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I thought Apple was supposed to be the great government-resistant pro-user-rights stronghold. Why is this code even present on US devices? Is the word "Taiwan"

I thought Apple was supposed to be the great government-resistant pro-user-rights stronghold. Why is this code even present on US devices? Is the word "Taiwan" such a bad word in China that, instead of some reasonable action, it crashes the OS? Is the Chinese government so upset about Taiwan they're insisting manufacturers hide the flag from the keyboard? All aspects of this are mind-boggling.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
> I thought Apple was supposed to be the great government-resistant pro-user-rights stronghold. Only when they are sure that the government really can't punish them for it, and it gets them good PR. When dealing with a government that will ban the sales of the iPhone in that country, they roll over and make sure they do whatever they need to do to have friendly relations with them.
- MBCook 8y ago
  And the country is big enough. Maybe they’d stand their ground against Liechtenstein but China is WAY too important. They also said they’d do what the US government required. They didn’t like the idea of the gov being able to unlock any phone and lobbied against it but said they’d follow the law if it exists.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    So for consistency, surely we can read the blog post against similar issues like requiring icloud data locality? Otherwise, we need to be very clear where you're even allowed to publicly disagree or not.
    - MBCook 8y ago
      This seems like a sort of standard country customization/localization thing that just happened to have a bug in it. However because it’s China and Taiwan it’s a “thing“ because there’s a very heavy political angle. My original comment was meant to point out that Apple isn’t hypocritical here as many people want to claim. They said they’d do the exact same kind of things here if required by US law.
      - kodablah 8y ago
        > They said they’d do the exact same kind of things here if required by US law. Well that's not true. You specifically said "lobbied against" in your post. "Exact same things" would mean exactly the same reticence. That's where the hypocrisy lies.
        MBCook 8y ago
        Because it’s not US law yet. In the past they’ve talked to the Chinese government about why they think possible policy X is a problem too. But once it’s a law they lose the choice.
- lostlogin 8y ago
  Possibly also related - the phones are made there too.
- bigiain 8y ago
  Not just ban the sale of iPhones in China - they could potentially stop the manufacture of all iPhones (and every other bit of Apple hardware). > they need to do to have friendly relations with them Yep. That sure do...
NamTaf 8y ago
According to the CCP, there is no Taiwanese flag. Taiwan is just part of China. Qantas just folded over CCP pressure to change their stance on calling Taiwan a nation rather than a territory. [1] China is really sensitive about this and pushes its influence heavily on this particular point. [1]: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-04/qantas-to-refer-to-taiwan-as-territory-following-chinese-demands/9833606 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-04/qantas-to-refer-to-tai...
- lucb1e 8y ago
  (CCP is Chinese Communist Party, for anyone else wondering.)
  - NamTaf 8y ago
    Thanks, sorry, I should try to remember to clarify my acronyms when I write posts.
- derefr 8y ago
  What happens when someone else sends you the Taiwanese flag emoji?
ghrifter 8y ago
Saying Taiwan is a country is a like saying the n-word in the United States.
bigiain 8y ago
> Is the word "Taiwan" such a bad word in China that, instead of some reasonable action, it crashes the OS? From my reading of the article, the intention was not to crash the device, but to hide the Taiwanese flag emoji - and the crash was because the code intended to do that was buggy. So no - it's not _that_ bad a word. > Is the Chinese government so upset about Taiwan they're insisting manufacturers hide the flag from the keyboard? Yes, it seems this is true - and while I've never needed to deal with requests like that from a nation state, it does seem kinda cowardly on Apple's part to agree to that, and it seems quite at odds with the resistance to the FBI getting a screenlock bypass to that iPhone 5 a while back...
- adventured 8y ago
  > and it seems quite at odds with the resistance to the FBI getting a screenlock bypass to that iPhone 5 a while back It's not at odds at all. The US isn't going to arbitrarily blockade Apple's market access over the screenlock conflict. At worst you go to court and battle the US Government over that, with a decent chance of prevailing. China will and can do anything it likes, including entirely removing your market access, if you injure their fragile national self-esteem. They're very sensitive about perceived slights, whether due to their history or the inherent fragility of authoritarian regimes, or both. I'm not making a joke about their over-sensitivity, it's a real thing that all companies must deal with there. Apple basically told the US Government point blank: no; on something important to the Feds. What happened to Apple in consequence? Nothing. Try that with China. They'd probably love an excuse to kick Apple out, even if briefly, to bolster their domestic alternatives (doing it briefly is ideal, because it might make it nearly impossible for Apple to recover lost market share, and then China gets to pretend they're still open to Apple's products after the damage is done).
  - bigiain 8y ago
    > The US isn't going to arbitrarily blockade Apple's market access over the screenlock conflict. I wonder if people from Huawei and HTC have a different point of view there?
- tinus_hn 8y ago
ubernostrum 8y ago
As others noted, it appears Apple was attempting to keep the Taiwan flag emoji (🇹🇼) out of the emoji keyboard depending on localization settings. This is a well-known cost of being able to do business in China; the version of your product for sale/use in the PRC cannot in any way acknowledge the existence of Taiwan/ROC as a separate entity. Most vendors simply have localization switches which hide/re-label Taiwan in location selectors, use some icon other than the flag to let users select the zh-TW localization, re-label any displayed maps, etc. IIRC Microsoft got in trouble years and years ago for a mistake in code they shipped, which accidentally displayed either "Taiwan" or the flag in a build of software for use in the PRC. This has been the case for many, many years. Most HN readers probably just don't deal often enough with localization issues to realize how politically sensitive they can be, and how easily even a small misstep can get you in trouble with a government.
- derefr 8y ago
  Can you list "Taiwan" as an entry if you don't really care about countries per se, but are just making a big list of states/provinces/territories/other small "cultural" boundaries? Whether or not Taiwan is a country, and whether or not Taiwanese is a language, Taiwan is certainly a place, containing a number of people; and those people certainly speak a mutually-unintelligible dialect of Chinese. Could I get away with listing "Cultures" and "Dialects" rather than "Countries" and "Languages"?
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    Some things seem to get away with "Taiwan, Province of China".
    - gurkendoktor 8y ago
      Oh, thanks for mentioning this. This phrasing is mostly a rookie developer trap! We're all so used to ISO standards that we assume they are politically neutral. That's why everyone starts their weekend project with the ISO 3166 country list that includes "Taiwan, Province of China" [1] [2] [3]. This list is crap. It follows UN country names, and the UN is not a neutral entity. It isn't even logical that "Hong Kong" can stand on its own in the list, but Taiwan has to be suffixed with "Province of China". As far as I know, no major website uses this list unmodified. (The airlines that recently bowed to PRC pressure now call it "Taiwan, China"). If you see the "Province of China" label on a website, you should refer its developer to the Unicode CLDR data: http://cldr.unicode.org/index http://cldr.unicode.org/index The CLDR data is the actual industry standard, and tries to be as neutral as possible. [1] https://github.com/rails/country_select https://github.com/rails/country_select [2] https://gist.github.com/DHS/1340150 https://gist.github.com/DHS/1340150 [3] https://pypi.org/project/django-countries/ https://pypi.org/project/django-countries/
xref 8y ago
Does Apple hide the Israeli flag for users in Saudi Arabia etc? Is there a list of these kinds of govt requests they choose to abide by?
- designcode 8y ago
  "Does Apple hide the Israeli flag for users in Saudi Arabia etc?" No, they don't.
analogmemory 8y ago
It's not like Apple removed all traces of "Taiwan" from iOS. They are simply trying to comply with the local laws of China, which unfortunately is the cost of doing business there. You can still set your keyboard or/and language settings to Chinese (Taiwan)

