“Apple announced a number of changes to their emoji set this week, including better representation of women, single-parent families, and a pride flag,” Jeremy Burge writes for Emojipedia. “Many of these additions were met with a mixed reaction, but none has generated more feedback than this: ‘🔫 Pistol emoji has changed from a realistic-looking gun in iOS 9.3 to a bright green toy water gun in the iOS 10 beta.'”
Feedback for the change of falls into broad categories:
😂 Ridicule “this is dumb”
💅 Disinterest “who cares, what’s the point”
👹 Snark “what’s next, the poo emoji?”
💩 Frustration “Political Correctness GONE MAD”
🤔 Concern “won’t this be confusing?”
😡 Anger “how DARE Apple take away our gun emoji”
Burge writes, “The real issue here is that emoji is bigger than Apple. Or to put it more succinctly, this is dangerous:”
“If Apple goes ahead with this change in the public iOS 10 release, one person could innocently tweet a toy and have that be seen by others as a weapon,” Burge writes. “Apple: Don’t change the pistol emoji. At least not today. Hide it. Unicode does not depreciate emojis, but there is no requirement to show all approved emojis on the keyboard.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As Burge notes, iOS 10 is still in beta, so it’s not too late for Apple to correct this issue.
SEE ALSO:
In wake of London stabbing rampage, will Apple replace their knife emoji with a plastic spork? – August 4, 2016
Open Thread: Should Apple code their OSes to block video games that glorify guns and murder? – August 3, 2016
Apple jumps the shark by removing the handgun emoji; Gun owners might want to reconsider buying Apple’s products – August 3, 2016
Apple removes handgun emoji, replaces it with a squirt gun – August 1, 2016
Apple’s politics may be hurting its brand – June 29, 2016
Apple quashes rifle Emoji – June 20, 2016
