Everyone has a defining moment in life. Mine happened on the toilet.
I was peacefully enjoying my porcelain meditation when my iPhone buzzed: “Approve Apple Watch update?” Sure, why not? Then I did the unthinkable — I tapped on the Terms & Conditions link. Voluntarily. With full awareness. I know. I’m scared of me too.
As I scrolled through the usual wall of legal lorem ipsum, I spotted a mysterious reference to an MPEG-4 license. Then a link: mpegla.com.
I tapped it… and immediately felt like I had discovered Atlantis, except this Atlantis was down, broken, and throwing server errors.
Apple — the trillion-dollar titan — had sprinkled three dead links into their sacred T&C scrolls. Three! At this point I expected Tim Cook to jump out of the bushes…
Everyone has a defining moment in life. Mine happened on the toilet.
I was peacefully enjoying my porcelain meditation when my iPhone buzzed: “Approve Apple Watch update?” Sure, why not? Then I did the unthinkable — I tapped on the Terms & Conditions link. Voluntarily. With full awareness. I know. I’m scared of me too.
As I scrolled through the usual wall of legal lorem ipsum, I spotted a mysterious reference to an MPEG-4 license. Then a link: mpegla.com.
I tapped it… and immediately felt like I had discovered Atlantis, except this Atlantis was down, broken, and throwing server errors.
Apple — the trillion-dollar titan — had sprinkled three dead links into their sacred T&C scrolls. Three! At this point I expected Tim Cook to jump out of the bushes and whisper, “Shhh… nobody actually reads those.”
The Investigation Begins
After finishing my biological duties, I moved to my computer like a detective in a crime show. HTTPS? Certificate error → 404. HTTP? Straight to a dejected 500 Internal Server Error, the unmistakable scent of a neglected .NET server.
As someone who spent years fixing .NET errors professionally, my first instinct was:
“Step aside, MPEG LA. I’ve got this.”
But who do you even email about this? webmaster@lostkingdom.com?
The Real Lesson Here
Anyway, this entire investigative saga began because I dared to do the forbidden: read Apple’s Terms & Conditions.
Most people click “Agree.” I click “What is this MPEG-4 link doing here and why is it broken?”
It’s a strange hobby, I know. But someone has to keep trillion-dollar companies accountable for their hyperlink hygiene.
Shameless Plug
And when I’m not unraveling corporate mysteries from my bathroom, I’m building Codorex.com, a fun coding platform for kids 7+ that will hopefully never put dead links in its Terms & Conditions.
Because if a kid can spot a broken link, we’ve already failed.