"Apple has, and will, fold to government pressure faster than a lawn chair."
As a publicly-traded, trillion dollar company, where profits are at stake, this would seem to make sense.
What does not seem to make sense is why anyone would believe Apple might ignore its own financial interests and those of its shareholders and deliberately sacrifice a major opportunity^1 in order to resist government pressure based on some political issue. Why would anyone hold such an assumption. There is nothing to support it^2 and it does not seem to make any sense.
1. That includes the opportunity for Chinese customers to purchase the Apple Watch, albeit with a disproportional size representation of some geographical aspect in the Maps application
2. NB. If resisting government pressure resulted in an increase or no change in profits then that is a different situation. In that case, resisting, or even appearing to resist governmental pressure, would seem to make sense.
To put it another way, no one should be surprised by decisions like this one, whereas some of us should be surprised if we ever learn that a publicly-traded company with the market cap of Apple deliberately sacrificed an opportunity like selling to the Chinese market^3 because of a political issue. It is doubtful we would ever learn about such a decision, for various reasons.
3. Or using Chinese manufacturing facilities
"But the Maps app had become a priority for Apple..."
Apple acts in its own interests. It seems strange that anyone would believe that it acts in someone else's. Unless it increases profits, that would not make any sense.
Generally, large companies do not protect citizens from abuses of government. It is supposed to the the other way around. Governments are supposed to protect citizens from abuses of large corporations.