fruity networking
Although my personal exposure to Apple products has been somewhat limited (mostly an originally blueberry iMac running OS 10.3 that I play around with... seriously), I have plenty of experience helping other people with their Macs or Apple gear. The times I've spent with Apple desktops and laptops has been enjoyable, but as for Apple networking equipment (Airport express, Airport Extreme, etc) i would have to rate these experiences at the opposite end of the pleasure spectrum. Somewhere near "pound my bloody head on the desk over and over".
Specifically, I would like to know what fruit-loop at Apple decided that CLI and web-interfaces were too passé, so they needed a closed configuration interface that requires a binary application running on a Mac or Windows computer to do anything at all with the device*. If they were trying to say "Dear users of Linux and other lesser OS's: FUCK YOU", well I got the message. Thanks. The last general networked device I encountered that was so retarded that it's main configuration method was proprietary software running on another device was a stupid print server.... from NINETEEN FUCKING NINETY-FIVE. However, at least that device could still be mostly configured using Telnet!! Not so for POS Apple networking gear.
Yesterday I discovered that the Apple Airport Extreme wireless router does not support static routes. Seriously, even if this was a seldom used feature for most users, how fucking hard is it to include it when you're putting together a router anyway. Besides which I can't even remember the last time I encountered a POS off-the-shelf Linksys or whatever router that didn't have static routes. So again, Apple is apparently competing with low-end networking gear from the 1990's??
Here's another added bonus: changing anything as trivial as a firewall rule reboots the router. Again, all but the shittiest routers I can think of can apply firewall rules and many other config changes without rebooting the whole router. This is absolutely pathetic for hardware that costs as much as Apple's shit does.
Between the hell I went through trying to configure a couple of Airport Expresses using their awful software and the new knowledge that Apple routers can't even do static routes, you can bet I'll be recommending Apple networking gear precisely NEVER. I wouldn't want someone to buy one only to find out it also doesn't support... I don't know, DHCP? DNS? Who the fuck needs that anyway, right? We'll just all say Bonjour and Rendezvous over at .local.
Fuck you, Apple.
* Yes, I know there are some open-source tools painstakingly constructed by sniffing traffic from Apple's software, but they aren't fully-featured and don't work with all devices, and that only supports my point.
