What is Digg?173 Comments
- astrosmash, on 10/12/2007, -26/+104It's a nominal fee, and a legal requirement. Read the ***** article.
- StephenCIreland, on 10/12/2007, -17/+91one person pay and provide us the files necessary
- aetherworld, on 10/12/2007, -6/+76From the Article: According to the editor, the fee stems from a law called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which supposedly prohibits Apple from giving away an unadvertised new feature of an already sold product without enduring some onerous accounting measures. 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.
Sounds like a strange law to me but I'm not a lawyer and I'm sure Apple wouldn't do something ridiculous like this without legal pressure. - StephenCIreland, on 10/12/2007, -4/+48that patch will be torrented faster than apple can make an ad about it
hi im a mac time to patch me : cue big bandaid with "N" on it - greatblackowl, on 10/12/2007, -6/+33Everyone:
IT IS ONLY $5 US!!!
What the heck is everyone getting mad about? It's not even their decision to do it. - bradleyland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+28"that patch will be torrented faster than apple can make an ad about it"
I'm not sure Apple will really care. Based on the article text, it sounds like they're just trying to avoid more accounting woes. - awhiteflame, on 10/12/2007, -9/+36So it's not really Apple imposing it. Kinda misleading.
- OSDAgent, on 10/12/2007, -7/+29This sounds like it was an attempt on Apple part to give it's users a 'surprise' free gift when their new N products came out... as in - and guess what folks - all your computers are good to go. Here's what you need to get running. Then accounting came in and said hold the f- up... SOX and the SEC will bite us in the ass if you take another step. Then it turned into a huge foot-in-mouth situation.
SOX laws are extremely complicated. I'm guessing that their external auditors caught onto this and red flagged it the second they started looking into their books for end of year taxes. - fyre2012, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21From TFA: "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"
OMFG $5... my bank is tehBroken! - dreamlayers, on 10/12/2007, -8/+28There are plenty of examples of features added via free software or firmware updates. Microsoft added various features to Windows XP with SP2. Olympus adds PictBridge compatibility to some cameras via free firmware updates. I have a feeling this law is just an excuse.
- fitzfan, on 10/12/2007, -10/+29$5 aint bad, considering it wasnt advertised when you bought the Mac.
How much is it going to cost to upgrade your PC to 802.11n? - onehrcleaner, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) is a WHOLE lot more than this little hoop that Apple has to jump through. It was the direct result from the Enron/Arthur Andersen collapse. The revenue recognition principal the article is speaking about is merely a side note next to the new corporate governance and internal control legislation put forth by SOX. It has changed the audit side of accounting completely.
More info (wiki does a decent job):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-oxley - GraceMolloy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+20Geez people, it's called BitTorrent. You honestly think this won't leak?
Get over it. - turpenine, on 10/12/2007, -7/+17and its $5. If you have the money for the new router required and your not getting the airport for some reason, you should be able to sport the extra $5.
- listrophy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12I am not an accountant, but I believe Sarbanes-Oxley is the "Anti-Enron" law which ensures that some sneaky accounting isn't taking place.
And from the people I know in the accounting community (mostly limited to golf trips with my dad and his buddies), SOX, as it's called, is a cash cow for accountants. I can't imagine Apple wanting to go through a SOX rigmarole above and beyond what they're already to do for that law.
It's kind of a good law in general... it's just that in this case, it's (slightly) screwing customers. In other cases, it saves hundreds, if not thousands, of employees per company from losing pensions. - KibibyteBrain, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13http://thepiratebay.org/ (pretty sure as soon as the enabler is out, it will be here)
Seriously. I am usually not for "piracy" but its when bull like this pops up that I hardly think someone getting a bit of enabling firmware could be considered morally unjustified in the least. Apple marketed the MBP as draft-N ready, and should allow their customers to use that feature of their hardware, with no extra expenses, regardless of how minimal they are. It is a matter of principle. - Falldog, on 10/12/2007, -7/+15I'm not a SOX expert, but it sounds to me like they're just using it an excuse. The only reason I could see it make sense is if they already claimed a profit from selling 802.11n on their books, which would’ve been a really stupid idea. Otherwise, they could use that same excuse to charge for general upgrades and patches.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14It's not inaccurate. Apple, as of right now, will charge $4.99 for the enabler. Period. Those claiming this report is inaccurate obviously haven't read the entire report.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@omaryak
So, you are saying that when MS released new features for the XBOX, new media players for windows, directX enhancements, they were all illegal? - Protoss, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Torrents FTW?
