On Tuesday afternoon, Apple began rolling out a small, yet quite consequential, change to its Maps product: Under direct pressure from the White House, the Cupertino-based company opted to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” complying with an executive order Donald Trump signed last week.
Apple’s acquiescence to Trump, which followed Google’s, is sure to stir outrage among those who do not like seeing Big Tech openly kowtow to the president’s every whim and further boost MapQuest’s resurgence. At the same time, the move was hardly unexpected. On Monday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum appeared on Fox Business and indicated to host Maria Bartiromo that Trump had “reached out to Apple directly” about the matter, predicting that the company would implement the “Lake America” change “soon.”
While Apple had likely always planned to update its map to reflect the executive order—it had, after all, also swapped Gulf of Mexico for “Gulf of America”—Status has learned that executives…
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