14 DAY TRIAL // The update to macOS 10.14.4 prevents Apple’s Macs sold in China from displaying the Taiwanese flag emoji, and bypassing this restriction is harder than you think.
The censorship is a result of a special policy implemented by China’s government, which requires companies in the country to treat Taiwan as a province and not as an independent state.
As a result, companies like Apple selling products in China have configured their devices to prevent showing the Taiwanese flag in an attempt to comply with the requirements and avoid a potential sales ban. iPhones and iPads have been blocked from displaying this emoji since 2017, according to Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia.
Software workarounds
More interesting is that the release of macOS 10.14.4 has apparently made it harder to bypass the restriction and enable the Taiwanese flag in China.
While previously it was possible to remove the block by simply setting the region to a different location than China, it now looks like this method has also been disabled. Instead, the restriction is activated when setting up macOS for the first time and setting the region to China, which means that further modifications to the region no longer turn off the censorship.
At the same time, software tweaks could also help deal with this ban, though it’s obviously a less convenient method that many might not be interested to turn to just to enable the Taiwanese flag.
For the time being, Apple has remained completely tight-lipped on these changes, but the ban is likely just another effort of the Cupertino-based tech giant be on good terms with the Beijing government. China has been a particularly difficult market for Apple lately on several fronts, including in the smartphone market where the iPhone was found to be violating a series of patents owned by Qualcomm.