14 DAY TRIAL // Snow Leopard testers are finding new System Profiler listings, AppleInsider reports, “building on evidence that Apple is seeking to hire engineers to test new Macs with 3G Wireless WAN support.” Particularly, these people are cited as saying that Mac OS X 10.6 will feature support for native WWAN hardware.
Earlier this week, news broke out that Apple was looking to hire QA Engineers to test Macintosh hardware with 3G wireless WAN cards. By removing the respective job description from its website, Apple further provided evidence of its plans to boost the connectivity capabilities of upcoming portable Macs.
According to the description, the position is in the Mac Hardware Group. “The Comms Software QA team within the Mac Hardware Group is seeking a motivated QA engineer to perform quality assurance testing for new Apple CPU Products,” what can be considered an introduction to the job description reads.
Now, AppleInsider is citing people close to Apple as sharing that, “The new version of the System Profiler application provided in Snow Leopard developer builds includes WWAN reporting under its network information section,” posting an artist's conception of System Profiler, the utility that lists the detailed hardware information of a Mac. The site notes that Apple would normally list third-party USB 3G WWAN peripherals along with other USB devices, rather than break out WWAN support on the same level as other Apple technologies that have been directly built into Macs.
According to a copy of Apple's aforementioned job description listed at computerjobs.com, “[The candidate] must possess in-depth knowledge of one or more Comms technlogies, including Gigabit Ethernet for consumer and enterprise-class workstations, Bluetooth v2.0, 3G Wireless WAN, and Wi-Fi [802.11] a/b/g/n including all associated security modes, authentication types and protocols for Access Points and Clients.” (emphasis ours). Despite the abundant evidence that Apple may be considering embedded 3G hardware in its Macs, AppleInsider believes that the job listing could still apply to the evaluation of mere dongle devices.