Get your own personal Apple.com username
Like most of you, I like to pretend I am an Apple employee, occasionally dressing up as one and standing outside the entrance to my local Apple store greeting customers and dispensing advice. And now I have discovered a way to further encourage my deranged fantasy.
Simply add the text ?user= to Apple’s url, and you can create the illusion that you have special access to Apple.com, complete with the username of your choice. Imagine how proud your parents will be when you show them you can log in to Apple.com as “Apple_President_and_President_of_The_Earth_in_General“. It will make that $140,000 they dropped on your college education almost seem worth it.
This is actually nothing Apple-specific, you can do this on most sites (even ours), but of course no one ever wants to pretend they work for Macenstein.
The story behind this post is that a faithful Macenstein reader, who shall remain nameless (Tom), sent us the URL “http://www.apple.com/?user=Apple_sucks†claiming they found proof that Apple’s site had been hacked. Since I think they were serious, (and we actually received a similar “tip” about a year ago), I realized that not everyone knew about this silly web trick.
Thanks to faithful Macenstein reader Christopher for the editorial advice.
Hmm, I don’t get it. Where does this user name appear on the Apple-site? I mean just the URL isn’t it or?
It’s just a lame thing you can do with the URL, it isn’t actually a true log-in or anything.
-The Doc
To be perfectly honest, I’m pretty disappointed in you, Dr Macenstein. 😉
Knowing how to pass an unhandled parameter to a CGI application does not warrant a blog post, Slow News Day or not.
Sure you can’t update it with something remotely interesting? It isn’t too late!
Sorry Christopher.
It was never my intention to mislead any of you into thinking this blog was interesting. The whole reason for this post was actually because a reader sent me the URL “http://www.apple.com/?user=Apple_sucks” claiming they found proof that Apple’s site had been hacked.
Since I think they were serious, I realized that not everyone knew about this silly web trick.
-The Doc
Oh, you should have said!
It would have made for an interesting anecdote to include that in the actual post.
OK Christopher, maybe I’ll take your advice.
Here at Macenstein, if we can make just ONE reader happy… then we’ll soon go out of business…
Article updated.
-The Doc
I must say, Doc, you seem to take reader feedback very seriously.
I’m impressed.
Only when it’s easy. Please don’t suggest I change the logo or color scheme or anything requiring effort.
🙂
A brief glimpse into my laziness…
I eat Peanut Butter on a spoon for both breakfast and lunch because I am too lazy to add bread and make a peanut butter sandwich. Scurvy, here I come!