TOKYO: Apple’s new iPhone 5 may have been criticized for its glitch-ridden new maps program, but it may have inadvertently provided a diplomatic solution to China and Japan’s ongoing row over disputed islands. The new smartphone, which has dumped Google Maps in favor of its own version, has been ridiculed for misplacing major landmarks, shifting towns and even creating a new airport.
But amid a row over an outcrop of islands claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing, Apple’s new iO6 software has provided a resolution of sorts.
When a user searches for the Tokyo-controlled Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, claimed by Beijing under the name Diaoyu, two sets of the islands appear alongside each other.
“The map has one set of islands for each country. Is this a message from Apple that we civilians must not get engaged in a pointless dispute?” one Japanese blogger wrote.
The new mapping program was released this week as part of Apple’s updated mobile operating system software, which powers the new iPhone 5, released Friday, and can be installed as an upgrade on other Apple devices.
To the chagrin of many, the new operating system replaces Google Maps, which had been the default mapping system in Apple devices until now.
As of yet there is no stand-alone Google Maps app available for the iPhone, although some reports say this is coming.
The East China Sea islands, strategically coveted outcrops, have been the focus of a territorial dispute between Tokyo and Beijing, with tensions escalating dramatically after the Japanese government bought three of them from their private owners.
Tens of thousands of anti-Japanese demonstrators rallied across China, with some vandalising Japanese shops and factories, forcing firms to shut or scale back production.
oh/ami
Apple maps offer ‘solution’ to China-Japan islands row
Apple maps offer ‘solution’ to China-Japan islands row
Book Review: Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love
It is always a pleasure to encounter a short story collection that delivers on every page, and British Muslim writer Huma Qureshi’s “Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love,” does exactly that.
Deliciously complex and devastating, the stories in this collection, published in paperback in 2022, are told mostly from the female perspective, capturing the intimate textures of everyday life, from love, loss and loneliness to the endlessly fraught relationships between mothers and daughters, friends and lovers.
Qureshi’s prose is understated yet razor-sharp, approaching her characters from close quarters with poignant precision.
I found it particularly impressive that none of the stories in the collection fall short or leave you confused or underwhelmed, and they work together to deliver the title’s promise.
Even the stories that leave you with burning, unanswered questions feel entirely satisfying in their ambiguity.
Several pieces stand out. “Firecracker” is a melancholy study of how some friendships simply age out of existence; “Too Much” lays bare the failures of communication that so often run between mothers and daughters; “Foreign Parts,” told from a British man’s perspective as he accompanies his fiancee to Lahore, handles questions of class and hidden identity with admirable delicacy; and “The Jam Maker,” an award-winning story, builds to a genuinely thrilling twist.
Throughout, Qureshi’s characters carry South Asian and Muslim identities worn naturally, as one thread among many in the fabric of who they are. They are never reduced to stereotypes or a single defining characteristic.
Reading this collection, I found myself thinking of early Jhumpa Lahiri, of “Interpreter of Maladies,” and that feeling of discovering a writer who seems destined to endure.
Huma Qureshi tells the stories of our times— mundane and extraordinary in equal measure— and she tells them beautifully.
