Having trekked down to the Apple Store this morning, I had no trouble picking up my brand new white 64GB 4S. The feature I was most interested in trying was Siri, the “Personal Assistant” included with every new 4S, but unfortunately between the US and the rest of the world, everything is not equal.
Asking Siri to find the closest petrol station greeted me with this unexpected rebuff:
Having had a look through the Apple Australia website and rewatched the Siri section of the keynote (link), I can’t find anywhere that it says that business listings are not available outside the US. In fact, the screenshot on the Apple AU website would imply otherwise:
The other features of Siri are pretty cool to use, and so far seem to work surprisingly well, but it would have been nice to know upfront that not all these features are available outside the US, whether you speak English or not.