Apple Says Southern Lebanon Villages Weren’t Removed From Maps. It Never Had Them

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https://www.wired.me/story/apple-says-southern-lebanon-villages-werent-removed-from-maps-it-never-had-them

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47742765

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47742680

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Apple Maps’s main data source is OpenStreetMaps which definitely has the villages. So it doesn’t matter when the villages were removed, someone at Apple went out of their way to do it.

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Is that accurate though?

Does Apple Maps update from OSM routinely? If not, did they update before or after the villages were added?

I ask because many things update off OSM once in a blue moon. Pokémon Go for instance updated less than once a year.

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The villages I clicked at random were added 7 years ago.

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I can’t really find any info on when they pull their data from OSM, but it seems their use of OSM may vary from country to country? I don’t know that there’s an easy way to confirm this one way or the other.

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Before 2012 Apple maps was based on OSM, blog post about the change: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2012/10/02/apple-maps/

Since 2012 they use OSM on some parts of the World, you can read OSM attribution in the list of sources: https://gspe21-ssl.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html

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Mmmm I don’t see Lebanon listed on that page, though this does point towards this being a post split change.

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There is no war in Eurasia.

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At this point, when I still need to use Apple hardware and software as part of my personal and business workflows, I have to boycott Apple - at least financially.

From now on, I only buy Apple hardware secondhand, I only use free Apple software (like the OSes and basic app suite) and third-party software purchased outside of the App Stores, and I refuse to subscribe to any paid Apple services (which I have been abstaining from since they turned their backs on Hong Kong).

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I guess a good follow-up question might be what other regions aren’t on Apple Maps?

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It seems Apple does this in more than just one place, in “controversial” regions (read: where a powerful enough nation can declare a place doesn’t or shouldn’t exist)

it takes a couple minutes to test the claim and notice that the issue in affecting all Lebanon and not only the Southern region where israel is invading and leveling entire villages to the ground as they did in Gaza.

zooming in around the Lebanon border you notice instantly that a lot of information is missing as the background become white: https://i.imgur.com/L2p1j15.png

and following this clue, you soon notice that the same issue of missing labels is also happening in Syria: https://i.imgur.com/8p1ANAZ.png

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47749766

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