A friend sent me an email this week:
Sometimes I like to kill time by trying to find obscure, obsolete, and completely random articles in the Apple Knowledge Base that should’ve been taken out a long time ago. Here’s a good example: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=790. Now, here’s the duel I challenge you to: find a more obscure/obsolete one.
An interesting challenge, but an easy one at the end of the day. I found article 116 which explains how “to use Apple Writer with the Paymar Lower Case Adapter.” The oldest article I found was number 3, which reads:
The Apple II and IIe power supply is a switching power supply. It is designed to accept 107 to 135 volts from DC to 60 Hz.
It will also work at up to 400 Hz but this endangers a circuit which protects the supply from shorting to the point that the protecting circuit will not work.
Glad I know that. Next time I plug an Apple IIe in, I’ll keep it in mind.
This little time-waster brought something to my attention I had noticed before but never really thought about. Apple is currently naming support articles like this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1545, instead of the old way showed above. At the top of each of these branded articles is this section:
If you point your browser at the old URL you get redirected to the new one with “?viewlocale=en_US” added to the end.
I suppose all of this is to make it easier to recall kbase article numbers without thinking too much, but as far as I can tell, Apple hasn’t made public what the “HT” or any of the other prefixes mean. My best guess is that HT means help topic. This page, which has search tips, doesn’t address it (but I assume the “HE” in the URL stands for help). And the “HT####” format is easier than the “?artnum=####” format.
Interesting? Maybe just to those of us who use the kbase everyday.