iPhone crashes when user types ‘Taiwan’

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17501970

I find it incredulous that iPhones with a Chinese locale can't display the Taiwanese flag. AFAIK, there's no such restriction on Chinese phone brands like Xiaomi/Huawei/Honor/Meizu.

Here is a summary that omits some of the more technical details: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/iphon...

(posted on the other thread)

So hang on a bit here - i'm not an Apple fan, don't use their phones, ditched my MacBook etc.

But this crash is a bit convenient. It smells to me like a teenager complying with the letter of the rules. Their QA, although awful recently, surely would have picked up this crash?

So maybe Apple deliberately made the code crap to telegraph the fact they'd been coerced into writing the code? Assuming they'd been told by PRC to not give specifics of what they had to comply with?

This is a really great breakdown. The author is clearly pretty skilled at reverse engineering.

I'm afraid this didn't get as much profile as it deserved. It has a bad title. I think a better one would be something like "iPhone crashes when the user types the word Taiwan."

The headline should be changed to:

"Apple wrote code...it was buggy"

Because it reflects better the reality of Apple products.