iPhone denies existence of Gibraltar, other bits of British empire The iPhone will not accept that people live in Gibraltar, a reader has pointed out to us, highlighting that the phone will not acknowledge this as a possibility when users are entering country names in their address book. Android phones let users type in country names manually when adding addresses to contacts, while iPhones …
It does according to the ISO 3166-1 Alpha-3 country codes that the UKBA require to be used when we're telling them about overseas students... (It's XXT if you're interested - sounds a bit made-up-at-the-last-minute to me.).
Then again, the UKBA only recognise the FCO's approved list of 200ish 'passport issuing' countries. Maybe they all use iThings there ;-)
Slightly economical wiith the truth there. The Turkish invasion didn't just happen out of the blue. The Greek military dictatorship had seized control of Cyprus following a coup which it had organised. Turkey originally intervened to prevent the ethnic cleansing / massacre of Turkish Cypriot civilians. If Turkey hadn't acted, Cyprus would have lost its independence and been annexed by Greece.
@AC.......your're not the only one being economical wiith the truth. The facts is such situations is always much more complicated.
Cyprus was part of the Ottoman Empire since the 1500. Britain annexed Cyprus from the Ottoman Empire in because in 1914 after the Ottoman Empire declared for the wrong side. Throughout the 1930s and 1950s (with all nationalistic aspirations being paused for WW2) the Greek Cypriots wanted the island to join Greece, Britain governed with a divide and rule method, playing off the Turkish and Greek factions against each other. Britain wanted to keep control of Cyprus in the 1950s as their Middle East HQ as they had been kicked out of Egypt by that time.
In the 1950s the pro-greek EOKA group started a campaign of violence to end of British rule in Cyprus, at around the same time the TMT was founded by the person who became president of the Turkish bit of Cyprus with the aid of the Turkish military to counter the EOKA,, As much as the EOKA called for union the TMT called for separation.
The Greeks did not organise the coup to which you refer, EOKA did, but with the support of the Greek military junta.
I also feel that your claim that if Turkey hadn't acted, Cyprus would have lost its independence to be a bit dubious as well. A 1951 referendum conducted by the Cypriot Orthodox Church got just a result of nearly 100% in favour of union. The referendum may have been suspect as there was religious coercion to vote in favour of union but it does show that there was significant part of the population in favour of union.
Tim Cook's 'really exciting news later in the year': A complete world reorganisation to conform to iStandards. Some of these little alleged islands were approached and told that they couldn't have the 'i' in the front, for obvious reasons. You know how stubborn Brits are, and, after they declined to change names repeatedly, Apple's only defence was erasing them completely.
The Caymans and Bermuda are an exception: The latter are nice for conferences (coughcough), and the former need to be kept because that's where the money goes.
So. all in all, completely understandable. Except Gibraltar, it seems, but no: The Rocks original name was iabal tāriq (جبل طارق), and neither Steve nor Tim ever liked that.
Prior to it being called Tariq's Mount, it was one of the Pillars of Hercules, being called Mons Calpe by the Romans. No doubt, Hercules (Heracles), being Greek, would have called it something else.
It's not surprising that Gibraltor is not included in the iPhone map as the helpful prejudicial map, labelled "Europe according to Americans", at [1] does not show it either.
[1] http://www.topdesignmag.com/mapping-stereotypes-the-geography-of-prejudice/
ISO maintain a list of all the countries in the world. That's where we get the ISOCountryCode from. GB = United Kingdom, GI = Gibraltar. The list is freely available. Why would Apple use anything else?
GA Gabon
GB United Kingdom
GD Grenada
GE Georgia
GF French Guiana
GG Guernsey
GH Ghana
GI Gibraltar
GL Greenland
GM Gambia
GN Guinea
GP Guadeloupe
GQ Equatorial Guinea
GR Greece
GS South Georgia And The South Sandwich Islands
GT Guatemala
GU Guam
GW Guinea-Bissau
GY Guyana
> So for the Argies the Falklands are listed as the Malvinas?
Well, Spanish speakers do call them Malvinas regardless of their political stance (if any) on that issue. Just as Portuguese speakers also call them Malvinas, and the French, Malouines.
I take it i18n / l10n is not your line of work.
