Do not get me wrong – I love Apple Inc. They are the bestest in the whole wide world. There are some things though that I think they need to sort out if they are going to be taken seriously in some markets that they are trying to get in to.

The problem that I am having at the moment is getting net-snmp to work on apple machines. Yes, every Apple box running OS X 10.4 has snmp on it already. I thought this would be great. The problem is though there is a serious bug on it, if you call certain MIB’s more then a couple of times, the daemon will jump too 100% CPU utilisation and just sit there… for ever.

I would love to raise a support case with apple – but for $195 per incident – to tell them that there is a bug with there own OS, I kinda think that is just plain rude. So I turned to the net-snmp developers. They don’t support the version of net-snmp bundled with apple boxes because it is too old.

So I then decided to move to the most recent version of net-snmp direct from the source. This doesn’t currently compile on an OS X box. And the net-snmp people are far from helpful about that – apparently because it is OS X.

To cut a long story short (there are other things that I have tried, many patches, compile options, older versions etc), as far as I can see at the moment there is no working snmp daemon / agent for OS X. Which makes it bloody hard to monitor these machines in anything remotely resembling an enterprise environment.

I am now lost as to why Apple would make and market servers, but not equip them with even the most elementary tools that they would need to go into a server farm. It is also annoying to me that they don’t seem to want to provide any support for their operating system. When it retails for $999 you expect at least some support!

It would appear that Apple has picked a fight that many legal commentators are saying can not be won. As I said yesterday, I thought it strange that Apple would choose to name their new portable device the iPhone as Cisco owns the trademark on it.

When Steve Jobs announced it, Apple and Cisco were in negotiations to allow the use of the iPhone name, with both companies working to ensure that the devices were inter-operable, and that from a marketing point of view there was a clear separation of the devices in the eyes of the end users. Jobs decided differently…

Originally the Trademark of Infogear Technology, Cisco purchased that company and all their IP in 2000 – inheriting the iPhone trademark. The registration of the iPhone trademark dates back to 1996, predating all of the iApple products.

It was amusing to see that in the keynote Jobs made such a point of the patents on the iPhone, clearly displaying his perceived importance of intellectual property.

Even though they don’t even own the name (Cisco does) Apple have just announced their new iPhone. It is an Internet Communicator, Wide Screen iPod and Telephone all in one… and it runs OS X. The iPhone will ship in the U.S. in June, in Europe in the fourth quarter and in Asia in 2008.

More in the Keynote address here…

Born July 9, 1932 – Rumsfeld has had some interesting media appearances. This is a compilation of a few of them.

Thank-you Paul

Well, the wacky warning contest has been fought and won for another year. This years winner was a Coin-operated-laundry owner who submitted a warning from his front loader washing machines. The manufacturer placed warning reads “Do not put any person in this washer“.

Other winners of the contest were “Never use a lit match or open flame to check fuel level.”, “Don’t try to dry your phone in a microwave oven.” and “Please do not use this directory while operating a moving vehicle.”

Born out of a concern that there are too many people suing (and unfortunately winning) for their own stupidity the Wacky Warnings site holds a contest each year to find the most ridiculous warnings fitted to products, generally born out of the manufacturers concern over being sued.

With cases like Dederer v Roads and Traffic Authority in Australia where then 14 year old Phillip Dederer jumped off a bridge that had signs saying do not jump, and then succeeded in wining his litigation against the RTA as an example, it is no wonder that sites like Wacky Warnings are popping up.