Sadly, the comment that Remek makes, "Why adjust our product to the world--let's make the world adjust to it." is the American way. I come cross it so often. Take Windows - those of us in other countries have to spend quite some time adjusting our settings to measurement and date formats from the default US way (which virtually no-one else in the world uses).
And it can work for the US. On my last trip to Canada, I noticed a provincial document that used the US MM-DD-YYYY date format. I was visiting a friend who still works for the Province, and over our 2nd or 3rd beer asked him why that document appeared like that, when the official way in Canada was the international YYYY-MM-DD format (it used to be DD-MM-YYYY format, which is what my kids were taught in school in Ontario in the 1970s). He replied that so many computers were now operated by the province which came with the default US MM-DD-YYYY format, that there was wholesale confusion over dates, and that far too few people changed their format to the international one. So the province took the easy option, and now uses the default US one. I have to say that annoys me, but only because I think the US date format is illogical and stupid. John F-L ----- Original Message ----- From: Remek Kocz To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 11:55 AM Subject: [USMA:50188] iPhone & Fahrenheit I find it quite amazing that in their infinite wisdom, Apple markets the iPhone/iPod with that weather app pictured with a sunny day and 73 degrees (unidentified, but we know which scale). From a cursory glance at sites outside the US, it looks like they're marketing it like this to the rest of the world. This really flips the software development concept of internationalization on its head. Why adjust our product to the world--let's make the world adjust to it. I know that the app can be switched to Celsius, but Fahrenheit by default, that's just hard to believe. Remek
