Apple to impose 802.11n ‘unlocking fee’ on Intel Mac owners

19 years ago

“Core 2 Duo-based Mac owners who want to unlock next-generation 802.11n wireless technologies hidden inside their computers will first have to fork a few bucks over to Apple,” Katie Marsal and Kasper Jade report for AppleInsider. “That’s unless they plan to plunk down $179 for the company’s forthcoming 802.11n-enabled AirPort Extreme Base Station, with which the unlocking fee (and 802.11n software enabler patch) are reportedly included.”

Marsal and Jade report, “You see, Apple for the last several months has quietly been shipping the majority of its Core 2 Duo systems with inactive support for the draft 802.11n specification, an emerging wireless standard that promises fivefold speed increases over previous-generation 802.11g products.”

“The company said that it plans to offer an ‘AirPort Extreme 802.11n Enabler 1.0’ patch next month when it begins shipping its new AirPort Extreme Base Station, which will activate the technology. ‘Most new Mac computers ship with built-in 802.11n wireless support that can be easily enabled with the installation of enabler software included with new AirPort Extreme wireless base station,’ Apple wrote on its website,” Marsal and Jade report.

Marsal and Jade report, “What the company did not say is that Core 2 Duo Mac owners who want to unlock 802.11n capabilities for use with third party wireless solutions will have to pay a small $4.99 fee before downloading the 802.11n enabler patch.”

Full article here.

The reason for the fee, Jeremy Horwitz reports for iLounge is that “the Core 2 Duo Macs weren’t advertised as 802.11n-ready, and a little law called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act supposedly prohibits Apple from giving away an unadvertised new feature for one of its products. Hence, said the Apple rep, the company’s not distributing new features in Software Update any more, just bug fixes. Because of Sarbanes-Oxley… It’s about accounting. Because of the Act, the company believes that if it sells a product, then later adds a feature to that product, it can be held liable for improper accounting if it recognizes revenue from the product at the time of sale, given that it hasn’t finished delivering the product at that point.”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Rainy Day” for the heads up.]