Apple: wonderful products, occasional moronic ideas

If you happen to live in a country speaking more than one language - or traveling - you are in trouble these days.

Everybody and his dog seems to be busy making websites detect your locale and serve content exclusively in what they think is the local language - never mind your choice, common sense or the other national languages.

Lots of websites - including Apple's App Store - serve information in a language you may not know, and stubbornly ignore whatever language settings you may have on your computer and in your browser. Even if it's an Apple computer and Apple software!

I live in Switzerland, which has four official languages: German, French, Italian and Grischun. German is spoken by more people than the remaining three languages.

I live in the French speaking part. And I don't speak German. I know, I should - but I don't. And whenever I register products I buy, I get e-mail newsletters in German. They end up in my trash can, of course. On websites, I am served terms and conditions in German - fat lot of good - I just click yes and hope that I did not agree to get ripped off. Sometimes I am allowed to select a language - usually a well hidden feature. Frequently you don't get the choice.

I bought an Apple iPhone. Wonderful - and great apps. Except that, since a few days, I am only allowed to download apps adapted for the Swiss market - guess what - in German!

More and more websites play this game - including the big, international players: Google, to name one! But at least Google allows you to select a different language - with some difficulty.

By the way - same thing when I travel in Spain - I get served content in Spanish, by default. Great, I can speak a bit of Spanish - but what if I couldn't? Is it the World Wide Web or the great moronic conspiracy, preventing us from accessing content in the language(s) of our choice? The more so that the content exists in several languages and nearly always in English - but some idiots think that it's so smart to talk to me in the language corresponding to my country - never mind if I am traveling in Finland or Korea and don't speak the language!