It's not too late for Apple to change this, and in my opinion, they should. IOS 10 is still in beta, with the final release over a month away. For Gun Fans: If you really want this emoji, you can copy and paste it - the same way you would enter the ♗ Bishop Unicode character, or any other character not shown on the default iOS keyboard.For Cross-Platform Compatibility: If someone sends you a gun emoji, you still see what they intended.For Backward Compatibility: Old messages with this emoji still show it.For Apple: Regular users don't see the pistol on the iOS emoji keyboard any more.Hiding the gun emoji is a win-win situation which ticks many boxes for all of those with varied interests: The pistol emoji could be removed from the iOS emoji keyboard without causing any cross platform compatibility issues. Unicode does not depreciate emojis, but there is no requirement to show all approved emojis on the keyboard. A Better SolutionĪpple: Don't change the pistol emoji. There is also the matter of backward-compatibility, which is a lesser issue in terms of danger, but equally confusing for end users. Even if they all decided to follow-suit and change to a water or toy gun (which could happen, if Apple sticks with this), the change would take a considerable amount of time.īy comparison, if you tell people to bring a snack using the 🍪 cookie emoji, and Galaxy users bring you saltine crackers, that’s a shame, but nothing more. 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.Īll other vendors display this emoji as a real gun. Or to put it more succinctly, this is dangerous: The real issue here is that emoji is bigger than Apple. Just because a lot of people complain about something, it doesn’t mean they are right. I know as well as you do that the internet can be a snarky place.Ĭhanges about anything draw negative criticism, cheap pot shots, and in the case of harassment, much worse. 😡 Anger “how DARE Apple take away our gun emoji”.💩 Frustration “Political Correctness GONE MAD”.💅 Disinterest “who cares, what’s the point”.Feedbackįeedback for the change of falls into broad categories: Īnd this isn’t even in the hands of most people yet: it's is only a beta. In the history of running Emojipedia, I have never seen an emoji change so poorly received. 🔫 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. 🔫 Pistol changed to a toy gun emoji in iOS 10 beta 4 /SpA96aVG9s- Emojipedia August 2, 2016 Many of these additions were met with a mixed reaction, but none has generated more feedback than this: Apple announced a number of changes to their emoji set this week, including better representation of women, single-parent families, and a pride flag.

Apple emoji 1.0