OK so actually a lot of the time Apple gets it wrong, their US-centric approach has given us locked phones, locked and therefore useless DVD drives and, in conjunction with the RIAA and MPAA a crippled iTunes in outside of Nprth America. (That last one is solveable – but lots of lawyers are required to change a heck of a lot of contracts.)
However as Apple gets it right so often, it is still la bit surprising when they make a silly usability mistake – like this one on the Australian Apple website:
I was idly looking for a retailer near Fremantle:
So entered “Fremantle” in the find a reseller box
And got this useless and rude error message.
That annoyed me.
What they could have done better is to also give me a list of states/cities to click, or a list of all of Australian stores or, even, better converted Fremantle into a post code (really not hard) and returned the right list.
I hit back and realised that a post code was the required input format, and so I guessed.
Apple’s Californian staff may not realise that the rest of the world doesn’t really care about zip codes. The staff don’t seem to travel much – at least not independently – so they probably don’t realise that travelers in a particular area are unlikely to know a local zip/ost code. Or the names of local towns.
Which is what makes the output list really frustrating.
I really have no idea where these places are. How hard is it to plonk them on a map? I’m trying to find a place to buy your products after all.
Lance Wiggs 