Apple MacBooks to get 3G?

An Apple job posting, which has now been taken down, suggests the company might be thinking about adding 3G wireless radios to future MacBooks.

According to the posting, spotted by Computerworld, Apple's Mac Hardware Group is seeking a quality-assurance engineer with experience in the various networking technologies popular in the personal computing market, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 'and/or 3G wireless WAN'.

Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Ethernet are the standard network interfaces on the Mac at the moment, while 3G wireless WAN is a technology confined just to the iPhone inside Apple.

A few years ago, laptops with embedded chips that could connect to cellular networks were thought to be the next big thing in mobile computing, but the concept hasn't taken off in the same way as Wi-Fi. In the US, Apple may be considering a MacBook partnership with AT&T, given its close ties to the carrier through the iPhone.

Rumours to that effect have surfaced before, and it might make sense that Apple would want to have some sort of tweak available for its MacBook line-up heading into the second half of the year.