Google who list the name of every language in the world localised to the current IP-address-selected language
google is exceptionally retarded with this functionality, try a trip around Europe and you'd be amazed. Living in a country where you do not speak the language is like punishment from them. Some of their services ignore the account lang. preferences.
...And of course, google, the web-standard defender ignores Accept-Language header.
Being big is a plus - in Apple's case: feel free to deleted few islands here and there.
JOKE ALERT! (for the sensitive fanbois out there)
If so, does it include arse and elbow in the right places?
PS. If such an app does exist I would also expect eyeball, eyelash, eye-socket, and eyebrow to be removed for copyright reasons - as these are all Apple terms....
iBall - Apple workers day out (or 30 second break if working in Chinese Apple sweatshop)
iLash - Serious drinking session by Apple workers (or punishment for spending more than 30 second at the iBall for Chinese workers)
iSocket - Used for connecting non-proprietary devices to i-Devices [not currently available on iPhone. iPod, Ipad, etc] - (or where the special 'chair' is connected for really naughty Chinese apple workers)
iBrow - German beer sold to Apple workers (erm....)
I helped my brother apply for the dole online last year. When you enter your address, you have to include the country. Now, for almost everyone that will be the UK. Other options on the list included Antarctica, the USSR, the Byelorussian SSR as well as Belarus, the German Democratic Republic, Zaire as well as Dem Rep of Congo, and Southern Rhodesia.
In the sea between Korea and Japan (almost precisely halfway between each, and even that measure is fought over), there is a tiny archipelago of pointy rocks which both countries claim - heatedly - to be their own. The Koreans call it "Dokdo", whilst Japan names it "Takeshima".
Particularly on the Korean side, they are fiercely insistent that the islands are theirs, and woe betide anyone who suggests otherwise (if you're visiting Korea and the subject comes up, just agree with it - really). There's a lot bubbling away under the surface, not least the legacy of Japan's half-century occupation of Korea and the atrocities that took place, and that undoubtedly fuels the issue on the Korean side.
Whatever the rights and wrongs here (and why two nations would want to possess a desolate rock in the ocean is up for discussion - natural resources are suspected), it probably doesn't help that iOS6 names the islands as... "Takeshima".
A bit of a snub to a nation increasingly enamoured with Apple products? Perhaps this is Apple's two-fingered reply to the country that gave us Samsung...
http://londonkoreanlinks.net/2012/06/14/how-not-to-make-yourself-popular-with-korean-smartphone-users/
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2012/06/14/ios6-registered-dokdo-as-takeshima-ios6-registered-dokdo-as-takeshima/
Admittedly, the rocks are a bit on the small side to need road-maps (or roads, for that matter), but there was no call for such a strong response...
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Sadly, they're not the only ones that don't use a COMPLETE list of the countries included in the ISO standard country list.
It's particularly frustrating and annoying when purchasing online and the only selectable option is UK (GB) (we are not part of the UK and are therefore not subject to VAT - we have our own GST that we have to pay thank you very much!). That is why there are separate ISO country codes for JE, GG, IM, etc..
I'd laugh uproariously except that only last week I was trying to buy from a British company who will remain nameless (but who are called C*bicle 7) and their webstore wouldn't allow me to specify my New York zip code, most likely because the regex writer had specified a UK-only pattern be acceptable input (even though the space was labelled as being used for zip codes as well as post codes). At least, that's how it tested from my side of the webpage.
This "international shipping policy/UK-only address format" issue is depressingly common on the blightside, which is why I smile when people make the (accurate) statement that Americans have a tendency to assume "the world" means "America + Toronto".
Perhaps the iPhone app designer tried to buy something from a UK business's webstore, came across the same issue and vowed eternal vengeance?
Typical, bloody typical.
Meanwhile in every other bleedin' country on the planet we have to deal with idiots who reckon "State" is a mandatory item in an address.
Here's a novel idea you might wish to give a trial run to in the USA: Try fixing your own problems before trying to fix the rest of the world.
I don't think 200 years is too long to hold a grudge, do you? After all, you Brits did burn down Washington D.C. Seems like a perfectly acceptable reason to feign incompetence.
Burn down Washington D.C… in some political circles in the USA, that makes the Brits heroes.
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