Those aching to buy new wireless draft-N equipment should feel comfortable pulling the trigger now even though the final specs won’t be approved for more than a year, October 2008. The IEEE’s 802.11 working group ratified Draft 2.0 of the eventual 802.11n wireless standard last week, which includes backwards compatibility with with early Pre-N equipment, though with reduced magical powers (it can use only one of Draft 2.0’s two 20MHz bands) and basically full support for products that play by the Draft 2.0 schema.
According to a story on Ars Technica, this is one of the reasons Apple went ahead and unlocked 802.11n functionality in its hardware. And you know if Apple says it’s OK, it must be safe for general consumption.