the iphone now allows entry of non-ASCII characters! the iphone software update 1.1.1 fixed that issue of my iphone to-do list, and character handling in the SMS app also seems to have been improved. of course, this was a bare necessity before the iphone launch in europe, trying to sell an ASCII-only device in europe would guarantee a market failure.
however, even though it is now possible to input non-ASCII characters (the most basic task of internationalization), i am not so convinced that the way to do it is a good way. and interestingly, the iphone and the ipod touch (both running software 1.1.1) follow different approaches:
- the iphone hides accented characters at the location of the unaccented character, and it is necessary to tap the character for quite a long time until the list of available accented characters pops up. this interrupts the flow of typing, and it happens pretty often that your finger obscures the pop up. technically, this works, but it is not something that would score very well in usability testing.
- the ipod touch supports localized keyboards, so that users of languages with non-ASCII characters actually get a keyboard that fits their needs. this definitely is the better solution (and users can even easily switch keyboard layouts).
my guess is that iphones sold in europe will get the ipod touch's feature of localized keyboards, and maybe american iphones will support that as well in later versions of the software. but at least it is now possible to enter characters on the iphone which were simply unavailable before.
another thing i have noticed is that the itunes app that came along with 1.1.1 displays a very weird mix of localized and american content. some of the labels are in german (and some of them don't even fit into the boxes, which looks ridiculously bad in the otherwise polished iphone interface), and prices are displayed in swiss francs. i am really wondering where this comes from, i cannot remember having said anything about my mother language or setting a preference for the currency. there must be some apple data mining going on behind the scenes, and i am wondering where they got this information...
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