It’s remarkably amazing how the Middle East seems to be the least of Apple’s concerns. We’re always the last to get anything.. Arabic support on the operating system, iPhones, Arabic on the iPhone, and of course.. the iTunes store!
It’s also remarkably intimidating. the iPhone has been in this region (Egypt, KSA, Bahrain, UAE, Jordan..) for quite some time now. It’s strange how we haven’t raised our hand and asked, “Hey Steve! You know that iTunes app on my iPhone.. it keeps kicking me out!”
So if Apple has not been able to sort out licensing agreements with music publishers to provide music and content for this region, then their solution is to close the iTunes app every time it launches? What about all the free podcasts that users should be able to download? How does it make any sense that I can download an app that can download podcasts but I can’t do that from the iTunes store?
Something is really off here!
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There have been rumors about iTunes store coming into the UAE (along with the Kindle!) but this is not enough. Let’s set aside this far-fetched request. Speaking of, and until the Recording Industry Association of America gets their act together, can you unbreak the app on our phones?
Apple, there’s 200 million of us here, and we use our iPhones because we consume content, not because we want a mono-tasking phone that we use to listen to Nancy Ajram!
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