“Apple said it is working to bring more racial diversity to its popular set of cartoon icons known as emoji,” Salvador Rodriguez reports for The Los Angeles Times.
“The Cupertino, Calif., tech company hopes to update its emoji icons so they are inclusive of more people, Apple said in a response to an email sent from MTV that was sent to Chief Executive Tim Cook,” Rodriguez reports. “‘There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard,’ said Katie Cotton, Apple’s vice president of worldwide corporate communications, according to MTV.”
“Because Unicode is in the hands of a consortium and not solely in Apple’s control, the company can’t simply issue an update,” Rodriguez reports. “Instead, the Unicode Consortium must first accept any changes to the Unicode standard.”
Read more in the full article here.
Apple user since before the Mac and a Mac user since 1985. I have never used the emoji character set and doubt I will in the future.
A non-issue.
@ Darwin Evolved. A non-issue to you perhaps, but that doesn’t mean others don’t use them. I use them frequently in texts to my kids and while the lack of racial diversity has never occurred or been an issue to me, I’d certainly like a bigger range of icons than the current set.
A bigger range of colors?
Whoa. I believe you are not thinking about the range of implications and interpretation.
Make them all purple, green or blue and be done with it. Everyone is onboard.
If colored to favor Democrat voting blocs no justice for all will be served.
But under the Thin Tim liberal activist movement these days, not a surprise and level playing field inclusion for all is in jeopardy.
U.S. imperialism to the rescue!
Why don’t wankers like you piss off GoeB? Why do you think everyone here is from the US or even remotely interested in your politics? Why don’t you go to any of the myriad politics sites and annoy everyone there with your hilarious views on provincial politics? Here, you and all those like you are just TROLLS, spewing forth political bile and spoiling for trouble and with nothing useful to add to the on-topic conversation.
Long shot, you sound like a sanctimonious prick, and I’m getting really pissed off with the continued US-centric politics, and the bullshit that goes with it.
And I don’t live in a third-world country, I live in the country that first colonised the US, and gave you the language that it, and a huge portion of the world, communicates in.
If you’re not interested, why did you read and then reply?
BTW mate, Apple and MDN are American companies. Sorry that offends you.
Regarding the content of my post whether political or otherwise, when you offer an alternative opinion, only then a real discussion is warranted.
No VALUE in personal attack rants.
@ Goeb. No, not a third world country, but one with a higher standard of living than yours. But why is that relevant? You sound like just another xenophobic nob. MDN is based in the US, true, but in case you haven’t noticed the internet is global in nature. Political comments and attacks on a non politics website are, by any definition of the word, TROLLING. Oh, I think you’ll find that Apple is a multinational and perhaps global business that happens to have it’s HQ in the US. This is not an attack on the US. I generally love it’s citizens and the USA itself and travel there often. But many of us here are really, truly, sick of the snide US political comments that seem to creep into nearly every thread on MDN.
Three things you are exceptional at:
1) Misinterpretation and putting words in my mouth.
2) Railing against snide while being snide.
3) Country insecurity.
Stay out of the soccer stands or you may …
I never thought a Yellow happy face implies race. I still do not.
It’s rather obvious you don’t have a clue about Emoji. There is more to it than smiley faces.
Emoji is Japanese slang for ASCII characters or pictographs. So if you tell me you’ve never had use for ASCII pictographs but have been an Apple user since before the Mac, you’re full of shit.
I don;t put happy faces on my posts- do you?
THAT is what is being discussed.
Steve Jobs used a smiley face in an email to Sergey Brin IIRC and I use wink-wink quite a bit. 😛
They’re a part of our culture on the Net and I don’t see the harm.
Bet if you pulled that bug out of your ass he’d be wearing a smiley face!
or a shit eating grin?
very clever
Guess Walmart will be changing the color of it’s smile face next.
