Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. There is some new Emoji characters
coming out. But why did Apple spend time in creating new emoji instead of adding
features or fixing bugs? Let's take a look. MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great
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So there is some new emoji characters coming out that should be in iOS 17.4 and iPad OS
and macOS at about the same time. So once you have updated to those operating systems
you can look for these six new characters as well as a few other ones. For instance,
there are going to be characters in wheelchairs facing both left and right in the new set. The
new ones here include Shaking Head both vertically and horizontally,
a Phoenix emoji, a Lime emoji, a brown mushroom, and also a Broken Chain emoji.
Now what do those new characters mean? Well, emoji character definitions are open
to interpretation. So some of them have some pretty obvious things. Like a broken chain,
that could mean, say, breaking up with somebody or quitting a job or it could be a misconnection,
something like that. But what you actually use it for depends on the context and also it depends on
your region and the type of industry or groups you're involved in. Or maybe even
just your very small group of friends. Emojis can mean very different things to different
people. For instance the Phoenix emoji, well a phoenix metaphorically is something rising
from the ashes but it could simply look like your high school mascot. You can think of
some uses for these emojis now but maybe two or three years from now people will come up
with completely different things that these can mean that gain some sort of popular traction.
Now, of course, whenever new emoji characters come out people ask, well why did Apple come
out with these. First, it is important to realize that Apple doesn't make emoji. Emoji characters
are decided upon by a group called the Unicode Consortium. It's a California based non-profit
organization that includes a whole board with a variety of people that will vote on decisions,
like which new emoji characters to add. But it doesn't just oversee emoji characters.
It will oversees all characters. So it is a way to make sure that when you type, say,
a specific currency symbol on your iPhone and then send a message with that symbol to somebody on an
android phone that they get the same currency symbol there and there is no confusion about
what you mean. So all different characters that you type in all different languages on computers,
that all goes through the Unicode Consortium. Now this group is actually made up of member
companies and individuals. You're going to recognize most of the names here,
especially for the voting members. It includes companies like Apple, Adobe,
Amazon, Goggle, and Microsoft. These are all the companies that make hardware and
software that use the different characters. So the idea here is instead of one company
deciding on its own which characters to add, a whole group of companies has this organization
where they can all decide together. So you have the same characters available on one device from
one company as you do on another device from another company. If you're using a specific
app and that app has emoji characters in it the same emoji characters there, when sent to
somebody using another device in another piece of software, will look the same on their end.
Now the Unicode Consortium doesn't actually sit around and think of ideas for new emoji
characters. Not at all. Instead they take submissions. So the general public submits
characters and the Unicode Consortium considers them and votes on them. Undoubtedly when they
get a lot of proposals for the same character that's when they know that they should probably
take an action and add that character. You can submit your own proposal. There's a whole system
at the site for submitting a new character idea. You can also go and look at all of the different
submissions they've gotten in the past and what's happen to them. So if you look through this list
you'll see which ones they decided not to add, but also which ones they did and when they were added.
So a fun fact! Emoji actually comes from two Japanese words meaning picture character. Now
it is kind of similar to the English word emotion. But there is really no relation except of course
that the similarity between emoji and emotion probably has helped the name catch on. So why
does there need to be an organization like the Unicode Consortium to decide which new
characters are there? Well, the idea is to coordinate between all the companies so that
Apple doesn't have different emoji characters then say android or Microsoft Windows. Basically all
these companies can decide together which new characters to add and kind of coordinate the
timing. The new releases of software don't always come out on the same day but usually
within a few months new characters are added across all of the different devices and apps.
Now why does Apple even need to comply with this? Can't Apple just go off and
create its own characters and do its own thing? Well, the idea is that if you are
part of this consortium that you agree to go with everybody else so that it will all
be coordinated. So say if you were to type an emoji character, like money flying away,
on an iPhone and then sent it to somebody on an android phone they would actually get a character
that is the same or very close to it. Otherwise it would just be chaos. We would be sending
characters back and forth to our friends and they wouldn't be seeing the characters that we typed.
Now even though the Unicode Consortium decides which new emoji characters should be there
and comes up with a description for them it doesn't actually draw them. The drawings for
each character depend on the company. So Apple draws its own version of each emoji and Goggle
has its own for android and Samsung also has its own for its android phones and other apps
and other companies draw their own versions. So there are multiple different versions of
different characters. Now the idea is they are supposed to convey the same meaning. So they
should be pretty close. But sometimes there are tiny little differences that don't really matter
in the meeting but kind of are neat little easter egg inside the emoji. For instance,
if you look at the Book emoji on Apple devices and you zoom into look at the words there you
could just make out that it is advertising copy for old Apple Mac ads. In addition on
the Coin you could see the words The Crazy Ones but of course that is only on the Apple version
of the Coin. If you look at the Technologist emoji you'll see that, of course, they're using an Apple
MacBook there. But if you looked on another set, like say the Microsoft set, you'll see
that it is actually a Windows laptop they are using. They are real people that draw these
emojis. As a matter of fact here's a good article written by one of the people that drew a lot of
the original emoji set for Apple. Search for it if you want to know more about how they were created.
So every time a new emoji characters are added there are always people that complain that Apple
is spending time on new emoji characters but not time fixing the bugs that has been bothering them
for years or adding a new feature that they really want. Of course it is important to
realize that Apple is a big company. The people that take the time to draw the new emoji are not
the same people that say software engineers working on a particular app. So the fact that
somebody took a few hours to draw the new Phoenix emoji doesn't mean that some software engineer
at the other side of the company had less time or money to spend fixing a bug or adding a new
feature. It's the same for any big company or large supply chain. The farmer that grows the
wheat that goes into your breakfast cereal isn't the same person that designs the box
for the cereal. Apple is a big company and it could do lots of different things all at once.
Also when new emojis come out there are a lot of people that proclaim that emoji
aren't really important to them and they never use them. That's fine. But remember the Mac,
iPhone, and iPad these are devices that are created for everybody,
not just one person or one type of person. So what's important to one person isn't important
to somebody else. Somebody may never use emoji and other people may use it all the time. Some
people may use certain features of software and others may never use them. Certainly if
emoji characters aren't important to you and something you don't want to use, you never
need to use them. Just like you never need to use any feature of any app or part of your Mac,
iPhone, or iPad. These devices do lots of things. You just use them for what you need them for.
So I hope you found this useful or at least informative. Thanks for watching.