OK, so I was installing the newest version of QuickTime today (which seems to only come bundled with iTunes, which I don't want, but that's a different rant altogether!), and when it got to the language selection screen, it gives me an option of "English (United States)"... and that's the only option for English. Why?!

It doesn't say "Japanese (Japan)" or anything like that. It just has plain "Japanese" or "Danish".

Does this mean that if I speak English, I must live in the US? Some installations give a choice between "English (United States)" and "English (International)" ... does this mean they just change every Z to an S, and add the U back into "colour" and "honour"? Why give two options? English should always be understandable if you come from an English-speaking country. Couldn't they just have an option for "English" and leave it at that? Or do US citizens need to be reminded of what language they speak?

"Gee, it doesn't have American in here as an option... oh wait, it says United States here, that must be us."

Is there an actual reason behind this seeming silliness, or is it just an arbitrary decision on the side of software-makers?

Grr! And when you go for an alphabetical list of countries in a drop down list it has United States of America as the first option.

Well the United States invented English back in 1492. I really don't see what the problem is.

we are phasing you out.

yeah, I think it should just say english and thats it.

I tend to go between saying color and colour humor and humour depending on my moods anyways.

Isnt it to do with keyboard layout, date and time, currency etc. preferences?

BTW i think you can uninstall iTunes afterwards if you want to.

hear hear to mop and rick! I get annoyed scrolling through location lists too with United States first, and United Kingdom miles down the bottom. U should not appear before A damnit [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

There's a separate installer with just QT, it's kinda hard to find. Here's the link to it if you want it.

hahaha ive kind of wondered that myself mop. its just plain silly if you ask me. It SHOULD be just "english"

Side note: If one more friggin game installs dx9c i'm going to blow up on someone at microsoft. Every single new game ive installed has required me to install it... i had it the whole time!

Dravalen: Ahh, cool - how the hell did you find that? I tried looking through www.apple.com/quicktime/ , and the link was nowhere obvious...

n30: Haha, yeah... also, recently I was trying to install MechCommander, and it was saying stuff like "WARNING! You don't have DirectX6 installed! Are you sure you want to continue installation?!"

Toomas: Yeah, I can see how that would be the case for some programs, but since when has Quicktime needed to know currency or time settings - I would have thought that it would "learn" settings from Windows, or the Windows clock and keyboard settings would be the default "override" anyway.
I know I can uninstall iTunes afterwards... but there's the extra download time, and it shouldn't really be necessary to uninstall software I don't want - that'd be like Microsoft saying I had to download a copy of Media Player if I wanted IE (or maybe they do that already? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img])

I just plain hate installshield ahd msi that's all

I didn't NEED Internet Explorer 6 to RUN MSN Messenger or Windows XP to run Doom3. Hell I don't even need DX9 to run Doom3 (works on dx7 just fine!)

English (Yankee)
English (Redneck)
English (Monty Python)
English ('arry Pott'ah)

Too many options. Either way, you're talking about a company that can't make a functional media player unless it's a browser plugin.

[ QUOTE ]
hear hear to mop and rick! I get annoyed scrolling through location lists too with United States first, and United Kingdom miles down the bottom. U should not appear before A damnit [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Even if "United States" was listed alphabetically, "United Kingdom" would still be miles down the bottom. It would only be moved up one spot. Maybe countries should be listed by their GDP, so all of the large, industrialized nations would be close to the top. Of course, I'm sure that would still piss some people off.

Keyser: Yeah, but if it was listed alphabetically, then at least it'd make sense.
Surely there's a way to detect what Keyboard/Regional Settings the user has, and set that to the default language option of installs?

ElysiumGX: Heh, my Quicktime player often crashes in browser plugin form. However, that might just be Firefox, I'm not sure.

Maybe just press the key that corresponds to the first letter in your country name?
You know then it magically scrolls down :P

Yeah, to Uganda.

Then you just scoll down manually few lines and there it is teh United Complaindom.

psst...
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html
right hand side...
under the picture of the two little girls...
QuickTime Standalone Installer...

psst...
direct link...
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone.html

KaosNKorruption: Thanks, but this has already been pointed out - anyway, this wasn't really about downloading QuickTime.

Toomas: Hehehe [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Maybe because when you make a piece of software, it's highly likely the majority of the installers will be Americans? I personally enjoy having USA as the default or first option, and I'm pretty sure the rest of the US does as well. If you don't like it, swell your country to the same size, and I'm sure it will get listed first.

When I make a video game, I know if I market it to twin african siamese 93 year old blind women, it's only going to sell 4 copies, so I shouldn't spend too much on it. It's the same principle, know your audience.

How about when you make a piece of software aimed at the Western world market, it's highly likely the end-user will speak English?
There's no need to differentiate between "US English" and "International English" (whatever the hell that is!) for a simple software installation.
US folks: Raise your hands if you or people you know aren't sure if you speak "English" or "American" [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

On a related aside, I have the full authoring version of Quicktime, but when I try and upgrade to 7.0, it tells me I'll be invalidating my license key on the prior version and will have to re-purchase. itunes takes about twenty minutes to open and seems to use up way too much in the way of system resources. General usage of it is horrifically unintuitive.

In short, Quicktime and itunes are evil.

Also MoP, yes, it's their language. They own it. When I first moved here, a woman who makes coffee in the building at work said to my English friend Chris "So, did you have to learn our language before moving here?"

[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

All joking aside, at the rate things are going Spanish will most likely be the language of the majority in the United States anyways. Very sad indeed...I know the language but wish that English would be declared the official language of the US and that we'd stop making it so that people don't have to learn it in order to function as a citizen in this country (illegaly or legaly). I can't even ask where a product is when speaking to some of the people in my local grocery store that are clerks because they don't know english. That is just wrong. I'm not trying to be elitest or be prejudice. It's just if you choose to move to a country not of your own origin at least have the respect to learn it's language should you choose to live there. I wouldn't move to Japan or Germany and expect people to cater to my language barrier out of my own lack of effort to learn the native tongue. It's just disrespectful and shows my lack of respect for not only the native people but the country I'm trying to live in as well.

Perhaps its labeled English (United States), because thats where the language pack was most likely developed, or originally written *gasp* HORRORS!!!!1 (Ie. it sets the language to use, then the character map to display)

That and US is usually first in the dropdown menu because the millions of us installing the software would much rather just hit enter or leave the field be, then scroll down and select US. And wouldn't having the first world nations listed first in the order make more sense than alphabetical order? That is...unless you're afraid you'll piss off the whole dozen or less people in Afghanistan who might be using a product...

...whine...I can't believe a thread was even made about this.

Oh btw, time to have some fun with this...because you decided to American bash at the end, so here goes:

The Quicktime Language Selector includes:
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Danish
Dutch (Netherlands)
English (United States)
Finnish
French (France)
German (Germany)
Italian (Italy)
Japanese
Korean
Norwegian (Bokmal)
Spanish (Traditional Sort)
Swedish

...I guess everyone with a bracketed explanation next to their country must be stupid when it comes to recognizing their language.

BTW, I never got a country selector...guess someone is special.

Illusions, did you even read what I said? Read my posts again, you will see that your points are completely negated. I don't care that "US" is top of the drop down list, that's not what I'm talking about! Go and read!