BREAKING: Apple Refuses to Rename Lake Ontario Even After Direct Pressure From Trump Himself
Google folded within days. Apple has held the line, even with Trump personally calling to push them.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum confirmed Monday that Trump reached out to Apple directly, asking the company to change Lake Ontario to “Lake America” on Apple Maps. “I know that the president reached out to Apple directly, so I’m sure that we may be seeing that change coming up soon,” Burgum said on Fox Business.
Apple hasn’t budged. As of Monday morning, Apple Maps still displays “Lake Ontario” for U.S. users, direct presidential outreach and all. It’s a notably slower pace than Google, which switched over the weekend, citing its policy of following the U.S. Geographic Names Information System after Trump’s executive order took effect August 27. This isn’t new territory for Apple either. When Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico last year, Google made the switch in eight days. Apple took over three weeks, and eventually complied, but only after significant delay.
Apple hasn’t commented publicly on the president’s outreach or given any timeline for a decision. So far, the company that once needed three weeks to fold on the Gulf of Mexico is taking even longer this time, holding steady even with the White House applying direct pressure.
Not everyone is waiting to see what Apple decides. MapQuest posted flatly on social media that it has no intention of changing anything at all. “We’re not changing the name of Lake Ontario. Name it whatever you want at your leisure,” the company wrote in a post that went viral.
A sitting president personally calling a tech company about a lake’s name, and getting nowhere so far, is a strange kind of standoff.