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

> I thought Apple was supposed to be the great government-resistant pro-user-rights stronghold. Only when they are sure that the government really can't punish them for it, and it gets them good PR. When dealing with a government that will ban the sales of the iPhone in that country, they roll over and make sure they do whatever they need to do to have friendly relations with them.

MBCook 8y ago
And the country is big enough. Maybe they’d stand their ground against Liechtenstein but China is WAY too important. They also said they’d do what the US government required. They didn’t like the idea of the gov being able to unlock any phone and lobbied against it but said they’d follow the law if it exists.
- kodablah 8y ago
  So for consistency, surely we can read the blog post against similar issues like requiring icloud data locality? Otherwise, we need to be very clear where you're even allowed to publicly disagree or not.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    This seems like a sort of standard country customization/localization thing that just happened to have a bug in it. However because it’s China and Taiwan it’s a “thing“ because there’s a very heavy political angle. My original comment was meant to point out that Apple isn’t hypocritical here as many people want to claim. They said they’d do the exact same kind of things here if required by US law.
    - kodablah 8y ago
      > They said they’d do the exact same kind of things here if required by US law. Well that's not true. You specifically said "lobbied against" in your post. "Exact same things" would mean exactly the same reticence. That's where the hypocrisy lies.
      - MBCook 8y ago
        Because it’s not US law yet. In the past they’ve talked to the Chinese government about why they think possible policy X is a problem too. But once it’s a law they lose the choice.
lostlogin 8y ago
Possibly also related - the phones are made there too.
bigiain 8y ago
Not just ban the sale of iPhones in China - they could potentially stop the manufacture of all iPhones (and every other bit of Apple hardware). > they need to do to have friendly relations with them Yep. That sure do...

