AfterDawn: News

Taiwan asks Apple to blur some Apple Maps images

The Taiwanese government has asked Apple to blur some of the images in its Apple Maps mapping service.

The images are of the Hsinchu airbase, where the military recently added a new radar defense system. The station will help the country detect if any missiles are fired from nearby nations, most notably China.



Legally, no one can force Apple to change the images (sensitive area or not), but the nation has asked for the blur as a gesture of goodwill.

There are blurred areas in rivals mapping services, such as Google's, but all of their blurred areas were purchased that way.

Apple made headlines when it launched iOS 6 with Apple Maps, leaving out Google Maps, the current gold standard. The service is so bad it spawned its own Tumblr page.



Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 11 Oct 2012 12:26

• Previous article

• The Woz: Apple got 'arrogant' with iPhone 5

• Next article

• HTC drops out of U.S. tablet market, for now

• 2 comments

• SomeBozo

  Is the Taiwanese government really this stupid? I would suspect China, who would be the main threat, easily has satellites which already do mapping, or high altitude planes as well, that will produce much better detail and resolution than what crapple would ever be able to provide...
  
  Also thinking about this request by the Taiwanese, did they have there head in the sand, map's maps suck? I would think the Taiwanese would want China to use crapple's maps. OK I get it, I'm slow, this is counter intelligence :)
  
  Am i missing something here?
  

  11.10.2012 17:24 #1

• Gnawnivek

  Originally posted by SomeBozo: Is the Taiwanese government really this stupid? I would suspect China, who would be the main threat, easily has satellites which already do mapping, or high altitude planes as well, that will produce much better detail and resolution than what crapple would ever be able to provide...
  
  Also thinking about this request by the Taiwanese, did they have there head in the sand, map's maps suck? I would think the Taiwanese would want China to use crapple's maps. OK I get it, I'm slow, this is counter intelligence :)
  
  Am i missing something here? LOL. I was thinking the same thing, how's blurring the image going to help? It's pretty much like sticking the head in the sand :P
  
  Oh wait, maybe it's just publicity stunt? It's telling China hey the radar is here, but it's actually somewhere else?
  

  Peace!

  12.10.2012 09:32 #2