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> units with better wifi cards would have cost more. Depending on how they structured their pricing: it may have been been cheaper to get the lower-end units and install your own wifi cards rather than buy the higher-specced ones from the factory. By blocking owners from using 3rd-party parts the laptop manufacturer can squeeze more money out of customers

Another good argument against proprietary firmware.

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The white list is because the device is certified for being "a good neighbour" in radio usage as a whole - because the WiFi module doesn't include the antenna which is part of the laptop.

The article directly adresses this

Around 2014 (haswell era), Thinkpads all had the same wifi hardware, an Intel 7260. They still pulled this stunt by disabling 5GHz bands on cheaper models.

The next year they ditched the whitelist on most models.

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