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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#311

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

nicbou wrote: post #174
mattlondon wrote: post #76

I get this problem all the time and I live in "the right" London so it is not just a "nearest London" thing. It is not just digital assistants, but so many other things like Google maps, e-commerce sites, address auto-completes etc seem to assume that I want the North American one with a population of 300k that no one knows about, not the one that everyone has heard of with a population of 9 million. I've always just…

This is rather inconvenient when shopping for niche products. American website assumes that everyone on the internet is American, and you have to go through the shopping cart experience to learn that they don't ship to Canada or Europe.

See also: "Please select a state" dropdown with no "Not US" option.

TBF internationalisation is complicated and hard to do well. So is international shipping.

But compare with a European site like thomann.de, which not only handles currencies and taxes but also (mostly) translates the product descriptions into most European languages.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#312

Post by cameronh90 »

Marazan wrote: post #288
zimpenfish wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the recent (~5y) past, I've asked Google Maps, from within London, a route to Charing Cross Station and been given the one in Glasgow.

"Charing Cross (Glasgow)" Station in Glasgow is the true Charing Cross. I can only applaud Google Maps there. You were looking for the vastly inferior "London Charing Cross"

Yet, if someone says Charing Cross in London, they do probably mean London Charing Cross nevertheless.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#313

Post by elliekelly »

gfxgirl wrote: post #271
AmericanChopper wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re also very weak examples of companies that do this. For starters, Apples localization is quite on point most of the time. Facebook and Google really don’t have many features at all that are territorially exclusive.

Tell that to their atrocious app store situation. Need an banking app for Japan AND one for the USA each only available on that country's store. Apple says F.U!

Are you only allowed to affiliate your Apple ID with one country’s app store? If I moved to Japan and switched to the Japanese app store would I just lose all of the apps I purchased via the US store?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#314

Post by anoncake »

gambiting wrote: post #219
aib wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please also take a moment to wish tiny inconveniences upon designers of applications which ignore my locale and present me with "11:06 AM" or worse, "04/05/2020"?

Yep, if you're presenting to international audiences then either one of those two is unacceptable. First one because in a lot of countries people genuinely won't know what AM means, the other because there's only one clear way of reading it, but it's not consistent between countries.

If someone doesn't know what AM means, they don't know English anyway.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#315

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #232
nromiun wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why are they on the internet? Aren't they aware that non-US people can also access it? And if they aren't interested then why do they add "for now" to their message? And are you telling me global companies like Google and Amazon don't have any non-US customers? I don't know which world is that but I want to live in it.

Google and Amazon aren’t particularly good examples of this. They don’t have very many services that are only available to US customers. But there are plenty of businesses that only trade with US customers, and make little effort to ensure that’s clear on their websites. To answer your question, the reason companies like that don’t put special effort into making this more clear is because while some people might thin…

Failing to consider that your customer base could be international is the definition of blinkered irrationality. You're not just losing goodwill, you're losing potential profits.

There are obvious exceptions, like fresh food or anything else with a limited shelf life, and any product that has a distributor chain providing sales and support in a different territory.

Beyond that it makes no sense at all, especially for software and other non-physical services.

Other countries, including China and the EU, understand this. Companies in the US that fail to adapt will lose business and be left behind.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#316

Post by kohtatsu »

Youden wrote: post #291
ojilles wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best are that have a settings page where they try to give an example. But use a day-of-month =< 12. Like your example. It couldn't have hurt to use and example of "22/05/2020"; then it is still infuriating, but clear.

> It couldn't have hurt to use and example of "22/05/2020"; then it is still infuriating, but clear. Assuming you're addressing OP with this part, I think that was their point. When an application presents you with "04/05/2020", you have no way of knowing whether it means crazy American dates or normal-people dates.

This is reason enough for me to use 2020-04-05 exclusively. Lexical order is a bonus.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#317

Post by larrik »

aib wrote: post #177
mattlondon wrote: post #76

I get this problem all the time and I live in "the right" London so it is not just a "nearest London" thing. It is not just digital assistants, but so many other things like Google maps, e-commerce sites, address auto-completes etc seem to assume that I want the North American one with a population of 300k that no one knows about, not the one that everyone has heard of with a population of 9 million. I've always just…

Can we please also take a moment to wish tiny inconveniences upon designers of applications which ignore my locale and present me with "11:06 AM" or worse, "04/05/2020"?

I actually didn't realize am/pm wasn't something Europeans did...

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#318

Post by hunter2_ »

ajuc wrote: post #249
Recursing wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think almost everybody in European countries knows about AM/PM, but I certainly get confused by 11:59 AM vs 12:00 AM

I am from Poland, and while we understand 12-hour clock and use it interchangeably with 24-hour one (well, mostly old people, young people just use 24-hour clock) - nobody uses AM/PM. In Polish it's 8 rano (in the morning) vs 8 wieczorem (in the evening). I can't remember which is which in AM/PM, and have to check each time :) And the issues with midnight/noon are frustrating and 12-hour-clock should just die.

I am from the USA and whenever I travel to Europe (Poland, Germany, England, Scotland, etc.) I never quite grasp whether 24h is used for all purposes, or just "official" purposes (like train schedules) while casual conversation remains 12h. I wonder if the young/old divide you described is prevalent in most places.

I assume some people (perhaps older people) wear analog 12h wrist watches, and wouldn't translate to 24h after looking at it to answer a random question "what time is it?"

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#319

Post by DangerousPie »

Gatsky wrote: post #242
DangerousPie wrote: post #41

It's ridiculous how Siri is still this shitty. I have an 11 Pro and even on such an expensive phone I can't really trust it to do anything more advanced than set timers. Every few months I try to do something else and just get annoyed at how bad it is. Before lockdown I even had it disabled entirely because it would get activated randomly from time to time, even if nobody in the vicinity said anything remotely close…

It isn’t really ridiculous. The number of people that buy an iphone because of Siri could share a pizza.

It may not be the main selling point but it's certainly a factor for many people. And the fact that Siri is so bad makes the whole phone feel less high-quality.

And maybe I'm the exception here, but I have refrained from buying an Apple Homepod specifically because of how bad Siri is. If it was on the same level as Google Assistant I would have bought one by now.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#320

Post by ajuc »

hunter2_ wrote: post #318
ajuc wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from Poland, and while we understand 12-hour clock and use it interchangeably with 24-hour one (well, mostly old people, young people just use 24-hour clock) - nobody uses AM/PM. In Polish it's 8 rano (in the morning) vs 8 wieczorem (in the evening). I can't remember which is which in AM/PM, and have to check each time :) And the issues with midnight/noon are frustrating and 12-hour-clock should just die.

I am from the USA and whenever I travel to Europe (Poland, Germany, England, Scotland, etc.) I never quite grasp whether 24h is used for all purposes, or just "official" purposes (like train schedules) while casual conversation remains 12h. I wonder if the young/old divide you described is prevalent in most places. I assume some people (perhaps older people) wear analog 12h wrist watches, and wouldn't translate to 24…

When I was young (in 90s) everybody used 18 and 6 wieczorem (in the evening) interchangeably, like 50% - 50% split.

Now I almost never hear "6 wieczorem" it's always 18. I think I haven't heard it used this year in Polish.

Lots of people use analog clocks but they just say 18 when looking at 6.

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