Apple confirms $2 fee to allow people running Macintosh OS X to use 802.11 N

zekrahminator · Jan 20, 2007

Early rumors stated that Apple was going to charge people who own a copy of their latest operating system, Macintosh OS X 10, $5 to run 802.11N technology. Apple will only be charging users $1.99 to run 802.11N compatible hardware. While most people would complain that these costs should have been factored in with the cost of the actual operating system, Apple claims that the "nominal fee" is to ensure that Apple complies with various regulations in the USA.

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djbbenn · Jan 20, 2007

LOL a fee to run a wireless standard? Give me a break.

-Dan

niko084 · Jan 20, 2007

djbbenn said:
LOL a fee to run a wireless standard? Give me a break.

-Dan

Ditto... lol ohh well, I'm sure you can edit that somehow someway.... :ohwell:

overcast · Jan 20, 2007

ghost101 · Jan 20, 2007

I laughed at first as well. Bit if you read the dailytech article and look at the comments, there are some explanations as to why this has to be done.

However, the question remains as to why they are charging $2 and not $1 or less. All they need is any kind of fee.

niko084 · Jan 20, 2007

ghost101 said:
I laughed at first as well. Bit if you read the dailytech article and look at the comments, there are some explanations as to why this has to be done.

However, the question remains as to why they are charging $2 and not $1 or less. All they need is any kind of fee.

$1 to make it a legal purchase. and $1 for the activation lol

EastCoasthandle · Jan 20, 2007

It reminds me of having to insert a quarter to use a public bathroom of days past.

xman2007 · Jan 20, 2007

EastCoasthandle said:
It reminds me of having to insert a quarter to use a public bathroom of days past.

still have to put 20p in the loos at new street station B'ham (damn annoying when you need a piss fast :cry:

)

jocksteeluk · Jan 20, 2007

no doubt this is down to the us patent office giving out silly patents to anyone who applies for them

Grings · Jan 20, 2007

being apple im surprised its not $100's

Wile E · Jan 20, 2007

Grings said:
being apple im surprised its not $100's

How do you figure? OS X.4 only costs $130 new in the box.

Track · Jan 20, 2007

Wile E said:
How do you figure? OS X.4 only costs $130 new in the box.

OS X is a piece of siht when u got Windows around, so whats the point?

Wile E · Jan 20, 2007

Track said:
OS X is a piece of siht when u got Windows around, so whats the point?

That's your opinion. I like both. They both have pros and cons.

Grings · Jan 20, 2007

Wile E said:
How do you figure? OS X.4 only costs $130 new in the box.

o.k. maybe its not so true nowadays, but i used to use macs in my old job (powermacs, pre imac) and everytime we upgraded the things, it cost tens of thousands of £££

im aware that more recently they've fallen in line with pc pricing, but once bitten twice scorned

hey im just getting used to nvidia and intel not being crap anymore, give me time, and i may get used to apple being acceptable too

Track · Jan 20, 2007

Wile E said:
That's your opinion. I like both. They both have pros and cons.

You cant be serious..

Windows Vista is far better than Mac OS X.

And Mac OS X is copied completely from Windows.. kinda like Christianity if that helps.

Dippyskoodlez · Jan 20, 2007

If you're gonna bashOS X track, please have some proof rather than spouting nothing but FUD.

As for this "fee" I want to know the whole story behind it. Whats apple gonna do, mail everyone a $2 bill? :rolleyes:

Way to report the whole story. Apple news != pc news, its never whole.

WarEagleAU · Jan 20, 2007

This still makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I mean, Windows users can use the Draft N or Pre N standard and not be charged. Why is Mac charging?

Wile E · Jan 20, 2007

WarEagleAU said:
This still makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I mean, Windows users can use the Draft N or Pre N standard and not be charged. Why is Mac charging?

They said it's because it's already installed, just not activated, so they have to charge because it's considered an upgrade. I think it's dumb, too. They could've just activated the n spec out of the box.

Track said:
You cant be serious..

Windows Vista is far better than Mac OS X.

And Mac OS X is copied completely from Windows.. kinda like Christianity if that helps.

The Vista thing is your opinion. It doesn't do anything that OS X hasn't already been doing for years, except maybe whole drive encryption. The only difference is that OS X uses 1/3 the resources while doing it. EDIT: Forgot to mention that Vista also has DX10 in it's corner, but to be honest, I don't know of anyone that uses OS X for gaming anyway. That's the whole reason I built my budget gamer.

And OS X is completely different from any Earlier versions of Windows, I don't see many similarities at all, besides them both being a gui for an operating system. OS X is also based on Unix, nothing like Windows at all.

It sounds to me that you haven't even tried OS X for any length of time, or you tried briefly, weren't used to the way it works, and decided it sucked based on the fact that you don't know how to use it. You shouldn't bash things you know nothing about.

newtekie1 · Jan 21, 2007

ghost101 said:
I laughed at first as well. Bit if you read the dailytech article and look at the comments, there are some explanations as to why this has to be done.

However, the question remains as to why they are charging $2 and not $1 or less. All they need is any kind of fee.

