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Taiwan Protests Apple Maps That Show Island As Province of China

Posted by Unknown on from the reality-calling dept.

itwbennett writes "Taiwan is demanding Apple revise its mapping software and remove a label that describes the island as a province of China, rather than as a sovereign state. The complaint was lodged after local media reports said that users on the island had noticed the change in Apple's latest iOS and Mac OS versions. 'The maps don't acknowledge Taiwan as its own nation. We voiced our disapproval, and hope Apple will make the change,' an official with Taiwan's foreign ministry said Wednesday. This isn't the first time such a mistake was made. Google also labeled Taiwan as a Chinese province in 2005."

6 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Not a mistake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not a mistake. China's market is far more lucrative than Taiwan's for Apple, and since they have to choose which one to piss off....

  2. Serious consequences by Thanshin · · Score: 5, Funny

    The mistake is more important than one may think at first, because Taiwan is one of the places the navigator will take you through in the path from your home to the local grocery store.

  3. Re:Province or nation? by stewsters · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, there is a solution to this. Apple maps is used on a device with gps tracking, so when you are physically located in mainland China you can say that Taiwan is a province of China, and when you are in Taiwan you say that it's a separate nation. Problem solved, everyone happy except fishermen using the app. But get a real waterproof gps if you are on a boat.

  4. Re:A Breakaway Province by unixisc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, it isn't. Beijing doesn't control anything that goes on in Taiwan, much as they'd like to. Yeah, they used to make hostile noises in the past whenever Taiwan spoke of formally declaring independence, but it ultimately didn't amount to much. But Taiwan controls everything of its own, including its foreign & defense policies - not something that can be said about the province of any country

  5. Isn't this what the Taiwanese believe as well? by jfruh · · Score: 5, Informative

    Both the government of the People's Republic of China (which controls the mainland) and the government of the Republic of China (which controls Taiwan) believe that Taiwan is a part of China. The two just disagree about who China's rightful government is. I realize that over the past 60 years Taiwan has grown more and more self-contained and has become a de facto state independent of China, but in theory there's nothing either side should object to in portraying Taiwan as part of China.

    1. Re:Isn't this what the Taiwanese believe as well? by bsDaemon · · Score: 5, Informative

      My wife was born in Taiwan. She and anyone in her family gets extremely angry if you refer to them as "Chinese," despite being ethnically Chinese, speaking Mandarin, etc. Good luck convincing her, her family, or frankly anyone else Tawainese I've ever met that they're "part of China" and that there is "nothing they should object to."

      That said, this is a result of using ISO codes instead of FIPS codes. We had a customer escalation come through a while back about Taiwan being listed as a province of China in our geolocation information. We had switched from a FIPS 10-4 source to an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 source, which ad the side effect of pissing off our Taiwanese customers.