, very bad.

This limitation reflects a broader pattern in Apple’s approach to AI tools. While the foundation is solid, the current implementation may be too restrained to compete with existing writing assistance tools that offer more comprehensive feedback on style and readability. The challenge for Apple will be finding the sweet spot between maintaining their caution and delivering genuinely useful writing assistance. I get the big picture here. I know they’re not trying to make a Grammarly competitor, but they need to take several steps away from that conservative benchmark if this is going to be useful.

Another problem with the text tools is the implementation of recommended changes. You can have it either replace your text entirely (without any indicator of what exactly was changed) or give you a list of suggested edits, which you must implement manually. Other players in this space, like Grammarly, highlight recommended changes and make it easy to implement or ignore them with a button.

Apple is famous for its ability to create excellent user interfaces, and I suspect they could do something similar but probably better if they put their minds to it. Unfortunately, the current version of the text intelligence tools in Apple Intelligence isn’t even close.