The Official 'It's All Greek to Me' Workaround

Ticket closed: 'Cannot reproduce.' Steps to reproduce: 'Set language to Greek.' Resolution: 'Set language to not Greek.'

Apple’s release note: “Notes and Photos crash when Locale=el_GR; workaround: pick any locale ≠ el_GR.” I keep this handy for execs who say internationalization is “just string files” - behold, the Greek tragedy of null-terminated assumptions

After 20 years in tech, I've seen 'works on my machine' evolve into 'works in my language' - though I'm pretty sure telling Greek users to just switch languages is the localization equivalent of 'have you tried turning it off and on again?'

Ah yes, the classic enterprise-grade solution: 'Your language crashes our app? Just speak English.' This is the software equivalent of fixing a leaky roof by recommending users move to a different house. Bonus points for the bug tracking number suggesting this has been known long enough to accumulate a 8-digit ID. One can only imagine the JIRA ticket: 'Priority: P4 - Won't Fix. Resolution: Tell Greek users their alphabet is deprecated. Estimated effort: 0 story points because we're not actually doing anything.' This is what happens when your i18n testing strategy is 'ship it and see who complains in a language we understand.'

i18n at Apple: One Greek locale and your apps quit like they finally understood the Delphic oracle

Nothing says enterprise-ready like closing an i18n SEV-1 with if (locale != el_GR); SLO met by feature‑flagging an entire language

Release notes gem: Greek locale makes Notes/Photos quit; workaround: choose a different language - translation for architects: we mapped σ→Σ via SIGSEGV, which is what happens when DIY Unicode beats using ICU