- Qliphah, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8To me it sounds like legalese double talk... if apple has to charge for this why doesn't Microsoft charge for every security update? Let alone when they released IE7 (lots of features there that should have been there). Or why aren't you charged when an update to a game is released with a few new features?
In the end if they were "forced" to charge why not only charge a penny, or maybe state that all proceeds will goto a charity. Or mention that the inital price was $5 less because "(Apple) recognizes revenue from the product at the time of sale, given that it hasn’t finished delivering the product at that point". - jman8888, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Eh?
Why cant it just be free its in hardware... - node3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Apple marketed the MBP as draft-N ready"
No, they didn't. People figured out the chipset supported N, but Apple never mentioned it.
They should have, though. It would have avoided this whole mess. - turpenine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4to pirate osx.4 all you had to do was borrow copy from friend, copy, install.
it seriously had no protection.
or you can do what my girlfriend did, she had the geniuses reinstall her osx and they put 10.4 on it. - HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4And now you know why 5G iPods don't have the "Search" feature. And why bootcamp is "beta".
Apple feels hamstrung by the Sarbanes-Oxley act and feels they cannot ship new features in free upgrades.
How can you get around this 802.11n fee? Bootlegg the enabler. It'll surely be included in the next pay upgrade (Leopard) too. - planksconstant, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5you don't have to pay...
- Wootery, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9I doubt Apple will go too far out of their way to stop people pirating the 'enabler'.
Unless I'm mistaken (what a useful phrase), they don't normally bother with the whole anti-piracy thing. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I bet if apple had a paypal donation link on their website, mac fans would actually give Jobs their money. Seems like they can't shell it out quickly enough.
- TheCount, on 10/12/2007, -14/+18To all the people saying, "Hey, it's only 5 bucks! Get over it!"
If this was the PS3 and an article came out saying Sony every PS3 comes with a Blu-Ray player but you have to pay 5 bucks to unlock it, you would all be moaning like there was no tomorrow about how horrible Sony is for charging customers money to active a feature the hardware they paid for already supports.
So please, don't even try it. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"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," he wrote. "
So by this logic, no free OS updates can include *any* new features unless you get nickel and dimed for them. I wonder if this includes interfaces to existing but obscure features.
Hell by this logic *ANY* feature improvement to *any* software via a free update is a crime. - lilzaphod, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5~~~~ long pst ahead. skip to ~~~~ below to cut to the chase ~~~~~~~~~~~
SOX is a pain in the ass. NYC2Social's post is correct.
Apple basically has 2 choices. Change the pricing scheme in future sales of the product +$x, or go back and restate earnings for the models that included the technology. Either is a crap choice.
I would much rather pay a $5 unlocking fee than have to crack open my core duo MBP and have a new card installed. (which i will do, if i can). They are saving people quite a bit of money on this vs the alternative.
If you want to blame ANYONE on this, blame Enron. Their taking credit NOW approach on product and service not delivered until LATER has screwed everyone who sells products.
I have to take SOX training every year now (Thanks Enron, you sadistic *****), and one of the biggest areas covered in it is specifically in regards to making promises on products/services not delivered and how to account for BETA software with NDAs where "features may or may not be delivered in the final release". It's a ***** nightmare. If I say the wrong thing during a demo, we may not be able to recognize the revenue until 'XYZ' feature is released if the customer bought the product on the promise of said feature.
~~~~~ cut to the chase ~~~~
It's $5 freeking bucks. If you can't afford it, you shouldn't be computing. - relaxeder, on 04/17/2009, -2/+6Oh, who cares? Maybe some people are irate over the very idea of it, but five dollars is nothing.
