“Apple released another beta of iOS 10 yesterday, and among the changes in that release was the introduction of a squirt gun emoji that replaced the hand gun emoji that had previously been available,” Jim Lynch writes for CIO. “I’m running beta four of iOS 10 so I verified the change yesterday after doing my upgrade, the handgun emoji is no longer available.”
“Before I get any further into this post, you should know that I’m a life member of the NRA, so my perspective on guns certainly does not match Apple’s,” Lynch writes. “I’ve been a life member for a long time now, and I always recommend that folks join the NRA to help protect 2nd amendment rights.”
More than one hundred new and redesigned emoji characters will be available to iPhone and iPad users this fall with iOS 10. This exciting update brings more gender options to existing characters, including new female athletes and professionals, adds beautiful redesigns of popular emoji, a new rainbow flag and more family options. Apple is working closely with the Unicode Consortium to ensure that popular emoji characters reflect the diversity of people everywhere. — Apple’s official statement about iOS 10 emoji changes
“Take very careful note of the sentence that mentions ‘popular emoji characters reflect the diversity of people everywhere,’ Lynch writes. “Apple is using what it considers to be the language of inclusion, while at the same time excluding people like me who own handguns and who use them safely and legally. So much for real diversity and inclusion on Apple’s part. Apparently diversity doesn’t include lawful gun owners in America and other parts of the world.”
“When a corporation’s power and software is used to slowly edge out free expression within its products then I think it’s time to step back and think carefully about supporting that company. Remember that getting rid of the handgun emoji was the second step after blocking the implementation of the rifle emoji, there will be more of this kind of ideological censorship coming from Apple in the future,” Lynch writes. “For me this means a freeze on buying any new Apple products for the foreseeable future.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Whether this fiasco was indeed prompted by a bug report about the handgun emoji (see the full article) or not, Apple would do better to more deeply consider their actions before acting like sanctimonious fools. Is this really a well-thought-out plan or just a knee-jerk reaction?
Perhaps a drop in product sales might be the wakeup call Apple’s brass so obviously needs to remind them that, like freedom of speech, diversity means actual diversity, not just including the types of people or entertaining thoughts or speech with which you happen to agree.
Some people have said that I shouldn’t get involved politically because probably half our customers are Republicans – maybe a little less, maybe more Dell than ours. But I do point out that there are more Democrats than Mac users so I’m going to just stay away from all that political stuff because that was just a personal thing. — Steve Jobs, August 2004
SEE ALSO:
Open Thread: Should Apple code their OSes to block video games that glorify guns and murder? – 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 CEO Steve Jobs: ‘I’m going to just stay away from all that political stuff’ – August 25, 2004
Adding a squirt gun was appropriate. Removing the real gun emoji takes more away from freedom of expression than it adds. The real test of a free society is how well we tolerate the expressions that we DISAGREE with. Like it or not the real gun emoji has expressive value that all should be aware of. I agree with Apples’ sentiment but it was completely unnecessary.
🔫 there I’ve now actually used the emoji..
I guess according to Apple I now should want to kill someone.
These are all fine cause nobody has ever been killed or harmed with these right?
🗡🚬🔪⚔💉
I agree with MDN’s take: there is an ethical issue here- who is Apple to say what is “socially acceptable” or not? I’ve been using Mac’s since 1985 and had an iPhone 1 and I will continue to buy Apple products. But it has ALWAYS disturbed me that they impose their morals on me. I’m absolutely NO fan of the NRA (I believe assault weapons should be banned), but I also believe in free speech.
I realize this is hard to believe for some people, but to the best of my knowledge, no emoji has ever killed someone. Images, like words, should be protected under the Constitution..
“Assault weapons” is a made-up term that applies to whatever best serves Democrats who are pushing gun control at any given time.
The made-up term of “assault weapons” came into play when the Democrats — who were eager to find a scapegoat for escalating crime in the early 1990s — created a “politically defined category of guns” they could then demonize and ban. They subsequently achieved an “assault weapons” ban in 1994, and it lasted until 2004. And when today’s Democrats appeal to that ban as one that should be re-instituted, they prove they understand little about it.
For starters, the 1994 did not ban “assault weapons.” Rather, it banned cosmetic features that Democrats consider part and parcel to “assault weapons.”
To put it another way, the 1994 ban did not ban AR-15s in general. Rather, it banned flash hiders, certain fore stocks and grips, collapsible and folding rear stocks, “high capacity” magazines, etc. It banned things that made the gun look like the scary guns Democrats think about when they think about an “assault weapon.” But it did nothing to change or ban the actual gun.
Were certain guns explicitly banned? Yes. But the larger scope of the ban was so cosmetically based that manufacturers could simply remove certain features, lengthen the barrel slightly, label the gun a “target rifle,” and continue selling them. For example, according to the Washington Post, while the Colt AR-15 that James Holmes used in his attack on the Aurora, Colorado movie theater would have been banned, a “Colt Match Target rifle” would not. The difference between the AR-15 and the target rifle is largely cosmetic.
Again, none of the differences in the two guns impacts basic operation, just as the presence or absence of a collapsible stock has no effect on bullet velocity.
