The Keyboard is deadlier than the Sword. Apple fixes yet another text based crash

[rcmaehl]

Sources:
Engadget

9 to 5 Mac

Inkstone News

 

Media:

 

Quotes/Excerpts:

Quote

Apple says it has fixed a glitch that causes some iPhones to crash whenever the word “Taiwan” or the Taiwanese flag emoji appears...The American tech behemoth censors the Taiwan flag emoji from its devices, so long as the device’s region is set to China... identified a faulty part of the iOS operating system that fails, under certain region settings, to properly process and censor the Taiwanese flag emoji...Apple announced a software update that would fix the glitch

Quote

A bug in iOS 11.3 – fixed in iOS 11.4.1 – revealed that Apple censors the Taiwanese flag on iPhones whose region is set to China … reporting that iMessage, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger all crashed when she typed the word ‘Taiwan’ or received a message containing the emoji for the Taiwanese flag... It seems likely that Apple added the code to appease the Chinese government, which refuses to recognize Taiwan as an independent entity...China is a massively important market to Apple, as big as all European countries combined. The company has been accused of putting sales ahead of human rights

 

My thoughts:

 

We are now on how many bugs caused by entering text or receiving a text message on iOS devices within the past 3 years? Three? Five? Everything from unicode to links within a message. Perhaps we should stop trying to be proactive with the contents of a text message and instead just display it to the user? 

[suicidalfranco]

Taiwan numba 1

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Quote

The American tech behemoth censors the Taiwan flag emoji from its devices, so long as the device’s region is set to China...

Let the conspiracy theories of any influence from China begin. 

[Commodus]

4 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Let the conspiracy theories of any influence from China begin. 

You just know people will suggest that Apple should completely ignore China's requests.  It's easy to say that when you're not the one who'd lose a major chunk of sales (and potentially, access to vital manufacturing resources) with very little gain for the market you leave behind.   I'd rather see Apple censor the Taiwanese flag in messages than make Chinese smartphone buyers pick up locally-designed devices that are most definitely under the thumb of the government.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

2 minutes ago, Commodus said:

You just know people will suggest that Apple should completely ignore China's requests.  It's easy to say that when you're not the one who'd lose a major chunk of sales (and potentially, access to vital manufacturing resources) with very little gain for the market you leave behind.   I'd rather see Apple censor the Taiwanese flag in messages than make Chinese smartphone buyers pick up locally-designed devices that are most definitely under the thumb of the government.

It's the same reason why Air Canada caved in and labeled their fairly recent YVR to TPE route as Taipei, CN. 

[DrMacintosh]

Its always good to hear about bugs that have been fixed before anyone knew they were a thing. Kinda an odd bug tho, lol. 

[TigerHawk]

retoast 

 

[Christophe Corazza]

Your're late to the party! This has already been posted about 6 hours ago be @spartaman64!

 

 

[S w a t s o n]

This software glitch really relates to an underlying issue. China doesn't play fair. This is honestly one of the better cases for domesticating production to the US. If China couldn't lean on Apple to censor the flag this wouldn't even be a concern. Assuming somehow Apple pulled that off, China would likely ban Apple products, literally rip off the iPhone at a state-funded level and ignore any court action. I hate Apple's business practices but this is some bullshit

Edit: RIP

[Ryujin2003]

Why did they fix it? It sounds perfect for China.