The year 2006 has brought many more forays into Windows than normal. Over a decade ago, I wrote software for DOS and subsequently various versions of Windows. After quitting my job at Kysor, I left Windows behind and my primary desktop OS has been either Mac OS or a variant of Unix (FreeBSD, BSDI, IRIX, or Linux).
For the last decade, I used Windows only when necessary. Earlier this year, I bought a new Core Duo iMac. I contributed to the XPonMac context to get XP working on it. I was even happier when Apple released Boot Camp soon thereafter. I installed XP and Firefox, rebooted, and didn’t use XP again. Then Parallels arrived. I downloaded and installed it. Not only did it work, it worked well. I installed FreeBSD, Debian, and WinXP just to have convenient access to them. Before June, I did actually used XP for one thing. I downloaded and installed the Blue Frog. Then Blue Security got DOSed off the planet.
I began 2006 with only occasional contact with Windows. Within a couple months, I had it installed on my iMac and a few months later I was actually using it. Then, just imagine my surprise when I was filling out the rebate form for my free iPod (which I bought with my new MacBook). The form was experiencing technical difficulties and yielded up an extremely interesting error message. Apparently Apple is also becoming much more familiar with Windows as well. Pay careful attention to the server tagline at the bottom of the error message.
I am sure the explanation for why an Apple server is yielding up Windows .NET error messages will be interesting. For reference, I also saved the page as a web archive. The following is the .webarchive file generated by Safari. I have also posted a full sized image of the original screenshot.
I can’t read your web archive file, but I’m wondering if it shows you the URL of the actual page on which the error appeared (since your Safari screenshot hides the browser bar).
I’m guessing you’ll find it is not an apple site at all– or if it does have apple.com in the name, DNS will show you that it is actually a CNAME pointing to a server at some other company, most likely the company that will be processing the rebate. They’ve just skinned their own site with Apple’s look and feel.
Yeah, here you go: the Apple rebate stuff is in an iFrame on Apple’s site. The actual rebate form URL is
http://applepromotion.corporatesvcs.com/(bpicpljvhjrp5345xqhlvq55)/ProductAddition.aspx
And there ya have it folks… corporatesvcs.com is not an Apple website.
Registrant:
Corporate Services, Inc.
5681 West Cleveland Road
South Bend, Indiana 46628
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: CORPORATESVCS.COM
Created on: 04-Sep-98
Expires on: 03-Sep-06
Last Updated on: 04-Feb-05
Administrative Contact:
Wozny, Robert csins@corporatesvcs.net
Corporate Services, Inc.
5681 West Cleveland Road
South Bend, Indiana 46628
United States
5742712055 Fax — 5742712055
Technical Contact:
Wozny, Robert csins@corporatesvcs.net
Corporate Services, Inc.
5681 West Cleveland Road
South Bend, Indiana 46628
United States
5742712055 Fax — 5742712055
Domain servers in listed order:
NS2.CW.NET
NS2.CORPORATESVCS.NET
FS1.CORPORATESVCS.NET
NS02.SAVVIS.NET
It surely is not an Apple host. The version makes it seem as if it is a .NET server. However, it still could be an Apple OS X Server or any other kind of server for that matter. So maybe this server isn’t using Apache but XSP instead? Highly unlikey, but possible. Check out: http://www.mono-project.com/
Looks like Apple has nothing to do with it at the moement but they should get more familiar with maybe their own version of this solution. Matt, you should install this on the server so we can use it, serve up some asp.net on Mac! 😉