I know this is a little bit late, but here's my rant on what Apple has done. They have quitely shipped the latest MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops (except the 17" 1.83 Ghz MacBook Pro) with test versions of 802.11n cards, the latest and fastest Wi-Fi technology coming out soon.
"Cool," you say. But wait... it costs money! Apple charges $1.99 for software that activates the radio. I don't know how to put this. Why is Apple charging you money just to use hardware that's in your laptop in the first place? Granted, 2 bucks isn't that much, but it's more of a hassle submitting the credit card information and everything, especially when you've actually paid for it.
I also wonder how hard it would be to make Linux take advantage of this card, now that everyone's aware of its existence. Given the rate of advancement in open source, I would say it wouldn't take very long at all. Great, so now my secondary operating system could possibly be more functional hardware-wise than the OS that I basically paid for (came with the Mac). Isn't that wonderful?
A quote from the article explaining what the Apple spokesperson Lynn Fox, is this:
"[The reason is that] generally accepted accounting principles requires the company to charge for significant feature enhancements when added to previously purchased products."
Bah, it's just Apple trying to rip us off. Another thing I have to point out: 802.11n isn't even officially released, so it's actually kind of pointless paying, unless your network is an Ad-Hoc mode with Mac laptops. (haha, how likely is that to happen?) In a way, I'm thankful I own a MacBook Core Duo 1, so I don't have to bother with Apple.