It is strange that they can't give out the updater.. Its just an improvement upon an excisting technology.. It would be the same as having those Mac mini's that shipped with better specs, being elligal..
Not quite. The 'upgraded' Mac minis were fully functional and disclosed their performance when assessed. Standard disclosures such as "actual appearance may vary" and "specifications are subject to change at any time" etc. cover supply-chain changes and periodic upgrades. What they don't cover are substantive changes--they couldn't secretly switch to Intel processors in the minis from G4s without disclosing it. With the minis, you just got incrementally better equipment than what was specified. This is not the case here. 802.11n represents a material change.
This may explain why someone at Adobe told me that couldn't add even minor new features to Adobe software along with the bug fixes. At the time, I thought she was crazy and pointed out all the improvements Apple sticks in between versions. Now it sounds like it is true. For their big products, we have to wait 18 months are longer for even minor improvements in a user interface or something.
No, that's just nonsense. If Photoshop 6 shipped with the features of Photoshop 7, just disabled, that would be applicable. But evolutionary software application updates are irrelevant and generally not subject to this act. It is expected that software is a fluid product and as such only the major function is reported (e.g. OS, image editor, music player).
What's really funny is that SOX isn't causing this at all. What is causing this and many similar fees is simply awareness of ethical, consistent, and enforced accounting treatments by many corporations that had either been very lax or just thought a few "white lies" wouldn't be any big deal. SOX isn't specially causing any of this. Good accounting and ethics are causing it.
The issue is actually PCAOB auditing, based on what I can see. I'm not a lawyer on this case or representing any interested parties. However, new accounting rules and strict records compliance require action to avoid what are called "material misstatements" which include substantial differences in products. Apple reported its products as having a complete feature set including 802.11b and g support. In order to support 802.11n, additional hardware and software is needed to enable a substantially different interface. In terms of interoperability, the difference between 802.11g and 802.11n is the same as the difference between ethernet and wireless networking cards. They are not interoperable and constitute a material change. Special hardware is needed to take advantage of and to construct an n-capable network.
The fact that the hardware has disabled capabilities is not novel (processors are often crippled and sold as inferior products [Celeron v. Pentium; GeForce MX vs. 4; et al.]), but Apple as a company cannot simply announce a latent feature in preexisting products that was not disclosed in their accounting documents previously. The way around this is to issue the update as a paid "upgrade" which implements the new feature. They can then report this material change to their products in their accounting and disclosure filings.
If this were a purely software change, then this would not apply, as software features are not disclosed in the detail that hardware is. Also, if this were an extension of an existing product that was simply bigger or faster or cheaper, it would slide by as well. This isn't a faster 802.11g card; it's a
different device implemented in hardware and software both internal (the Airport card) and external (requiring compatible switches/routers/gateways/etc.) to the product. It happens to be faster and roughly similar. But then again the Pentium M is faster and roughly similar to the Pentium III and was also a material change.
