Region Availability functions idiocity

[Frippe]

This with having specific functions for different regions is getting silly with Apple.

I use my system with english text, write most of the time in english but I live in Sweden. Just because I live in Sweden, a lot of functions in spotlight isn't working. This is so dumb.

Why can't I check like the stocks, weather etc just because I live in Sweden. If I wright "APPL" in spotlight, it shouldn't matter if I live in the US or Sweden. This function has nothing to do where I live. Same goes with me writing, "weather in cupertino". Why Apple is this not working on every El Capitan.

I can understand that the natural language search might not work if I would write in Swedish. But like 80% of the Swedish population are fluid in the English language.

Same goes for iOS 9 with the new news app. It doesn't even exist. Do the people at Apple think I only read Swedish news sites.

Do anyone know if there is any way around this? Maybe I could change the Region to USA and change all the formatting to how we have it in Sweden.

 

[Shirasaki]

This would be even more cumbersome if a user uses more than two languages, and tend to gather information from more than 2 languages.

A perfect example is Siri. She would never support all languages for search even one language has been set by default.

 

[Frippe]

The thing is, I have preferred language set to English in system preferences. Still I can't use these functions. Does it look up the IP or something?

 

[Janichsan]

This has in fact nothing to do with the language, but with the region you live in. And yes, the limitations are most likely IP based.

The reason behind this has little to do with you being able to read English or not, but with different licensing and copyright regulations in the country you are currently in. For example, many US news sites don't let you access their US coverage from Europe. They (often) provide specific news services for different regions (with often the same content, but still…).

Unless Apple has struck a region or country specific licensing deal to use these services, you won't be able to access them.

 

[Frippe]

I can understand region based services like Hulu, Netflix etc. that you pay for. But I am fully able to go into weather.com and check weather. Never seen a news site that I can't access from Sweden.

Spotlight basically just aggregate stuff into a nice package from the web. And if I am able to access it with Safari, it should work in Spotlight. So doubt that me not being able to check weather, stocks have anything to do with licensing.

 

[Janichsan]

I can understand region based services like Hulu, Netflix etc. that you pay for. But I am fully able to go into weather.com and check weather. Never seen a news site that I can't access from Sweden.

That's because you are usually redirected transparently.

Spotlight basically just aggregate stuff into a nice package from the web. And if I am able to access it with Safari, it should work in Spotlight. So doubt that me not being able to check weather, stocks have anything to do with licensing.

Do you notice any difference between what you get on the screen when you check the weather on the website and when you do it in Spotlight?

A little hint: the one thing has ads, the other hasn't.

 

[jpn]

this is not IP based.

computer and i are in asia. when i have VPN on, with a USA server selected and showing a USA IP address, you still can not get Spotlight Search features as heavily marketed by apple, if your Region does not match your Preferred Language.

Lame. Is the best word that comes to mind.

 

[leman]

It works for me in Switzerland. Is there a list of regions that are officially supported by Apple?

 

[alperduran217]

This is the list of countries that supports Spotlight Suggestions

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• Mexico
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Spain
• Switzerland
• UK
• USA

Just 16 countries -_- They should support more than this.

 

[Frippe]

I tried changing my region to USA in system preferences, still not working.

Anyway to get passed this stupid limitations?

 

[ilieke]

Actually the spotlight was not able to do web searches in Yosemite either. It is able to search only the local files. I am located in Finland.

 

[KALLT]

I tried changing my region to USA in system preferences, still not working.

Have you rebooted our logged out and back in?

Region and language need to match. So you can’t use, for example, Swedish with region US.

 

[Frippe]

Have you rebooted our logged out and back in?

Region and language need to match. So you can’t use, for example, Swedish with region US.

Yeah, have english as my primary language and region set to US. Even changed keyboard layout to US. Still not working.

Why stuff in Spotlight isn't working is beyond me. I can use their widgets to get stock prices, check weather. But not in Spotlight. Makes no sense.

Maybe I should be glad that I can at least access US websites with Safari Wouldn't have surprised me if they blocket that "feature" away also.

 

[smokesletsgo]

You can get iOS 9 news app by setting your region to U.S. and rebooting the phone. Spotlight suggestions, however, are impossible to use outside the countries supported unless you would use a VPN.

 

[valdikor]

Yes, this is absolutely ridiculous. Although I have a lot of bad things to say about international media licencing, but at least in that area Apple turns a blind eye and doesn't restrict access based on your IP address location (save the Beats 1 radio, sadly). But I cannot imagine Spotlight search to actually have any contractually imposed licencing restrictions. The same goes to News, etc. But at least you can turn on News by changing your region setting.
Dear Americans, o the chosen people who are allowed to know the weather in advance, behold how Spotlight search in El Capitan works for us peasants:

iOS 9 - the same story, no Spotlight suggestions, and even the in-app Spotlight search doesn't work - reading all of the app update release notes about implementing the Spotlight API is just making me frustrated. For some enlightened reason, I cannot use these marquee iOS 9 features because I happen to be located in a wrong place on the Earth.

 

[AFEPPL]

The only one I've noticed or have been impacted by on iOS is the app stores.
I have both a UK and US bank account, but I'm not apple to download BOA App as its not in the UK store only the US one.
But even when i change my store to the US one, it still refuses.