Apple Replaces The Pistol Emoji With A Water Gun (cnn.com)

Apple has a announced a number of new emoji changes on Monday, but the most controversial new change is that the pistol emoji will be replaced with a green water gun emoji in the company's upcoming iOS 10 operating system: The water gun swap is not Apple's first foray into cartoon gun control. Earlier this year the governing body in charge of emojis nixed a proposed rifle emoji. It was one of a number of possible new additions, but Unicode Consortium members Apple and Microsoft argued against the Olympics-inspired gun, according to Buzzfeed. Last year, an organization called New Yorkers Against Gun Violence started a campaign to get Apple to replace its version of the pistol emoji. It launched a site, disarmtheiphone.com, and sent an open letter to remove the firearm emoji "as a symbolic gesture to limit gun accessibility." As it stands, Microsoft is the only major software company to use a toy gun emoji instead of a pistol emoji in Windows -- Google, Samsung, Facebook and Twitter all use realistic pistol emojis. Apple's iOS 10 will be released in fall, but you can download the iOS 10 public beta to be one of the first to wield the toy gun emoji.

Comments

Wingdings, webdings, etc.

[vossman77]

Maybe I am old, but did people fight about the cartoons depicted in wingdings. Because as far as I am interested, it is a stupid font on my computer that has no use to me.

Re:Change history Commrade? Da or Nyet?

[CODiNE]

Emoji are a system defined font basically. Apple, Google and Microsoft among others do not define the code numbers and meanings, but they do create the images and set a style for the appearance on their systems.

This means everyone you text that does not have iOS 10 still sees a pistol.

It means some foolish Apple user is going to send a water gun emoji to someone maybe saying "Let's take the kids to the park" and some non-Apple user is going to call the cops.

I can't wait to see how this communication breaking move has a real world effect.
(Hopefully nobody gets shot or swatted)

Re:Guns are a LEGAL PRODUCT

[DaHat]

And the first person who sends a cute "I'm going to shoot you with my (water-gun emojii) tomorrow!" gets arrested for making a threat because the receiver doesn't have an iOS device will get to sue Apple for creating an incompatible standard which lead to legal issues.