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Comment by jvdh | Hacker News Reader

That last part explains why customer experience in Europe sucks so utterly and completely. Decisions at Apple seem to be made by these design teams, which have no direct experience or feedback from Europe.

Examples:

- There is a § key at the top-left of my MacBook Pro keyboard. It has been there for years, in all the different models (Powerbook, iMac, etc.), and this is the first time in over several months that I've actually touched that key.

- Applecare in Europe is a joke. We pay the same premium price for a service that is only a fraction of the kind of service you get in the US. In Europe there are next to none official Apple Stores, which means a repair must always be dealt with by the official repair center. This means that any repair to your computer means you have to part with it for over two weeks.

While I completely support the idea of being your own customer, you have to extend this globally if you are planning to expand your market globally.

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Here's a another point: People around the world wished for "Personal Hotspot" (where your iPhone becomes a UMTS-Wifi router) for years. I talked to a high-up guy at a big European provider about this wish - reply "Apple won't listen to us". Many even jailbraked their Phone to add a software for $10.

Out comes the Verizon deal, and suddenly the feature is here, both for the Verizon iPhone and the worldwide GSM one. Looks like Apple only ever talked to AT&T and their customers, never to people outside the country.

Another one: the bandwidth-limitation of the YouTube app. Other providers around the world would be happy to move more data, but AT&T says Njet, Apple complies and denies more bandwidth to every iPhone user around the world.

If you're iPhone is jailbroken for another $3 you can buy My3G to make apps think they're on WiFi all the time. I use it to download apps > 20MB and see good quality YouTube everywhere.

You can also get higher res video by going to the YouTube site instead of using the app. But if you click a youtube link you have no choice...

I disagree on the hotspot complaint. People in the US have been asking for hotspot functionality and jailbreaking to get it for years, just like Europe. Similarly with tethering before it showed up.

It's far more likely that the delay was just Apple doing its usual feature triage and taking its time to get hotspot functionality up to their standards.

And with tethering in particular, it seems clear that if Apple only listened to AT&T it wouldn't have even shown up as soon as it did. Or have you forgotten the time-lag between announcement and international availability and when AT&T finally decided to turn it on, even with a steep fee?

I think it makes sense that it's taken a long time for Apple to implement Personal Hotspot; it's a feature that runs in the background that can suck up a lot of battery and add a lot of charges to your plan. I'm sure they had to think a lot about how to best put this into the interface, making it obvious that it's running, easy to turn on/off, etc.

That said, it's my favorite feature of my Nexus One...

> - There is a § key at the top-left of my MacBook Pro keyboard. It has been there for years, in all the different models (Powerbook, iMac, etc.), and this is the first time in over several months that I've actually touched that key.

Another odd one is the continued lack of a dedicated '#' key on the laptops…

Hmm, the Dutch seem to be blessed with just the single § key. Other European variants are indeed much much worse, check out the Hungarian one:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2841

That must be a disaster to code on, lacking access to [, ], {, }, and even < and >

But I guess it's easier to type in hungarian notation.

This is in most cases probably not an Apple thing. All German keyboards lack dedicated [], |\, and {} keys. We have umlaut keys instead of those (this is obviously the right tradeoff for the vast majority of all German computer users except programmers).

I would like to see the circumflex key (directly below esc) replaced with something more useful but that’s also not an Apple thing.

The only thing odd about Apple keyboards is the very narrow enter key.

I would like to see the circumflex key (directly below esc) replaced with something more useful but that’s also not an Apple thing.

It's useful as the shortcut for "terminal" in most computer games, but indeed that's about it. Now Scroll Lock and Pause/Break are keys I've never used.

if you'll ever have to use windows: win+break => system preferences

I don’t know of any similar, well, localization problems in Germany but I agree that the service isn’t so great. It has gotten better in recent years; still, there is no Apple Store anywhere close to me [0].

A repair means losing access to my MBP for several days or weeks. It’s not so much that the service itself sucks (though I had an awful experience with an Authorized Apple Service Provider once), all that waiting sucks. (Besides that, my experiences with Applecare were pretty great. Apple was willing to repair everything without flinching – broken keyboards with suspicious amounts of crumbs under them included – and was always extra accommodating whenever I had a problem. They have very friendly and patient people taking support calls who approved exchanging my battery five or so times for free.)