Huge response to whether a pistol emoji should be a squirt gun! Amazing to watch how every tiny detail in American life is exploited by people trying to polarize everything to the extremes. It allows America to expound that its freedom of speech knows no bounds and that even the mentally unstable can become president by exploiting this polarization.
Yes, that is how Obama became president.
Some enterprising individual should write a “Pistol Emoji” app containing a single pistol emoji.
Seems like both Lynch and whatever MDN editor troll commented, or both bordering on being imbeciles.
talk about blowing something WAY THE FUCK out of proportion.
Again, let me repeat my comment from the yesterday’s post with few extras:
I am not an American. Okay?I live and work in Europe. But I have a message to all people too lazy to vote:
Better stop this madness now and go and choose your leader wisely or get use to more of your freedoms to be grabbed. So called “progressive leftists” not gonna stop here if you let them. They’ll never be fulfilled with the corrections done on the social landscape. They’ll always try to forcibly change every part of the civilisation and it’s very organic nature by fetishising tyranny and expanding culture wars (Soros anybody?). It’s time for you to tell your leaders where are the boarders. And maybe for some the boarders for all this madness are far far away or there’s none. And that’s fine. Because if you go and vote with the others you’ll determine for yourselves what you all really wanted.
If you are going to roll over this minor emoji change and refuse to try to connect the dots back, perhaps you should also stop using the verbal language and exchange it with the Trigglypuff’s pantomime – it’s getting more and more trendy and will segue you nicely from this reality to the anticipated one. Go ahead! Bounce!… Like all other brainwashed minions.
Tim Cook/Apple stays dangerously close to the “progressive leftist’s”/socialist’s (globalist’s) agenda, because it incentivise Apple’s shareholders best in nowadays rigged economic system. I could go as far as to say that they are probably leading it on their front. I know Tim would like to paint himself as a calm spokesman for the whole human rights movement and a fan of Dr. Martin Luther King but to me – for now – he is rather the biggest globalist shill figure in the corporate America. An absolute coward.
I mean, Tim, really… Answer yourself: how the left can be possibly wrong if it’s built of pure love and brave? How that can be that on the posh neighbourhoods everything looks like things are going only in the good directions and life is great but everywhere else, where 90% people live everything looks like one day before the end of the world? People are scared, divided and there’s not enough job. Maybe you should try to live more with them instead fly helicopter everywhere and only meet with the oh so “important” pawns? It could help humanise your attitude.
End of story! Best regards!!
This is great! Apple says to MDN…..”fuck you and go and buy an android, see if we care!”
“Then they came for the emojis, but I did not speak out
Because I am not an emoji.”
Seriously??!! This is a controversy? A gun gets turned into a squirt gun and the NRA and gun folks go full mental? Is this what we’ve resorted to? Give me a break!
Excellent commentary. Thanks for brining it to our attention. Apple fighting hate by removing emoji would be like Merriam-Webster fighting racism by deleting words from the dictionary. It makes things worse by stifling open discussion.
APPLE WANT’S TO ABOLISH THE SECOND AMENDMENT, GO INTO YOUR HOUSE AND TAKE AWAY ALL YOUR GUNS . . . AND REPLACE THEM WITH GREEN SQUIRT GUNS!!!
/s
“there will be more of this kind of ideological censorship coming from Apple in the future”
. . . or perhaps Apple realized that kids use emojis more than anyone else.
You can take away my guns away from me with you pry them away from my cold dead emoji fingers!!! 😉
I never realized that Mac Daily News was a life member of the NRA. 🙄
I hope they don’t buy Apple products. It would be nice to know that someone carrying an iPhone is not a gun nut.
As usual our hypocritical overseers at MDN decry Apple getting into politics (which of course they’re not) while at the same time continuously posting political articles (mostly with a silly right wing slant).
Hey MDN take some of your own medicine. STOP posting political articles. Stick to tech.
Aaaaaand this finally did it for me. MDN has jumped my personal shark and I say goodbye to a site that I’ve viewed daily for years. I was so so tired of the ad load, then of the political rants, then the vituperative ad hominem commentary. But now toxic MDN editorial bleatings are part of the mix as well. Farewell.
Where does it lead? An emoji set of weapons?…
Macheté, flamethrower, AK-47, uzi 9mm, Abrams tank, tomahawk cruise missile, gattling gun, grenades, landmines, throwing knives, various handguns (in different colours), RPG’s, and so on.
Add some Warning signs, razor wire and numerous well-drawn icons of soldiers, shooters, henchmen, burglars, convenience store hold-up merchants, hunters, SWAT team guys, muggers, arms salesmen, gang members, drug dealers, bank robbers, snipers, cops and terrorists (all types) — all armed — plus a series of bangs! and explosions (biggest is nuclear), and you’re well on your way to profit.
After that, the emojis of civilians in multiple states of having holes blown through them or limbs and heads blasted off, and it’s a great set for all lovers of violence and intimidation.
Woodland scenes of cute animals running, grazing and birds flying; before, during and after a high velocity bullet tears through their chest.
Scroll to the back for a huge choice of bloody corpses (all ages), some still burning, and charge $3 for it — advertised in the pages of gun nut magazines. “Cheaper than a box of bullets!”. There we are. Sorted! Everyone’s rights protected. Everyone wins.
Right?
/S