Apple changed Lake Ontario to “Lake America” in its maps app following personal contact from Donald Trump, according to a senior member of his administration.Trump, who signed an executive order “renaming” the Great Lake during his ongoing trade war with Canada, reportedly reached out to Apple about changing the name. Canadian Apple Maps users will continue seeing Lake Ontario, while both names will be shown to international users. The changes to Apple maps mirror changes that Google made to its maps app following Trump’s executive order. US interior secretary Doug Burgum said the US president had contacted Apple to ask it to make the change.“I know that the president reached out to Apple directly,” Burgum told Fox News.Google complied with Trump’s request shortly after the executive order. Apple changed the name on Tuesday after a change to the body of ​water’s name in the US Geographic Names Information System.The name changes illustrate how US tech companies are being pulled ⁠into geopolitical disputes as the Trump administration ​pressures them to comply with executive orders that ​allies and international bodies have rejected.MapQuest, on the other hand, refused to rename the lake in its system, prompting a surge in downloads earlier this weekThe mapping company, which was openly dismissive of the president’s executive order, leapfrogged rivals Google Maps and Apple Maps to take the No 1 spot on Apple’s US App Store on Tuesday. It held the No 2 slot on Wednesday.Google Maps now labels Lake Ontario as Lake America for US users The 30-year-old company that bills itself as “the OG” (original) of the internet mapping era, has struggled to compete in recent years with Google and Apple.TechCrunch said the app’s downloads had “soared” in the US over recent days, while in Canada MapQuest was also the second-most downloaded app overall.It comes as polls show Trump’s efforts at renaming the lake found favour with only 14 per cent of Americans, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday. And that survey found only slightly more, 20 per cent, approved of higher tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Canadian goods, with 57 per cent opposed.MapQuest’s general manager, Doug Berger, said in a statement that usage of its app was running at about 50 times its usual rate. As a bit of fun, he said, the company was also offering subscribers the chance to generate their own name for the lake.That was courtesy of a tool it first introduced after Trump rebranded the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” among US federal government agencies in 2025 – to which Google also acquiesced in the American market.Berger said in a statement: “We took the same approach we did with the Gulf of Mexico: be part of the conversation, and give people an app that keeps the names they’re familiar with.“Hundreds of thousands of people signalled to us this weekend that we got it right, by downloading our app.”MapQuest has maintained its defiance, and some might say mockery, of Trump’s Lake Ontario order since an original “We’re not changing it” post on social media on August 27th.The following day, in an all-capital letter post similar in style and language to those favoured by the president, it wrote: “Our maps are big and beautiful. People come up to us and say we’ll get them places. And we do!”It also responded to a poster who expressed surprise that MapQuest still existed and was not “in the same grave” as RadioShack, the once prominent US technology and electronics company that went through two bankruptcies and shuttered its retail locations a decade ago.“Understandable but the other OG, @RadioShackUSA, is still here too,” MapQuest replied, noting its continued existence as an ecommerce operation. – Guardian