[0] The situation is improving. There are now four Apple Stores in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Oberhausen (near Düsseldorf and Cologne) and Munich, all built in the last two years and Apple might well build several more.

> Applecare in Europe is a joke.

It may be lower than in the US. But Europeans have more protections and guarantees by law with their purchases than in the US.

> are next to none official Apple Stores

This may be a problem. Yes, outside the UK, Europe is short of Apple stores (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Store#Locations), but this 'issue' is getting resolved fast.

A few months ago, there was none in Spain, and it has plans to open 10 stores (there are two already open, three more on the way) Right in the most centric-touristics spots in the major cities.

> It may be lower than in the US. But Europeans have more protections and guarantees by law with their purchases than in the US.

Yes, in Europe customers have a guarantee on hardware failures for the first year or so. Extending this to three years costs you more than the US counterpart (thanks to the nice €=$ apple conversion rate), and you don't have the benefit of mail-in or walk-in repairs, because there simply are no places to walk in to.

>"there simply are no places to walk in to."

From a practical standpoint, that's true for much of the US as well. If you live outside a large metropolitan area, your nearest service center can easily be 50-100 miles away. It's one reason many PC manufacturer's offer onsite service at the time of purchase.

You should never buy Applecare directly from Apple and always from ebay. It costs a lot less (185€ vs. 350€ for a MBP). Make sure to check the sellers’ ratings.

I successfully bought Applecare from ebay twice. (And heavily relied on it in one case. Apple replaced pretty much every part of my MBP without any fuss.)

The conversion rate isn't as outrageous when you take into account that US site shows prices before tax, and EU sites prices with tax.

iPhone and iPad international keyboards are amazing though, way better than the international keyboard support on Macs.

It depends. There are two layouts for Bulgarian keyboards - "Standard" and "Phonetic", and I believe phonetic is more commonly used. With iOS 4.0 the phonetic layout disappeared, to be back in 4.1.

> you have to extend this globally if you are planning to expand your market globally.

Not necessarily. Quite to the contrary: welcome to the world of those living in soft colonies. Sure, we pay the same premium price for a service that is only a fraction of the kind of service you get in the US[A]. You pay more.

World economy and its supporting legal framework is built to naturally shore-up the financial power of western, chiefly USA economies (mostly through petrodollars and entertainment industry, namely AAPL).

And the funny thing is, people like it, just like junk TV (this is just for those wishing to downvote this) -- this is how soft dictatures work (sometimes it is not so soft, see "rogue" states).

But imagine the rest of the world, were the premium price is mandatory for basic goods, not just "shiny cool" stuff.

Having more Apple Stores nearby doesn't necessarily mean you can get repairs done faster. I've had Apple laptops repaired a number of times and it seems like mailing it to the repair center is always faster than leaving it at the store because the stores have such a huge backlog.

I'm not sure about Europe, but in the US, they overnight you a box, you overnight them the machine, they fix it in a day, then overnight it back to you. One time I did this right before I traveled across country and they even mailied it to my destination for me and the computer beat me there.

If there's a design flaw in the computer, they will even do this for you without AppleCare which is nice.

While I've never been an Apple customer, there are Apple stores here in the Netherlands, at least, and a (Dutch) friend of mine got his Macbook repaired pretty quickly (no idea of the details - it's his Macbook...)

These "Apple stores" in the Netherlands are official retailers, not official stores. This means that they are allowed to sell them, but they are just general stores selling Apple hardware. You'll have some knowledgeable people there most of the time, but not something like an actual Genius Bar where they can repair your laptop or ipod on the spot.

Applecare does not cover any repair done by official retailers, it has to happen at a Authorized Apple Service Provider, which almost all of the time means sending it away.

The first official Apple Store in the Netherlands is opening soon in the center of Amsterdam.

Hm, that’s not my experience in Germany. All retailers which sell only Apple products are also Authorized Apple Service Providers and there is one in every mid-sized city. They won’t do repairs on the spot, though.

What does the § key do?

I've always understood the character to reference a section in a paper/document (eg. §249).

Not sure if there would be a different context on Euro-keyboards.

It's just a section sign, used simply to refer to various sections in a document. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_sign for a little more info.

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