No it actually makes no sense, even from an accounting point of view like they claim. It is odd how microsoft isn't charging one cent, somehow they manage to do it. I know it is odd for Apple to release an update that adds any functionality at all to the OS for free. In fact I am actually surprised they aren't forcing everyone to buy 10.5 if they want to get 802.11n support.

Wile E said:
It doesn't do anything that OS X hasn't already been doing for years, except maybe whole drive encryption. The only difference is that OS X uses 1/3 the resources while doing it. EDIT: Forgot to mention that Vista also has DX10 in it's corner, but to be honest, I don't know of anyone that uses OS X for gaming anyway. That's the whole reason I built my budget gamer.

While I agree with your overall argument that Windows isn't clearly better than OSX, I have to disagree with your statement that Vista uses 3 times the resources as OSX. I would like to see some hard proof to back that statement up, like some screenshots of resource usage of OSX, and some figures of what both of them use on clean installs.

Jimmy 2004 · Jan 21, 2007

xman2007 said:
still have to put 20p in the loos at new street station B'ham (damn annoying when you need a piss fast )

I went to Birmingham a few months back... wasn't impressed by having to pay, didn't have any change on me :mad:

Edit: back on topic, you do get the upgrade free if you buy apple's wireless N router I think.

Wile E · Jan 21, 2007

newtekie1 said:
No it actually makes no sense, even from an accounting point of view like they claim. It is odd how microsoft isn't charging one cent, somehow they manage to do it. I know it is odd for Apple to release an update that adds any functionality at all to the OS for free. In fact I am actually surprised they aren't forcing everyone to buy 10.5 if they want to get 802.11n support.

While I agree with your overall argument that Windows isn't clearly better than OSX, I have to disagree with your statement that Vista uses 3 times the resources as OSX. I would like to see some hard proof to back that statement up, like some screenshots of resource usage of OSX, and some figures of what both of them use on clean installs.

Here's a fresh boot of OS X with some of my helper apps running. iTunes helper, the Stuffit Daemons, Logitech Control applet, Toast - Mount It and Toast It Daemons, Menu Meters, and obviously Activity Monitor. 197MB after the booting dust clears. This is on the 2.33GHz Core2 iMac 20". On my G4 and G5 those figures are actually 50-70MB lower, depending on my start up apps. So it seems the Intel code consumes more ram than the PPC code.

http://img.techpowerup.org/070121/Picture 2.jpg

My Vista Ultimate install is currently not booting, so I can't post a screen as of yet. It quit booting after I tried to install the ATI drivers(Which seemed to fail. After waiting for 7min, I tried to open the Task Manager, but the system hung. Had to hard reset). But on fresh boot last night I recall somewhere it being around 370MB, with absolutely nothing installed. (Installed last night, just trying the RTM for the first time since its release. It stays on the green bars, any tips welcome. lol)

Dippyskoodlez · Jan 21, 2007

Wile E said:
Here's a fresh boot of OS X with some of my helper apps running. iTunes helper, the Stuffit Daemons, Logitech Control applet, Toast - Mount It and Toast It Daemons, Menu Meters, and obviously Activity Monitor. 197MB after the booting dust clears. This is on the 2.33GHz Core2 iMac 20". On my G4 and G5 those figures are actually 50-70MB lower, depending on my start up apps. So it seems the Intel code consumes more ram than the PPC code.

PPC code can actually be stripped out of a lot of x86 os x apps, and reduce the size CONSIDERABLY, it does, however, break things occasionally as not all programs are fully converted

So, what exactly did apple confirm with this anyways? :confused:

Wile E · Jan 21, 2007

Dippyskoodlez said:
PPC code can actually be stripped out of a lot of x86 os x apps, and reduce the size CONSIDERABLY, it does, however, break things occasionally as not all programs are fully converted

So, what exactly did apple confirm with this anyways?

I'm assuming Rosetta consumes the rest of that ram?

And I think Apple basically confirmed that the Airport Extreme cards in the new machines are actually 802.11n capable, they just locked it out in software and plan to charge people to activate it. I personally find that stupid, they should've just left it unlocked to begin with.

Dippyskoodlez · Jan 22, 2007

Wile E said:
I'm assuming Rosetta consumes the rest of that ram?

No, Rosetta could be looked at as a background "service" that translates PPC->x86.

Its the PPC Code itself, that takes up the extra space.

Wile E · Jan 22, 2007

Dippyskoodlez said:
No, Rosetta could be looked at as a background "service" that translates PPC->x86.

Its the PPC Code itself, that takes up the extra space.

Really? So how does the PPC code affect the ram? I just assumed it sat dormant on an Intel Mac.

OFF TOPIC:Gonna post this in the Handy OS X apps thread also. Intel only, Boot Camp and Parallels. You try Parallels yet, Dip? It's coherence mode is awesome(runs guest operating system transparently on top of OS X, you have the Windows taskbar on the bottom of the screen and the OS X tool bar at the top, and it works with Boot Camp partitions.)

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Apple confirms $2 fee to allow people running Macintosh OS X to use 802.11 N

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