All the irritating emo-joe things I get from my equally irritating sister are Goldie/ORANGISH…who the heck can get offended? …maybe an oompah loompah… GEEZ, don’t those politically correct people have something REAL to focus on…???
Then why did you click on this story?
Because it shows an incredible waste of resources on something of minimal value.
It is like the people who refuse to use the term history and they think it implies HIS-Story. They actually use the term Herstory.
Then why did you click on this story?
Because it shows an incredible waste of resources on something of minimal value.
Good answer Darwin, you couldn’t resist contributing to the waste.
You realize you just picked up a follower/stalker who goes by the name Heir to the Throne? I think he’s in love with you too.
Waste of what resources, exactly?
Please give concise details of what resource is wasted by tapping on a character in part of the character set of an alphabet.
Perhaps you consider it a waste of resources to use caps as well as lowercase, or to use punctuation?
You’re just as full of it as you usually are.
What you seem to be ignoring, deliberately or not I don’t know, but text on a screen carries no emotional content, it’s very easy to offend by appearing to be sarcastic, when wry humour was intended; emoji allow words to be interpreted more clearly.
Even a dimwit like you should be able to understand it’s use in day-to-day communication.
So your use, or lack thereof, defines what is and is not an issue. Such hubris as to be disgusting. Evolved my ass.
If one is older than maybe 12, I think this is not an issue.
…so this is the “great new product in the pipeline.”
At last.
In all those years you’ve never used “characters or pictographs” like ✁ ♥︎ ☞ ?
Emoji didn’t even exist outside of Japan until recently, so you wouldn’t have been using them, even before the Mac or as a user since 1985.
Make them all purple. Colorblind is the way to go eliminating the politically correct nonsense (Democrat Code) that has plagued Americans for far too may years.
Are you trying to say that all Republicans are grumpy fat old white guys? You stereotype too much.
Colorblind thinking is a stereotype?
… many years.
What a bunch of hypocrites! If I had my way, I would make Apple, Microsoft, Google, and anyone else back to Europe. I don’t care how good their products are, they don’t belong on this continent!
I suppose you refer to the continent of North America. Since one of its countries annexed Hawaii and several other islands not remotely considered continental (including the Phillipines, until recently), is your suggestion tantamount to saying ‘give the land back to the Indians’? … ‘Indians’ being the old code word for natives of any land colonized by extracontinental imperialists.
Unless your real name is something like Flies with Crows or Running Wolf, you don’t belong on this continent either, you petty minded, shrivel hearted git.
That was, I hope obviously, for “Heir”.
you sure are mean-spirited.
When preparing to eat crow, it is important not to leave it out too long in the sun otherwise you will have to eat flies with crow.
Yep. All the rest are intruders except negros who were shipped against their own will. 😤
Well I’m glad they got THIS issue looked at!
Next they can tackle the sex of the emoji, the sexual persuasion, it’s religion, hair color, political leaning, and oh, goodness, can’t forget to make them reflect the IQ of the user.
Here is a rendition they can use-
O
Then I hope they tackle those racist stick-people on back windows of vehicles…..
My fav stick people window sticker shows two parents, a daughter on a stripper pole and a son in the gutter with a needle in his arm. I think they are all white, the racist pigs.
Yesterday I saw one of those family stickers, and the father had his head ripped off. Impending divorce meeebee?
I can only imagine the graphic for transgender.
More Political Correctness bullshit. Political Correctness is killing this country.
Dial 1 for English. Dial 2 to be disconnected until you learn English.
What’s equally disturbing is the prevalence of these maddening, poorly-designed telephone answering systems that force one to perform unwanted feats of logic-tree navigation, only to arrive at an outsourced support consultant in Bangalore with an unfamiliar accent.
you called The White House?
It’s already there lol 😊🌚
One of those two black men needs to be a midget in bondage.
So if I am white, and use a black emoji, does that mean that I hate blacks or love them?
Oh, that’s a priority item. Uhhh huhhhh.
