Tiger Bits: Airport Indicator

There's been a subtle change in the behavior of the menu bar's Airport signal indicator in Tiger. According to Macworld UK's review of Tiger, "If you're using Airport, you may think that the reception has suddenly improved because it shows more bars in the menu icon. Not so. Apple says 'we revised the Airport indicator so it better indicates the performance you should get with your current connection. In this case more bars means faster throughput.' My tests suggest the signal strength remains the same, but there's less noise."

I'd like to hear some clarification on this, because it sounds a bit odd. I mean, can you have a really good signal, but poor performance so only a bar or two will show? Or a really poor signal with good throughput so the bars are full until you suddenly move a foot to the left and lose the connection entirely?

[via fscklog]