It's a service offering issue for unlimited plans, and a customer experience issue for metered.
Tethering is problematic in many ways with devices that don't expect to be metered. A Windows PC or Mac will sop up data sitting idle at a prodigious rate.
For every informed consumer who understands that, there are 8 who are going to go crazy when they end up with a wacky bill.
> A Windows PC or Mac will sop up data sitting idle at a prodigious rate.
Thankfully, Windows finally offers a "This is a metered connection" option. Do you know how to get the equivalent functionality on a Mac? I've looked, but can't figure it out.
The fine-grained control is nice but still seems like a glaring omission that the Mac still isn’t “tethering-aware” with regard to conserving data — especially since it’s so seamless to connect to an iPhone that shares the same iCloud account.
Thanks! Do you know if there's a free app? I don't need fine-grained control, just a metred/unmetred switch, and it feels excessive to pay $8 for that.
macOS's APIs and developer docs don't really encourage checking for cellular vs wifi the way iOS's do. So you probably do need relatively fine-grained control to get the same effect, as the vast majority of processes will assume the network connection is either fully up or fully down.
Tethering is problematic in many ways with devices that don't expect to be metered. A Windows PC or Mac will sop up data sitting idle at a prodigious rate.
For every informed consumer who understands that, there are 8 who are going to go crazy when they end up with a wacky bill.