NamTaf 8y ago

According to the CCP, there is no Taiwanese flag. Taiwan is just part of China. Qantas just folded over CCP pressure to change their stance on calling Taiwan a nation rather than a territory. [1] China is really sensitive about this and pushes its influence heavily on this particular point. [1]: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-04/qantas-to-refer-to-taiwan-as-territory-following-chinese-demands/9833606 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-04/qantas-to-refer-to-tai...

lucb1e 8y ago
(CCP is Chinese Communist Party, for anyone else wondering.)
- NamTaf 8y ago
  Thanks, sorry, I should try to remember to clarify my acronyms when I write posts.
derefr 8y ago
What happens when someone else sends you the Taiwanese flag emoji?

ghrifter 8y ago

Saying Taiwan is a country is a like saying the n-word in the United States.

bigiain 8y ago

> Is the word "Taiwan" such a bad word in China that, instead of some reasonable action, it crashes the OS? From my reading of the article, the intention was not to crash the device, but to hide the Taiwanese flag emoji - and the crash was because the code intended to do that was buggy. So no - it's not _that_ bad a word. > Is the Chinese government so upset about Taiwan they're insisting manufacturers hide the flag from the keyboard? Yes, it seems this is true - and while I've never needed to deal with requests like that from a nation state, it does seem kinda cowardly on Apple's part to agree to that, and it seems quite at odds with the resistance to the FBI getting a screenlock bypass to that iPhone 5 a while back...

adventured 8y ago
> and it seems quite at odds with the resistance to the FBI getting a screenlock bypass to that iPhone 5 a while back It's not at odds at all. The US isn't going to arbitrarily blockade Apple's market access over the screenlock conflict. At worst you go to court and battle the US Government over that, with a decent chance of prevailing. China will and can do anything it likes, including entirely removing your market access, if you injure their fragile national self-esteem. They're very sensitive about perceived slights, whether due to their history or the inherent fragility of authoritarian regimes, or both. I'm not making a joke about their over-sensitivity, it's a real thing that all companies must deal with there. Apple basically told the US Government point blank: no; on something important to the Feds. What happened to Apple in consequence? Nothing. Try that with China. They'd probably love an excuse to kick Apple out, even if briefly, to bolster their domestic alternatives (doing it briefly is ideal, because it might make it nearly impossible for Apple to recover lost market share, and then China gets to pretend they're still open to Apple's products after the damage is done).
- bigiain 8y ago
  > The US isn't going to arbitrarily blockade Apple's market access over the screenlock conflict. I wonder if people from Huawei and HTC have a different point of view there?
tinus_hn 8y ago

ubernostrum 8y ago

As others noted, it appears Apple was attempting to keep the Taiwan flag emoji (🇹🇼) out of the emoji keyboard depending on localization settings. This is a well-known cost of being able to do business in China; the version of your product for sale/use in the PRC cannot in any way acknowledge the existence of Taiwan/ROC as a separate entity. Most vendors simply have localization switches which hide/re-label Taiwan in location selectors, use some icon other than the flag to let users select the zh-TW localization, re-label any displayed maps, etc. IIRC Microsoft got in trouble years and years ago for a mistake in code they shipped, which accidentally displayed either "Taiwan" or the flag in a build of software for use in the PRC. This has been the case for many, many years. Most HN readers probably just don't deal often enough with localization issues to realize how politically sensitive they can be, and how easily even a small misstep can get you in trouble with a government.

derefr 8y ago
Can you list "Taiwan" as an entry if you don't really care about countries per se, but are just making a big list of states/provinces/territories/other small "cultural" boundaries? Whether or not Taiwan is a country, and whether or not Taiwanese is a language, Taiwan is certainly a place, containing a number of people; and those people certainly speak a mutually-unintelligible dialect of Chinese. Could I get away with listing "Cultures" and "Dialects" rather than "Countries" and "Languages"?
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  Some things seem to get away with "Taiwan, Province of China".
  - gurkendoktor 8y ago
    Oh, thanks for mentioning this. This phrasing is mostly a rookie developer trap! We're all so used to ISO standards that we assume they are politically neutral. That's why everyone starts their weekend project with the ISO 3166 country list that includes "Taiwan, Province of China" [1] [2] [3]. This list is crap. It follows UN country names, and the UN is not a neutral entity. It isn't even logical that "Hong Kong" can stand on its own in the list, but Taiwan has to be suffixed with "Province of China". As far as I know, no major website uses this list unmodified. (The airlines that recently bowed to PRC pressure now call it "Taiwan, China"). If you see the "Province of China" label on a website, you should refer its developer to the Unicode CLDR data: http://cldr.unicode.org/index http://cldr.unicode.org/index The CLDR data is the actual industry standard, and tries to be as neutral as possible. [1] https://github.com/rails/country_select https://github.com/rails/country_select [2] https://gist.github.com/DHS/1340150 https://gist.github.com/DHS/1340150 [3] https://pypi.org/project/django-countries/ https://pypi.org/project/django-countries/

xref 8y ago

Does Apple hide the Israeli flag for users in Saudi Arabia etc? Is there a list of these kinds of govt requests they choose to abide by?

designcode 8y ago
"Does Apple hide the Israeli flag for users in Saudi Arabia etc?" No, they don't.

analogmemory 8y ago

It's not like Apple removed all traces of "Taiwan" from iOS. They are simply trying to comply with the local laws of China, which unfortunately is the cost of doing business there. You can still set your keyboard or/and language settings to Chinese (Taiwan)