How many of you who surf digg are jobless? Seriously. - xotx69, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4From all the articles I've read, the Core Duos were did not include the N hardware. Sorry atomic16...hope I'm wrong! :)
- sparkmonkeyz, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8I hope that someone will come up with a way to get around this.
- xotx69, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6After reading the article, $5 is not a large cost to upgrade your wireless card from a 20Mbit average (G) to 100Mbit average (N). This was not advertised when I bought my Macbook, so I'll take this cheap upgrade any day over the alternative of buying an external (N) NIC.
- nyc2socal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I think there's a bit of confusion.. We're all looking at it from the consumers point of view and not from the corporates accounting policies. Lets say you bought a MacBook Pro in 2006 with the n feature. They sold you the product at lets say $2000 USD... The n feature does not work, it's a hardware component. They then make it work in 2007 (via a software patch). They already charged you and received money for a "non-working" hardware component. That is against accounting principles.
There's two ways around this. Back in 2006, charge you $1995 USD, because of a non-functioning hardware component, and then charge you the additional $5 when they actually get the component working in 2007. This is an issue because of all the macs sold in 2006, the price did not change to reflect the "new hardware" device, so they did "charge" you for a "non-working" hardware device. So their work around is to say that the consumers were in fact NOT charged, and will need to pay the $5 to enable the functionality. - rtini, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2When I bought my MacBook Pro, the specs said "802.11g networking", so 802.11n for $5 sounds great.
If I can think of a reason to buy the new AirPort base station, it includes the 802.11n enabler too... - zetsurin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I will spend as much money on this as I spend on my Quicktime Pro upgrade.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Exactly. That's why this absolutely reeks. Yeah, I have five bucks and I'll probably fork it over for the firmware update. But if this is indicative of Apple's attitude toward feature updates from now on, that just flat blows.
I don't really understand how Sarbanes-Oxley even applies here. I wonder if any other companies are interpreting the law this way. - notninja, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2apparently people cant afford to spend 5 dollars even thought they bout a mac in the first place come on give up that Starbucks or something.
- jtherrien, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2How does this make the front page??
- PleaseJustDie, on 10/12/2007, -8/+10Except your not upgrading, all your doing is unlocking hardware that's already there. Its similar to the people who complain because you can pay to unlock all the features in Need For Speed on the 360, it all came with the disk, you pay extra to unlock it without playing the game. Only with NFS you can unlock it without paying, Apple is forcing you to pay for it if you want to unlock it.
If you buy a PC with 802.11n ability built into it, you don't have to pay an extra 4.99 later to use it. - Mirag3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2you should know, not only do you not have a draft-n compatible wireless card, but the Pre-N router is not draft-n compatible and won't be compatible with the 802.11n cards when they come out.
- wastern, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm sure if they were doing it purely for profit they would charge more then $4.99, that isn't *****.
You say this is typical for Apple, but its really not. They could easily charge a few hundred for iLife, not to mention they give their dev tools away with the OS, something MS charges a grand for
What makes you think that the person there knows more then me? I could say I work for PWC or one of the other "big-four" and work on Sarbanes-Oxley ***** everyday.....does that make it fact? They said nothing to backup their statement - CasadeMike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3You've all wasted more than $5 of your time just arguing about it.
You could go collect some soda bottles and make $5.
Seriously. - gingerchris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@drizek
unless I'm mistaken that wasn't about the piracy but the fact it was unreleased at the time of the leak - malliemcg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@Churiana - I've found my C2D to be many times better than the Powerbook G4 it replaced in terms of wireless signal strength, throughput and drop out rates.
This Sarbanes-Oxley act is just silly - the notebook shipped with everything to enable this to work, other than drivers. Bah!
At least I get the enabler w/ the 802.11n base station - mainly getting it to use as a NAS.
M - SmegFirk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2As I understand it, if you use xp on one of these machines with boot camp, xp sees the wireless device as n. So unless I'm missing something, having to pay to enable OSX to realise that it actually has an n device seems harsh.
- ChristOff666, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Really nothing to do with the problem here...
If you already have an pre.N compatible hardware, why on hell would you want to pay a fee to be able to use it??? - b612, on 10/12/2007, -7/+9wifi works great on mine
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