I'm not trying to be incendiary, but that's now the projected ratification date: Ephraim Schwartz files this detailed column for InfoWorld about the steps between now and then for moving 802.11n out of Task Group N and into the full body. Draft 1.10 was approved the other day; with minor changes that goes out as 2.0 to a larger voting pool. The odds are about zero at this point for any changes that will involve anything but firmware upgrades as there will be an entire entrenched industry for Draft 2.0-based products.
The final ratification isn't expected until October 2008, but the spec will be nailed down by around January 2008, which was about the original plan as of a few months ago.
Recall that 802.11n was expected to be ratified in 2006 a couple of years ago. The roadblocks that prevented that have now been overcome.
Wow...that calls into question moves by Apple and others to move forward with 802.11n, even in their current MacBook/MBP and Airport Extreme line. I believe they are using Atheros' XSPAN AR5008 chipsets in the MBP, and likely the Airport Extreme. While that creates a happy ecosystem now, like you, I wonder if firmware upgrades are all it will take to get users to the final 802.11n spec, or if they'll be left in the cold.
Great article you had at MacWorld on this exact topic.
[Editor's note: I'm of the mind that the minor changes to come are going to be entirely constrained by compatibility with existing devices. They apparently preserved compatibility between 1.0 and 1.10/2.0, and thus there's increasingly no motivation to break it now-gf]