Lee Collins and Deborah Goldsmith from Apple gave a comprehensive talk on internationalization support on the iPhone since the English-only 1.0 release. Now at 2.1, dozens of languages are supported, driven by potential sales markets.
They have a very strict space budget for code and fonts since every byte they use is one less for the end-user.
As much as possible, they try to provide the full ICU API for developers to use.
Regular Truetype fonts are used, though there’s no hint information and there’s no mechanism to add your own.
Chuck Soper (Vela Design Group) talked about porting VelaClock to the iPhone, and made some recommendations for the Apple iPhone apps store.
He would like to see longer sales history information than 7 days, ideally unlimited. Also, he would like to see feedback and ratings reviews across countries, since loading 100 country forums is tedious.
He also wanted to know best to provide mib and strings to translators.
He says half his sales come from the Apple Store.
Some of his customers use VelaClock to do things like plan night flights.
I had a chances to try out the Blackberry Bold, with it’s new UI and hi-res screen. The screen has the same number of pixels as an iPhone, but half the dimensions.
I also tried a gPhone. It has a built-in compass, so Google StreetView knows what direction you’re pointing the phone and can show real-time updates based on that direction. Very cool to see.
Thanks to Apple for hosting the event in Cupertino.
