iPhone Spelling Mistake Blunder

Written on November 21, 2008 by David Appleyard and 13 people have commented

It’s generally taken for granted that a cutting edge company such as Apple has a well oiled system of editors and copywriters who check software releases for errors before they go live. Unfortunately, it seems that the system has broken down with the latest iPhone software release.

Apple has written the Categories menu on the new Podcast download area of the new app as “Catagories”. The error is even more unfortunate, as the correct spelling of the word can be seen at the bottom of the page.

Macworld humorously referenced back to Scott Forstall, Apple’s vice president of platform experience, who said:

I actually have a photographer’s loupe that I use to make sure every pixel is right. We will argue over literally a single pixel.

I’ve done the math, and in order to miss the word ‘Catagories’, Scott has overlooked eight hundred and six pixels… He needs to have a few strong words with whoever has been delegated the loupe in recent months.

It will be interesting to see what move Apple takes to correct this. Will they treat it as a priority and push out another software release fairly quickly, or will they simply wait until the next iPhone software update is due? Personally, I expect they’ll wait for a future release — updating the software on your iPhone can be a fairly lengthy process for users (especially those with slow internet connections), and they’re unlikely to be too concerned with a minor spelling error.

I’m interested to know — have you ever noticed any spelling mistakes with previous releases (iPhone or otherwise)?

EDIT: Well, it looks like Apple quickly fixed that issue by updating the download package. How unfortunate (for this article).

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Comments RSSComments

#1 Galley says:
It’s spelled correctly in the U.S. store.
#2 Sam says:
US version is spelled correctly. I downloaded this morning just before 8 EST.
#3 Lewis says:
Yea it’s fine on mine. USA all the way? hehe
#4 pixelbud says:
This appears to only be in the UK. My US iPhone has it spelled right:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1797875&tstart=0
#5 Daniele says:
The Italian interface has “podcast” spelled with a lowercase “p”. How annoying in the title bar.
#6 dtsomp says:
Somehow, I don’t see any tabs on the upper part of the screen :/

http://twitpic.com/n3be

(greek iPhone)
#7 Matt J says:
Somehow, I don’t see any tabs on the upper part of the screen :/

http://twitpic.com/n3be

(greek iPhone)

Have you installed 2.2?
#8 David Appleyard says:
That’s interesting - It never occurred to me that the US version would be different. Maybe slightly less care is taken with the copywriting for foreign translations!
#9 Simon Withers says:
I noticed this problem too. However I downloaded the latest iTunes (v8.0.2.20) this evening and have sync’d as normal .. I have just noticed that the spelling mistake has disappeard; I have a screenshot from this morning, so I know I am not imagining things !?
#10 dtsomp says:
@Matt J

of course. The link is to a screenshot from the fw2.2 iTunes.app.
#11 Simon Withers says:
dtsomp - I think we may be at cross-purposes. What I mean is when I first updated my iPhone 3G to v2.2 the word was mis-spelt as “catagories”. Later in the day I updated to the latest version of iTunes (v8.0.2.20) and re-synced my iPhone. The mis-spelling then disappeared, therefore I am intrigued how a change of iTunes version has somehow amended the iPhone firmware ?