Apple redirects to Wikipedia!? ¬
2009-01-01
I just happened across a hyperlink to apple.com/hypercard that redirects to wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard. Yes, I confirmed that the source of the page contains both meta & JavaScript redirects to said Wikipedia page, so it’s for real.
Since when is Apple redirecting straight to Wikipedia!?1 Why not redirect to a search of their own knowledge base!? Is this going to become common practice for corporations!?
1 My sincerest apologies for the blatant overuse of the interrobang, I’m just still in shock.
Update: Some further research by myself and others in the comments revealed that it had been redirecting to a non-existent product page on the Apple Store for 4+ years after it was discontinued in April of 2004. It was then redirected to Wikipedia sometime in January or February of 2008, so it’s been this way for a while now!
No, I think Apple has the redirection to Wikipedia as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that Wikipedia could have been built as a HyperCard stack.
5586 days ago
That isn’t an interrobang, because it isn’t a combination of the two.
5586 days ago
Alas poor Hypercard, we barely knew ye! The link to their search yielded a blank page earlier, but now shows results. Not sure if it was my error. I remember Hypercard and mourn it’s passing – it was a useful tool.
5586 days ago
I noticed this months ago. I wish I’d let somebody else know. Oh well, it’s still interesting.
5586 days ago
@Jeff You’re entirely correct, I didn’t use an actual interrobang. I didn’t feel it safe to use it on the web, but I’ve never formally tested what standard web fonts it appears in.
@Jonathan It’s actually very good to know that this has been happening for at least a few months. Interestingly, the Wikipedia article notes that Apple redirects to it, but I didn’t dig far into the history to see when that bit of trivia was added.
5586 days ago
Bear in mind that the Wikipedia page could be vandalised at any time to include statements like ‘Apple sucks’ and the like, and you’ve got a major problem!
5586 days ago
@Wikipedophile Very true. There are many potential issues with corporate linking to wikis, hence my surprise that they didn’t just link internally.
5586 days ago
It looks like the change was made by user Toussaint 22 Aug 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=HyperCard&oldid=233631526
5586 days ago
@CharlesV That definitely confirms Jonathan’s note that this has been so for a while. At least six months.
A quick browse through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine’s archive of apple.com/hypercard shows that it was redirecting to the Apple Store through 2007-12-12, but by 2008-02-11 it was redirecting to Wikipedia. The HyperCard page on the Apple Store was pulled sometime prior to April 2004 which fits with Wikipedia’s note that HyperCard was pulled from distribution in March 2004. I’m surprised it pointed to a non-existent page for four years!
5586 days ago