It is also a shame when users of this site ask questions, expecting to learn from the wisdom and experiences of others, and then summarily discard said wisdom when it doesn't match what they wanted to hear.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You cannot *prove* that this is a User-Agent string filter, as web servers can filter based on just about any information that can be gleaned from the page request: IP address, user-agent string, etc. I could be getting different results just for it not being 8am in my suspected time zone on Friday, 7/11/2008. You, however, have a stable platform, and the most logical method to isolate the problem: Change one variable at a time. Same location, same IP, same hardware, same OS, same patches, same browser engine, new User-Agent string. Had you initially just stated "I'm sorry, I don't know how to change that," someone would have pointed out the secret menu-option/incantation needed to get the job done.

In my opinion, at any rate, what Apple is doing *is* evil. Browser detects suck. They're mercurial, inaccurate, and they lead to the death of products. I once had an issue with the insanely popular Webtrends log analysis tool. It wouldn't support IE7 or Firefox, asking for MSIE 5.0 or higher, Netscape 4.5-4.7, or Netscape 7 or higher on Windows or Mac. I was on a PC running Windows XP SP2 at the time. The solution? Edit the master template for the site to add IE7 and Firefox as legitimate UA strings, a nasty server-side fix. Really, it shouldn't be necessary, and it shouldn't be kludgeish.

Perhaps they should, but chastising people while holding oneself above reproach only serves to aggravate the situation further. It seems like you're gunning for an apology, but unwilling to give one. That's understandable, but when neither party admits fault, then no one's going to apologize. It's better to take a step back, see where you may have inadvertently offended someone yourself, and apologize accordingly. Oftentimes, you'll get exactly what you want out of it. If not, well, it's time to move on and find a more gracious circle of friends.

Back to the technical (and completely blunt) front, Apple needs to get off their asses and write a hard User-Agent detect (if UA is in shortlist of crappy browsers that can't render this site, bail out. Otherwise, hope for the best, and let the user suffer for using a non-compliant piece of crap without PNG transparency support worth a damn,) or drop the code entirely. Tailoring sites to the accidental exclusion of perfectly good (or experimental) browsers is amateurish hackery of the lowest common denominator.