I have been finding it really irritating lately the way Apple treats different countries in such a fragmented and isolated way. I live in Switzerland, a country with four official languages (German, French, Italian and Romansch). I am a native English speaker, and although I'm learning German, my command of the language is still fairly basic. I learned to type on a UK English keyboard, and find the Swiss-German layout really difficult to get used to.
For their online store, in Switzerland there are two options: French and German. No Italian, no Romansch, no English or any other language options. For the iPhone Apple Store app (despite iTunes claiming it supports a long list of languages), in Switzerland it is German only. No French, Italian, Romansch, and no ability to set it to any other language. The situation is the same throughout Europe. I can walk to Germany from my home in about an hour. I can drive to France in an hour. Italy and Austria are near enough to go and come back the same day by car.
Even more irritating is keyboard localisations. For historical reasons different countries have different layouts. France favours AZERTY, Germany QWERTZ, while anglophone countries QWERTY. Different countries have different special characters, to accommodate currency symbols or accented characters in their local language. Apple produces keyboards in all of their laptops and desktop keyboards to suit each of these localisations. In fact I expect they are all built in the same factory in China, and shipped world wide.
Why is it, then, that if I go to the Swiss apple online store, in the BTO options list I am allowed to chose the keyboard layout I want from the great long list of precisely 2 options (Swiss-German or US-International)? I work in an international company, every day I speak with people from Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Spanish speaking South America, Ireland, Canada and so on. Not one single person from this list is able to buy a laptop from the online apple store, from the factory that produces thousands of laptops with their home country's particular keyboard localisation, in their "home" version.
For their online store, in Switzerland there are two options: French and German. No Italian, no Romansch, no English or any other language options. For the iPhone Apple Store app (despite iTunes claiming it supports a long list of languages), in Switzerland it is German only. No French, Italian, Romansch, and no ability to set it to any other language. The situation is the same throughout Europe. I can walk to Germany from my home in about an hour. I can drive to France in an hour. Italy and Austria are near enough to go and come back the same day by car.
Even more irritating is keyboard localisations. For historical reasons different countries have different layouts. France favours AZERTY, Germany QWERTZ, while anglophone countries QWERTY. Different countries have different special characters, to accommodate currency symbols or accented characters in their local language. Apple produces keyboards in all of their laptops and desktop keyboards to suit each of these localisations. In fact I expect they are all built in the same factory in China, and shipped world wide.
Why is it, then, that if I go to the Swiss apple online store, in the BTO options list I am allowed to chose the keyboard layout I want from the great long list of precisely 2 options (Swiss-German or US-International)? I work in an international company, every day I speak with people from Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Spanish speaking South America, Ireland, Canada and so on. Not one single person from this list is able to buy a laptop from the online apple store, from the factory that produces thousands of laptops with their home country's particular keyboard localisation, in their "home" version.
