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skalie · May 16, 2004, 01:30 PM

.....would the operating system be in German or English?

Adramelech · May 16, 2004, 01:36 PM

as far as i know, OS X is quite multilingual, so you can change the GUI 's language in the preferences (the terminal is always in english). I'd say the main difference is the keyboard you'd get, first it'll be a "qwertz" one, second the position of the special characters will be different.

Developer · May 16, 2004, 01:37 PM

Originally posted by skalie:
.....would the operating system be in German or English?

Mac OS X is "agnostic" to languages. At least the 7 core languages are always included no matter where in the world you buy it. And German and English are amongst the core languages.

If you purchase a Mac in Germany (there is no such thing as a "German Mac") you have the choice between German or English keyboard. At least in the Apple online store. At a retailer it might be more difficult to get an English keyboard; never tried to, so I don't know how.

JLL · May 16, 2004, 01:38 PM

Originally posted by Developer:
Mac OS X is "agnostic" to languages. At least the 7 core languages are always included no matter where in the world you buy it. And German and English are amongst the core languages.

15, not 7, AFAIK.

CharlesS · May 16, 2004, 01:57 PM

Mac OS X supports English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese out of the box. I think that if you buy a copy of Mac OS X in a country that speaks any of these languages, you should get the standard install which will support all these languages.

The thing is the keyboard. Some countries have slightly different keyboard layouts, and you might get a keyboard that is a little different from the US keyboard, which can be confusing if you're used to the US one. Other than that, you should be good to go.

skalie · 02:51 PM

Edit: What typed below is relevant to an iBook/Powerbook.....

According to Apple all that is needed to install a new keyboard, should it be an issue, is 20 minutes and a screwdriver.

Thanks for the replies all.

zen jihad · May 16, 2004, 02:56 PM

Is it new? What about the warranty, and repairs?

Developer · May 16, 2004, 03:14 PM

Originally posted by skalie:
According to Apple all that is needed to install a new keyboard, should it be an issue, is 20 minutes and a screwdriver.

I think you don't even need a screwdriver. But such a keyboard isn't quite cheap, so it might be worth to consider which keyboard layout you want before making the purchase.

skalie · May 16, 2004, 03:18 PM

Originally posted by zen jihad:
Is it new? What about the warranty, and repairs?

No, it's a used iBook, I don't have many more details yet. It's from a friend of a friend so the price should be low, one of the major selling points for me is that I'm hoping it has Panther (hence this thread), which I was intending to upgrade to anyway, which sort of subtracts $200 from the asking price.

Not much of an AppleCare type as it goes.

skalie · May 16, 2004, 03:23 PM

Originally posted by Developer:
I think you don't even need a screwdriver. But such a keyboard isn't quite cheap, so it might be worth to consider which keyboard layout you want before making the purchase.

Developer, I need to deal with shortcuts on Windows and Macs in two different languages already, I'm kinda jaded to the emotion generated by hitting "Ctrl C" as opposed to "Cmd C".

Just had the pleasure of installing Photoshop CS in Dutch, oh wonderfull......... "Hey guys, anyone know what the Dutch word for 'Snap' is".

workerbee · May 16, 2004, 04:22 PM

Originally posted by Developer:
Mac OS X is "agnostic" to languages. At least the 7 core languages are always included no matter where in the world you buy it. And German and English are amongst the core languages.

I noticed yesterday that there is one instance where this approach seems to fail: on my (Swiss) PowerBook, I'm running 10.3.3 and all my apps in English. However, I was unable to install the Developer tools from my (german) 10.3 System DVD. It ran all the install procedures, copied data for minutes, but when everything was done, nothing whatsoever had been written into the /Developer directory! (Maybe it expected an /Entwickler directory?).
Apart from that, the bad days of OS 9 with its different language versions are gone: I won't miss them.

Person Man · May 16, 2004, 05:08 PM

Originally posted by JLL:
15, not 7, AFAIK.

You're correct.

OS X Server, however, only has 4 core languages: English, German, French, and Japanese.

Where's Spanish???