Good on Apple. Shame on these commenters. Obviously mostly white.
So says the racist.
Name calling is an extremely effective debating tactic. You win.
And so are facts. Your comment proves that you are racist.
Haha whatever. You seem to think criticizing inclusiveness is the correct way. Heaven forbid our communication tools actually reflect humanity.
Only a racist would judge emoji icons by their skin color and rather than the quality of their character
OK. Just make them all black then, if it doesn’t matter.
lol
Let’s start over. My position is that adding racially diverse emoji is a good thing for Apple to be involved with.
Yours is that I’m racist because I inferred that the grumbling against this action is likely by white people who feel overly victimized when people of color are represented.
Does “g” stand for gook?
Best comment here today.
Just what is inclusiveness the correct way?
Like many pie-in-the-sky vague ideals and empty platitudes — no details?
Guess we have to approve it before we find what’s in it … 🙂
Every notice that minorities are far more racists than whites?
I’m a minority, and I’m no racist.
I’ll be the judge of that.
G, spot on….
(Except I thought you used to have to use the Japanese keyboard to unlock them. Who knew they were racist whites!)
I see what you did there …
When will they make an emoji for us Asexuals?
Never; you’re a dying breed.
Why not just make them flat and grey like everything else, Ive?
Jony should have no problem with that. His graphic design skills are that of a first grade student exposed to art class for the first time.
Sorry, Jony. Stick to hardware design.
Is this one of the fabulous new products we have been promised the first part of this year? After all, it is almost April.
You should judge emoji icons by the content of character and not their skin color.
Big thumbs up!
👲👳💂
Calm down people! Emoji are from Japan! You can’t blame “white” America for them…
Now that’s funny!
Colorblind people. Learn it and use it.
I hope Apple is a bit more careful than was Theo Van Gogh when they get to the icons that reflect the Muslim identity like abuse of women, for instance …that’s a good one …and blind leading the blind ..one of my favs.
So many shameful comments.
‘The unspeakable wells up in each of us, ardently wishing the right of expression, and contrives to circumvent whatever rules of conduct were laid down by civilised men.’
Would you rather our comment be shameless?
Shameful or Shameless? How much shame should we have?
These comments are worthy of shame; I could care less whether the commenters sense shame or not.
To be clear, I couldn’t* care less.
If you are not a black homosexual working-class woman, you’re an oppressor, pig! You deserve to die!
*smh*
I’m amazed by the comments here.
Some of you need to chill and maybe reflect on why you’re so worked up about this.
Apple, who just passed the 500 million iPhone mark, ships millions of iOS devices all around the world. Like it or not, an increasing number of the customers don’t look like this 👸.
This isn’t just an Apple thing. This is Unicode and affects almost all modern phones (and other devices) all over the world and their billions of users.
While Apple may (if this report is correct) be taking the lead in extending the emoji character set, it’s not like as Tim Cook has the lead engineers from all projects negotiating with the Unicode Consortium. Apple has a few people working for the company now, and can do multiple things at the same time.
So you don’t use emoji? Well, you’re not alone. Many people don’t, and for those of you who don’t, expanding the character set won’t have any impact on you. However some of you may benefit from things that aren’t just silly faces or smiling piles of poo, but the possibility of actual useful new characters.
Regardless, for those people around the world who will use those new characters, Apple’s adoption of an expanded emoji character set will make iOS (and OS X) that much more attractive.
This has nothing to do with “white guilt”, “reverse racism” or any other such BS.
‘The unspeakable wells up in each of us, ardently wishing the right of expression, and contrives to circumvent whatever rules of conduct were laid down by civilised men.’
…rules? We don’t need no steenking rules. – Alfonso Bedoya. 1948
Only ever seen yellow emojis. So what the heck is the issue?
When will the racist bastards add black chickens, black pigs, and black cattle?
THE ALIEN IS GRAY!!! Racist!!!! 🙂