Friday, March 29, 2019

macOS 10.14.4 Restricts Taiwan Flag Emoji in China

Jeremy Burge (via John Gruber):

Macs bought in China can no longer display the 🇹🇼 Taiwan Flag Emoji, no matter which region is set in System Prefs

[…]

Since at least 2017, iOS devices bought in China (i.e. Chinese model iPhones) have also been prevented from showing the 🇹🇼 flag, no matter the region.

Wang Boyuan:

The region you choose on the setup assistant will stay unchanged untill you reinstall the OS. I saw users who bought the Chinese model set the initial region to elsewhere, thus 🇹🇼 is properly displayed on their Mac and the 10.14.4 upgrade won’t affect them.

To solve the issue once and for all: edit /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist, change string “CN” under <key>Country</key> to other country code, then click System Preferences to change the region settiing in your profile to you know where. Reboot and you’re 🇹🇼 friendly

So again there’s no hardware lock. It has nothing to do with T2 chips. The only thing that changed is the mechanism macOS use to detect regions. You are still in control of your China model Macbooks.

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