This makes a ton of sense. Good article. This is directly analogous to API deprecation issues.
Apple should probably also thoroughly cleanse the iTunes Store for movies showing guns, lest some unsuspecting child has his purity irrevocably tainted by the image of a firearm. Such stimulation might lead him to commit homicide, such is the simple relation between the two. Sigh.
Edit: sarcasm guys, geeeez
Also, what if the Unicode Consortium later adds an emoji for “WATER PISTOL”? How should it be distinguished from the “PISTOL” emoji? Or should they be identical?
Interestingly, it's a giant middle finger not just to gun nuts, but to millions of people on both sides of debates about gun control, the militarization of law enforcement, etc. (Not to mention a kinda creepy form of infantilization.)
Everyone is only angry about this change because it was a normal pistol first and changed to a water pistol later. What if it was the inverse? Then we'd have people complaining the other way. My point is that people expect the emoji to represent what they've been taught it to represent, but in actuality the IME is the one who chooses how exactly it should look. Just look at the saltine cookie vs the chocolate chip cookie.
As for your last point it's quite unlikely that they would add that because it's too redundant to the pistol emoji. Though for facial expressions, the consortium gives specific recommendations on how to differentiate them and the IME would have to consider those.
Have a look at http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F300.pdf to see how much guidance they actually give on the looks of each. For most they list synonyms for searching and related emoji. For some they go more in depth on the look such as for U+1F4DE Telephone Receiver.
But I hadnt realized the potential danger in this change until this post!
Note that there are already problems with emoji being different across platforms. Here is a short article from the GroupLens people at the University of Minnesota: http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-mi...
I'm not a huge fan of Apple's general "safe" content approach either despite being an Apple user, but to me this is a tiny and insignificant political statement relative to all the issues they have with the app store/iTunes content and Beats 1 censorship.
No. Monkeying with the language and symbols we use for self-expression is defensible only if you think of 1984 as a progressive manifesto.
You say that as if it's a counter-argument, but it's really further proof that changing it is bad. Yes, it is confusing to change emojis that used to be one thing to be another thing, so it shouldn't be done, regardless of direction. Opposing all such changes is entirely consistent. If Apple wants a water pistol emoji they should add a new one, not replace an existing emoji that means something else.
Well that's good, because that's not what he was asking.
He was asking if this WERE done in text rather than pictures, would the outcry be any different?
① http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F300.pdf#14
② http://www.beretta.com/en/m9/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beretta_M9
It's that people might use a toy emoji which others interpret differently.
These two messages would be interpreted very differently:
> I'm going to get you back. :toy_gun:
> I'm going to get you back. :real_gun:
If a hospital has a rule against taking guns on premises, nobody thinks that would apply to a toy gun. A toy gun is a different semantic object.
Secondly, you're entirely missing the point of my comparison. I have never used the real gun emoji, but I might certainly use a toy gun in fun. The problem is that the composer might be trying to send a fun message, but it would be received negatively.
To be clear, I really don't care either way about the existence of a gun emoji. If Apple wants to remove it from the keyboard, that's fine and if they want to keep it that's also fine by me. My concern is with silently introducing a non-compatible change: it's analogous to silently making a dramatic change to the side effects of an API method without changing the name or announcing the change.
Why are you so defensive of this move? What advantage is served by switching out the emoji instead of simply removing it form the keyword?
Do you think this emoji exists on the Apple keyboard without ever being used?
ftfw
Your right though, we should let Apple control and dictate how language is used (since emoticons are now a part of modern day language) since they obviously know best. Btw, you can't legally bring an automatic weapon to a public place. Also nice to know you literally can't speak to just the topic at hand without bringing completely irrelevant topics into the conversation just to spew your political biases, which it seems is what Apple is trying to do, maybe you are just two peas in a pod.
If this thread was a recipe I'd say it needs Less 2nd amendment discussion and lots more Unicode technical discussion. :-/
Is there a class of people that you're both (a) comfortable enough joking about shooting with toy guns, yet also (b) slightly nervous about them coming after you with a real gun?
Your own source seems to exemplify why a toy gun doesn't fit. It specifies "pistol" or alternatively a handgun or revolver.
If someone wrote "the man walked in holding a pistol/revolver/handgun in his right hand" you would justifiably be surprised if the writer later explained that it was a bright green toy gun. They're different things.
Imagine if an IME decided to substitute the GLOWING STAR emoji with SUN WITH FACE. They would not be following the guidelines as the sun and stars are semantically separate concepts, even if technically the sun is a star.
Maybe you played a prank on your boyfriend. It's entirely possible that he would get you back by shooting a water gun at you. But it's also possible that he might get really mad about it and threaten you.
http://emojipedia.org/microsoft/windows-10/pistol/
Additionally, your pointing out that the example glyph looks like a beretta only has any kind of weight if you can also point to guidance that specifies to what level it should be followed.
(Source: https://twitter.com/rjonesy/status/761223785076797442)
> The unicode code chart¹ actually says “PISTOL = handgun, > revolver”, and the reference glyph (with a larger version > on page 4) is pretty clearly a Beretta M9.²
> ① http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F300.pdf#14
> ② http://www.beretta.com/en/m9/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beretta_M9
This is Apple breaking from standards to enforce a political agenda, and while we may disagree this is still Apple "changing" your speech, albeit not stopping or controlling it.
Weapons aren't the only thing that can be used as a tool of rage, as we witnessed in Neice France just recently when a packing truck was responsible for more deaths than many acts of gun violence put together. Hiding guns and their representations from the public wont stop criminal elements from abusing them, what we need is laws that punish those who use or brandish guns outside of self defense in a very severe manner. As in your threaten someone or brandish a weapon during the act of a crime and you go to jail for life, case closed. Gun violence would cease overnight and we could still respect the rights granted by the constitution.
Besides, the argument "no av program can catch ALL viruses, so it is pointless to use any av program at all" doesn't carry particularly well, regardless of how you reword it.
I.e., Windows used to show a laser/toy gun, but they changed this almost a week ago in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update: http://blog.emojipedia.org/diverse-emoji-families-come-to-wi...
A Microsoft spokesperson said “Our intent with every glyph is to align with the global Unicode standard, and the previous design did not map to industry designs or our customers' expectations of the emoji definition.” (https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/04/microsoft-new-real-gun-e...)
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12240849 and marked it off-topic.
Also, I would not call one single vendor “in great company”; before Apple, Microsoft was the only vendor showing anything else than a normal modern handgun (except Android, which in 4.4 had what seems to be an old blunderbuss pistol: http://emojipedia.org/google/android-4.4/pistol/ but Android changed it back to a revolver in Android 5.0).
