While I’ve been waiting for the iTunes Australia site to launch (it was held up recently) I realize that I missed the launch of Denmark, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden. There are now a total of 19 iTunes country Web sites:
In December there were 14:
And in September of last year there were just four; that’s right, just four:
There must be some awfully tired localization managers at Apple…
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1 response so far ↓
1 Marty // May 24, 2005 at 8:11 pm
Why do you say the localization managers must be tired? I confess I haven’t looked at all the stores, but all those I have checked out are in English — except the France store, where interface elements are in French. Sure, Canadians and Brits get “staff favourites,” but by and large the copy seems to be the same everywhere (including much English copy on the French version).
Where people must be really tired at Apple is in dealing with licensing content for the various stores. Poke around a little, and you’ll soon see that the selection of material varies tremendously from store to store. Is that really a localization issue — settling local/regional distribution with different regional rights holders for the same material? I’m skeptical.