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Apple planning to make Emoji characters more diverse and other news from March 25, 2014
If you take a look at iOS's built-in Emjoi set, you may have noticed that most of the people depicted are Caucasian. Curious as to why this was the case, MTV's Act blog sent an email to Tim Cook asking if Apple had any plans to diversify its Emoji icon lineup.
A few days later, Apple VP of worldwide corporate communications Katie Cotton responded.
Tim forwarded your email to me. We agree with you. Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms. 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.
This of course wouldn't mark the first time Apple took efforts to make its Emoji set more inclusive. With iOS 6, Apple introduced Emojis featuring same-sex couples.
Lastly, note that Apple is a full member of The Unicode Consortium, along with Adobe, IBM, Google, Microsoft and others.
via AppleInsider
Other news from Tuesday afternoon includes:
The Wall Street Journal has posted its interview with one of the original iPhone engineers, Greg Christie. The interview, which is behind a pay wall, discusses the development of the phone and Steve Jobs' expectations for it.
The iTunes Movie Trailers app has been updated, and it allows you to add a movie to a favorites list. This will alert you when the move debuts in theaters or is available for sale in the iTunes Store. The release also integrates Rotten Tomatoes reviews and sharing links via AirDrop.
9to5Mac noticed a couple more Apple hires, including Bob Kupbens as the head of Online Retail.
BlackBerry has filed a lawsuit to prevent one of its executives from leaving after he agrees to become Vice President of Core OS for Apple.
