Would you please guys recommend a wireless usb adapter that works natively with airport on leopard.

Any USB wireless adapter with drivers for Mac OS X will work with an AirPort AP but don't expect to obtain any enhanced TC or TM functionality cause it just wont happen.

One more thing to note, if your AirPort AP is configured for 802.11n with 802.11a support then you need a device that supports 802.11a, even if it's only an 802.11g device, it must have 802.11a to see the AirPort AP (802.11a/b/g or 802.11a/b/g/n).

thanks BuildSmart for your response , if you could please give me a particular brand and model that is tested to work with airport that would be fantastic.

most of the adapters that have drivers for mac os x are detected as Ethernet controller.

As usual the lack of information is overwhelming.

A USB device will not give you AirPort functionality but it will allow you to connect to any wireless AP including apple AP's.

I recommend using a card rather than a USB adapter if you want full AirPort support.

The issue is people would rather spend $25.00 and buy a USB device cause it's cheap and struggle to make it work rather than spend up to $100.00 to get a device that works properly.

Is this for a desktop or a laptop?

If it is a laptop, does your laptop vendor white-list the wireless adapter?

If it is a laptop, does it have a miniPCI or miniPCIe adapter?

If it is a desktop, does it have an available PCIe slot?

If it is a desktop, is it an SFF case or a regular size case?

chrand recently purchased one of my desktop airport 11a/b/g/n wireless adapters and all he had to do was plug it in and power on for it to work and he wont have to worry about it breaking on software update or worry about having to modify drivers to get it working, if it stops working due to changes in the apple software then all apple device will also stop working so he has security in his product functionality.

Not to hijack thread, but regarding

"if your AirPort AP is configured for 802.11n with 802.11a support then you need a device that supports 802.11a, even if it's only an 802.11g device, it must have 802.11a to see the AirPort AP"

, is this an Apple AirPort "feature" -- because of its operational frequency of 5GHz? Never heard about it before with other 11n APs on 2.4GHz freqs.

BTW soon I will be another customer which will no need to bother with future Apple updates breaking my WiFi. Cheers to BuildSmart

After a lot of search i came to a conclusion that no usb adapter could be controlled using the airport management so i got my self US Robotics Wirelss MAXg PCI Adapter - 125 Mbps 802.11g ( USR5417) which works out of the box with no need for any patching.

It works out of the box but expecting any AirPort functionality or support isn't going to occur, the card will allow you to connect to airport bases but if you're expecting to make use of a TC or enhanced features of TM you will find that your adapter does not work because it is not recognizes as a real AirPort device.

There is rebranding options that allow your thrid-party devices to become real apple wireless devices and I do have a couple of the 802.11b/g/n PCI desktop adapters available and these provide an acceptable solution in most instances.

For most people this is not an issue, for some, they want a real apple 802.11a/b/g/n PCIe desktop adapter and as far as I know, I am the only manufacturer of such a device.