Apple’s event earlier this week was all about "courage."
"The reason to move on: courage," company marketing chief Phil Schiller said, describing Apple’s decision to abandon the universal headphone jack. "The courage to move on and do something new that betters all of us."
But while the new iPhone may be removing a port, it’s evidently adding a new, er, tool.
That’s the implication of the phone’s tagline featured in posters in Hong Kong. In the Chinese dialect of Cantonese "This is 7" translates loosely to "This is penis."
Alternate translations include "Penis, is here" and "Exactly is penis."
As Quartz points out, the term “tsat” isn’t exactly offensive, but it is nonetheless an embarrassing mishap for a multibillion dollar company.
"It is often used to describe a hilarious person or thing, or mock someone gently," Zheping Huang writes for Quartz. "Let’s say a friend slipped in public, or got a goofy haircut: you can say to him in Cantonese 'You are so seven,' without hurting his feelings too much."
Residents in Hong Kong have been quick to pounce on Apple’s gaffe.
"Without a 3.5mm earbud jack, this is exactly penis," one commenter said on Facebook.
The worst part for Apple is that there is virtually no way around the problem. The 7 is the logical choice, numerically, so unless it wants to skip ahead to 8 for its Chinese markets, the company is forced to sell "penis."
How did the Fast and Furious franchise get around this issue?
