$1.99 for 80211n

Michael Gartenberg | January 18, 2007, 05:15 PM

Apple will charge customers $1.99 to enable the 80211.n functionality in some of their recent machines. Almost every Macintosh that has one of Intel's Core 2 Duos shipped with 802.11n. I asked Apple about this and was told

"The nominal distribution fee for the 802.11n software is required in order for Apple to comply with generally accepted accounting principles for revenue recognition, which generally require that we charge for significant feature enhancements, such as 802.11n, when added to previously purchased products,"

Now, I don't know if accounting rules mandate this. I'm not an accountant (if there is an accountant out there that knows if this is correct, please let me know) but I don't see Apple lying about this to get an extra two bucks from their customers. Frankly, they could have just done nothing and let those machines stand. I applaud Apple for doing the fight thing for customers by offering the update and given recent issues they had with the options backdating stuff, I'm not surprised they're taking a conservative approach to what's kosher and what's not. Let's face it, two bucks isn't a big deal and i'm amazed some folks are making a fuss about this.