Apple is building a new top-end laptop, and one of the rumoured features is a 5G modem inside it. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported on 22 July 2026 that the machine, which everyone is calling the MacBook Ultra, is on track for late 2026 or early 2027. If Apple does it, the laptop would use the C1X modem or the C2, which goes into the iPhone 18 Pro this year.
The iPad has had cellular since 2010 and the Apple Watch since 2017.
What does this fix?
My phone’s hotspot works. It takes two taps if it’s an Android. With an iPhone, I just open my Mac and the hotspot is already auto connected. Yes, a modem in the laptop would save me those taps, but I’m not convinced it’s worth it. There’s no where I’ll be with my Mac needing internet and not have my phone.
Apple has sold a cellular Apple Watch since 2017. Nine years later, Apple’s own carrier support page for the Watch lists no Kenyan network. South Africa is the only African country on it, with MTN and Vodacom. That means if you get a cellular Apple Watch in Nairobi and you have bought a Wi-Fi watch with an unusable radio.
Our telcos aren’t there yet even with the iPhone itself. Apple’s carrier feature list for Africa shows Safaricom supporting 5G, LTE and eSIM, Airtel supporting eSIM, and neither listed for Wi-Fi Calling . A cellular Mac would need the same certification from the same carriers.
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And it’s not just tech support. Recently, telcos in Kenya have moved the scale to less resources. Airtel cut every Smarta tier on 18 August 2026 without touching the prices. Smarta 1500 fell from 90GB to 32GB, a cut of 64%, and the KES 1,000 tier’s cost per gigabyte doubled to KES 45.45. Safaricom on the other hand cut No Expiry allocations in November 2025, then doubled the monthly KES 1,000 bundle to 21.5GB on 1 August 2026 while removing B-Live and later re-instating the bundles. With the way laptops use more data, getting a plan that guarantees you continued internet access on your laptop every time would be quite the issue here.
Also, Wi-Fi already covers the places laptops go. Kenya had 51.5 million mobile broadband subscriptions against 2.46 million fixed internet lines by December 2025, going by Communications Authority data we worked through in April 2026. The office, the cafe and the house with fibre all have a network already. The gap a cellular Mac would fill in transit, or at a queue is already solved by the phone in your pocket.
Anyways, it’s all speculation. I had an iPad 11-inch cellular a few years ago, and I discovered getting a plan for two different SIM cards in Kenya is so annoying and problematic and stressful. A feature like share my data on Safaricom’s Apps restricts data sharing to just 5GB, increasing such limits is also hectic, and such is the life you’ll have to live through. But who knows.
Would you buy a MacBook with 5G in it?
. The Mac mini is Apple's small desktop, an aluminium box roughly 5 inches square that ships without a screen, keyboard or mouse. You supply those, which is why it has been the cheapest way into a Mac for two decades. The design is unchanged this generation. ## Where the $899 comes from The previous Mac mini launched in October 2024 at $599 with the same 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage. We [covered that launch](https://tech-ish.com/2024/11/04/m4-mac-line-up-apple-refresh/) at the time, when the M4 Pro cost $1,399. In May 2026 Apple dropped the $599 version, brought it back in late June at $799, and pushed the M4 Pro to $1,599, [changes tracked by MacRumors](https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/mac-mini/). So the same specification has gone from $599 to $799 to $899 in under two years, a 50 percent rise on a machine whose whole pitch is being the affordable Mac. [AppleInsider calls $899](https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/08/25/m6-mac-mini-arrives-in-ram-and-ssd-constrained-environment) the highest starting price it has ever had. The original 2005 model was $499. ## Why the price went up On its earnings call on 30 July 2026, chief executive Tim Cook told analysts: "we reluctantly raised prices, I would say. We did it because we're in what I would characterize as a 100-year flood on the memory pricing." The [full transcript is public](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/08/07/apple-aapl-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/). Three companies make almost all the world's memory chips: Samsung, SK hynix and Micron. Since late 2025 they have moved factory capacity towards the specialist memory AI data centres buy, where margins are higher, leaving ordinary memory scarce. [TrendForce reported in July](https://www.trendforce.com/presscenter/news/20260703-13134.html) that contract prices would rise another 13 to 18 percent in the third quarter of 2026, after jumps of roughly 60 percent in the quarter before. Apple's finance chief Kevan Parekh told the same call that memory costs explained more than 100 percent of the company's sequential fall in profit margin. The same pressure is expected to hit the iPhone 18, covered in our [piece on iPhone pricing in Kenya](https://tech-ish.com/2026/08/02/iphone-18-split-launch-kenya-prices/). ## What you get The M6 has a 12-core processor and 12-core graphics, with a dedicated AI accelerator in every graphics core. Apple claims up to 4 times faster AI work and 2 times faster graphics than the M4 Mac mini, on its own July 2026 tests. It is also the only M6 tier Apple plans to make, since it is skipping the M6 Pro and Max to bring the M7 forward, as our [piece on both chips explains](https://tech-ish.com/2026/08/25/apple-m6-m5-ultra-chips-explained/). Base memory stays at 16GB and base storage at 256GB, so the extra $300 buys speed rather than capacity. The M5 Pro model gets Thunderbolt 5, the fast port standard used for external drives and displays, and can be linked to other Mac minis to run large AI models locally. The M6 keeps the slower Thunderbolt 4. Both gain Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5Gb ethernet, and both run macOS 27, which brings the rebuilt Siri that Apple [showed at WWDC in June](https://tech-ish.com/2026/06/02/wwdc-2026-siri-ios-27-cook-last-keynote/) as an English-only beta later this year. Apple said in February that Mac mini production would come to the United States for the first time, at a Houston plant, and Cook confirmed in July that assembly starts there this year. Apple [opened a training centre at the site on 13 August](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-opens-advanced-manufacturing-center-in-houston/). ## What this means in Kenya Apple has no store here, so the machines arrive through authorised resellers and importers on their own timelines. At about KES 129.45 to the dollar on 24 August 2026, $899 converts to roughly KES 116,000. Nobody will pay that. Computers enter Kenya at zero import duty, but a 2.5 percent import declaration fee, a 2 percent railway development levy and 16 percent VAT all apply, and VAT is charged on top of the other two. With air freight, our working estimate puts the landed cost near KES 150,000 before any shop takes a margin. The outgoing M4 Mac mini sells locally from about KES 89,000 at [iTey Store](https://iteystore.co.ke/category/mac-mini-m4-m5-in-kenya-apple-desktop-computers) to KES 137,000 at [Price in Kenya](https://www.priceinkenya.com/product/113317-apple-mac-mini-m4). Early Kenyan pricing on new Apple hardware runs high and then falls. The MacBook Neo landed at KES 130,000 against a $599 list price [in March](https://tech-ish.com/2026/03/25/macbook-neo-price-in-kenya-alternatives/), and iPhone 17 prices [dropped sharply three months after launch](https://tech-ish.com/2025/12/30/iphone-17-iphone-air-prices-in-kenya-go-down-crashing-just-3-months-later/). So wait for stock to settle rather than paying the first asking price. If your current Mac still does your work, nothing in the memory forecasts suggests a cheaper Mac mini next year. The thing to watch is whether Kenyan resellers list the M6 before the 22 September shipping date.](/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Apple-M6-and-M5-Ultra-hero-260825_big.jpg.large_2x-390x220.jpg)
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