Why is nobody using the ISO format for dates? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 yyyy-mm-dd? Another benefit is that it sorts correctly in the file explorers (I used to name my photo folders like that...).
Coming from a country where we typically do dd/mm I can never remember what the English standard is. I've taken to always writing the name of the month to be sure.
Also, can the huge lead of the iPhone still be true? I thought Android was outselling the iPhone by now. But perhaps the low end Android buyers don't really surf?
Because it's a format rarely used outside of an engineering context. If your users are 100% from a technical background, and always will be, fine. Otherwise, a lot of your users will find it difficult to parse dates in this format.
Traditionally, East Asian languages and Hungarian (I don't know about Lithuania and Iran), that use the YMD format have an overall "big endian logic". We say many things backwards compared to the rest of the world. Our names are also in reverse order, for example.
I've been using this format everywhere I can for years now. Quite often, when first exposed to it, folks go directly from "Huh?" to "Oh wow, that makes a lot of sense."
On HumanamuH I'm using "yyyy-mm-dd" or "mm-dd hh-mm" wherever several dates are displayed in a column (e.g. chat messages or notifications). I think it's easier to see where the day or month changed and it's sorted intuitively. But...
Several people who registered from the US stumbled over the form that lets you enter your birthday in "dd-mm-yyyy" format. Even though the format is explained right behind the form field. They were probably just as irritated as the majority of the world is by "mm-dd-yyyy". Not sure if using "yyyy-mm-dd" for birthdays works better internationally.
Maybe changing the format depending on the IP address would reduce confusion. Of course, users could also have an option to localize their date formats, but I assume most wouldn't want to bother.
By the way, the article contains Wikipedia's map of "Date format by country" which answers your question why nobody is using the ISO format for dates (some do):
That's the format I use in my custom blog engine, which parses markdown files into blog posts. As you mention, this results in blog posts that self-sort regardless of file manager, plus it's easier for me to parse. The down side is the fact that auto completion doesn't work as well on the command line (because all my blog posts start with 2012, so far).
Sweden uses it. In informal situations you often see d/m but whenever a year is present it's always y-m-d. In fact people identify themselves using this format as part of the national ID numbers that are used for everything from healthcare to newspaper subscriptions.
In Sweden I've seen d/m-yy or d/m-yyyy used when a year is present, and I still use it when signing contracts, though I am starting to write the first letters of the month instead.
I've taken to always writing the name of the month to be sure.
Apparently the US military does this as well do avoid problems when liaising with other countries (01 JAN 1970)
Also, can the huge lead of the iPhone still be true?
The author is Australian, and I'm wondering if his iphone data is national rather than international. The iphone here seems to have a bigger stranglehold than in the US, though that's merely my perception and I don't know the real numbers.
The iPhone were I currently live (Northern Ireland) seems to still have a massive grip on the market. I'm still in grammar school (high-school), and I can safely say that aside from a few Android phones and a lone Windows phone, out of ~150 people every single person in my year (17-18 y.o.) has an iPhone.
Yes, but how much of that is because a large amount of people in your age group (if they're anything like mine were) own second hand phones (whether purchased second hand or handed down from their parents). The iPhone was dominant overall around the time of the 3G/3GS, so there are a lot of second hand versions of these in the market, unlike early android ones like the G1 or HTC Hero. In fact, if NI is anything like the ROI, those early Android phones weren't even sold by the carriers. Also, they sucked. Android didn't function well until Froyo/Gingerbread (2.2/2.3) and didn't look good until ICS (4.0).
I'm only 1-2 years older than you, but I've noticed in my age group a huge swing from iPhones (or iPod Touch + dumbphone if you can't afford an iPhone or find a second hand one) to mid-range Android phones like the Galaxy Ace (which is probably the second most commonly owned phone among people I know, behind the iPhone 4) by people replacing iPhone 3Gs and 3GSes. The iPhone is still on top, but it's no longer dominant.
Also, for some reason I cannot fathom, a small group of blackberry users. Including one who traded in an iPhone 4 for one. I really don't see the appeal, but I guess some people just really like bbm + physical keyboards.
(Rough guess of the proportions among people I know is 50-55% iPhone (of which it's mostly 3GSes and 4's - the 4S is non-existent among my friends, which pretty much reinforces my theory that they're not buying new), 35-40% Android, 5% Blackberry, 5% dumbphones. I'm not aware of any WP users)
Also, can the huge lead of the iPhone still be true?
He explains in the text that this depends entirely on the target market. In some countries the iPhone utterly dominates and in others it's down in the baseline.
Coming from a country where we typically do dd/mm I can never remember what the English standard is. I've taken to always writing the name of the month to be sure.
Also, can the huge lead of the iPhone still be true? I thought Android was outselling the iPhone by now. But perhaps the low end Android buyers don't really surf?