Apple Maps has renamed Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” Bloomberg reported on September 1, after President Donald Trump asked Apple to make the change and after Google Maps already flipped the label late last week.
Bloomberg says Apple Maps now shows “Lake America” to users in the United States, keeps “Lake Ontario” for users in Canada, and displays both names for everyone else, matching the approach Apple took when it put Gulf of America on the map last year. The Maps view from here still says Lake Ontario with a US VPN, so Canadians cannot see Lake America in Apple Maps even after pointing a VPN at the United States.
That split only belongs in the body of the story because Trump’s executive order covers US federal usage of the smallest of the five Great Lakes. It does not decide what Canada, international bodies, or other mapping apps have to call the water sitting between Ontario and New York, even if Apple’s American map now says otherwise.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on August 31 that Trump reached out to Apple directly, and Bloomberg‘s report is Apple tracking the US Geographic Names Information System the same way Google said it was doing over the weekend, only a couple of days later.
MapQuest kept Lake Ontario on the map and rode that refusal up the App Store charts, so the original name is still one tap away.
If this feels like a rerun, it is, because Apple already relabeled the Gulf of Mexico after a January 2025 order and has now done the same thing to Lake Ontario, and depending on where you open Maps you will either see the original name, the new one, or both stacked together, which is going to make border-town screenshots look like they were taken on different planets.
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Such a juvenile and petty move by the current administration.
How can other countries take this president to be serious when he does things like this?
Schoolyard bully best sums up his behaviour!
Maybe American should be asking why Trumps personal wealth has grown over $2 billion since being president? Why does he charge corporations up to $100,000 per month to have first access to his market moving post on his platform?
A monkey on its own may not be taken seriously but a monkey with a grenade has to be taken seriously, even though it’s a monkey.
So many things to worry about and this is the something? People switching maps to inconvenience oneself seems a lot of over the top because someone hurt your feelings.
Toronto has continued to name change because they didn’t like the history, Ryerson to TMU and Dundas Square to Sankofa Square. Even Woodsy Park was changed to Ethennonnhawahstihnen. Rogers changed the name of the Skydome to Rogers Centre but people continue to call it the Dome.
Time passes but it would seem our political class has us arguing amongst ourselves to take the eye off of their incompetence. Woodsy Park in North York was renamed Ethennonnhawahstihnen’ Park
Crazy, what is next? Changing the name of Dundas Square to something crazy like “Sankofa”… Oh wait, we did that one to ourselves already…
It along with the Gulf of Mexico will be renamed back in 2029.
So nobody else sees how Apple like Google enjoys the smell of Trump’s farts and bow to him as their master? Ok.