I'm not sure that I understand the relevance - or the practicality - of that.

One of the reasons I finally dumped my HP PC and Ubuntu was that I no longer wanted to play sysadmin. I wanted my computer to "just work" with minimal (non invasive) effort on my part.

So far, I am supremely happy. This Air is the bomb: Fast, silent, robust, well made, wow. Nice piece of work.

But needing a CC to get a free OS update is neither non-invasive nor effortless, which the platform had been up until now.

(Sure, I could get the update from somewhere else, but I would only be doing so because Apple failed to address my particular use case. I'd rather get it from them, jic - as in "just in case something borks in the update" - then I can go back to them with ground upon which to stand. Sure, as noted elsewhere, my use case is in their 1% outlier fringe, but that doesn't mean I wish to be without support or without minimal privacy invasion.)