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It took four years until 2011’s iOS 5 gave everyone an emoji keyboard

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Re: It took four years until 2011’s iOS 5 gave everyone an emoji keyboard

#21

Post by ryandrake »

Zak wrote: post #11
UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #3

It’s very easy for people, especially younger people, to look at this with a 2026 understanding of the ubiquity of emoji and scoff at how ludicrous Apple was being. Things were very different. Drive-by Apple decriers will attribute anything possible to Steve Jobs’ vague “desire to control”. The reality is there were things he would obsess over and plenty he would let pass him by. Emoji only made its way into Unicode…

The obsession with control I find objectionable is not their decision not to enable emoji widely until support was stable. That's an obsession with polish , not control. The commitment to polish and self-restraint to not add features until they actually work well is something I've long appreciated about Apple. The control part is blocking third-party apps to toggle the hidden setting. If you enable unsupported featur…

It's the standard Apple "We will decide what you can run on your own computer, not you" paternalism that we have come to know and expect, and that they have perfected over the decades.

Re: It took four years until 2011’s iOS 5 gave everyone an emoji keyboard

#23

Post by esafak »

egypturnash wrote: post #19
esafak wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great point, but I am skeptical that emojis adequately carry the affect of nonverbal communication. I believe you make a case for sending audio/video messages alongside the text.

How do you feel about plaintext smilies? People were doing those long before emoji existed. :) :p :D

The same way. For me the proper use of emojis is in reactions, to cut down on brief responses that cause clutter and undesirable notifications. I am less welcoming of them in the middle of a message, where they don't serve that purpose.

Re: It took four years until 2011’s iOS 5 gave everyone an emoji keyboard

#24

Post by threetonesun »

esafak wrote: post #15

Do emojis enrich communication, or debase it? Why not use words, with precise meanings? Emojis are prevarication.

Decorative emojis (the stuff AI loves to add to bullet lists) don't do much. On the other hand I'd say emojis at the start/end of a sentence are as meaningful as emoticons or /s or any other Internet shorthand for conveying intent.

Re: It took four years until 2011’s iOS 5 gave everyone an emoji keyboard

#25

Post by conductr »

Zak wrote: post #11
UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #3

It’s very easy for people, especially younger people, to look at this with a 2026 understanding of the ubiquity of emoji and scoff at how ludicrous Apple was being. Things were very different. Drive-by Apple decriers will attribute anything possible to Steve Jobs’ vague “desire to control”. The reality is there were things he would obsess over and plenty he would let pass him by. Emoji only made its way into Unicode…

The obsession with control I find objectionable is not their decision not to enable emoji widely until support was stable. That's an obsession with polish , not control. The commitment to polish and self-restraint to not add features until they actually work well is something I've long appreciated about Apple. The control part is blocking third-party apps to toggle the hidden setting. If you enable unsupported featur…

I think they were controlling the perception that third party apps could change your entire device settings. That was/still is something that iPhone users expect to be “safe”. As in, if I carelessly install an unknown app, it at least can’t do much harm and I can just delete it without having any real consequences. The existence of “hack apps” undermines that layman understanding of their device security

Re: It took four years until 2011’s iOS 5 gave everyone an emoji keyboard

#26

Post by conductr »

esafak wrote: post #15

Do emojis enrich communication, or debase it? Why not use words, with precise meanings? Emojis are prevarication.

Short text communication has a way of being read as terse, rude, or with some other unintended emotion by the recipient so I think it’s a valuable way to communicate concisely but also encode the mood of the words

And yes, many things can be communicated purely on emotion and no words, which in short form is also valuable

Re: It took four years until 2011’s iOS 5 gave everyone an emoji keyboard

#27

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

kg wrote: post #20
esafak wrote: post #15

Do emojis enrich communication, or debase it? Why not use words, with precise meanings? Emojis are prevarication.

Most words don't have especially precise meanings, context is everything. So emojis being imprecise is not a unique problem. And emojis can be especially dense with information in a way that can be pretty convenient. You can scan a 96x32 pixel block of 3 emojis to quickly gather information that would have required reading 1-2 whole sentences, potentially. Emoji are also more 'casual' in a way that can be helpful. Yo…

> Emoji are also more 'casual' in a way that can be helpful. You can tap the 'heart' emoji on a message to a colleague or friend to express your gratitude or thanks for something without having to prevaricate over exactly what language to use to avoid seeming insincere or overly affectionate.

I think this might be one of the few points that this emoji use which you mention feels almost universal to me across all ages for the most part.

It just saves time if you can heart a message without saying I agree with you.

Additionally if the emoji itself is a reaction (say how Github/Discord heart emoji can work) then this is even better at times and how most of us sometimes use it because that way the conversation doesn't steer itself because they have nothing to respond to but they still see that you appreciated them. Win Win situation.

> Most words don't have especially precise meanings, context is everything

If someone wants words to have precise meanings, English isn't the best language for it. Sanskrit/Polish is. I was taught sanskrit during school and I think that a language having too precise meaning can actually take too much time to think and this just makes conversation take too long. It can also be that Sanskrit is almost extinct in verbal form aside from religious scriptures and rituals now so its just way too hard to learn the language even though we know fluent hindi. (FWIW It had 7 tenses IIRC and single/duo/plural for a single root verb)

I am not sure about polish tho but I am speaking this because I have only heard polish be also described as a language with more precise meaning and there was a HN post about it sometime ago in the context of AI.

Re: It took four years until 2011’s iOS 5 gave everyone an emoji keyboard

#28

Post by harrall »

esafak wrote: post #15

Do emojis enrich communication, or debase it? Why not use words, with precise meanings? Emojis are prevarication.

Words don’t have precise meanings either.

“He has completed the task.”

versus

“He pulled it off.”

Their meanings are the same but their both have different subtext.

Emojis are simply additional levers for subtext. It’s like using a red hot colors versus cool colors for a poster — the text might be the same but the colors provide an additional way to signal subtext.

The more options, the better.

Re: It took four years until 2011’s iOS 5 gave everyone an emoji keyboard

#29

Post by myhf »

Nevermark wrote: post #14

> Steven was the enterprising developer who actually discovered how to give emoji to any iPhone, all the way back in 2008. I love how this person gets the credit, deservedly so, and the irony of the unsung people who did all the hard work of actually creating the support but with its potential nerfed. Perhaps a rehabilitation committee can track those people down and we can give their stories and their soulless manag…

[flagged]

Re: It took four years until 2011’s iOS 5 gave everyone an emoji keyboard

#30

Post by Zak »

ryandrake wrote: post #21
Zak wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obsession with control I find objectionable is not their decision not to enable emoji widely until support was stable. That's an obsession with polish , not control. The commitment to polish and self-restraint to not add features until they actually work well is something I've long appreciated about Apple. The control part is blocking third-party apps to toggle the hidden setting. If you enable unsupported featur…

It's the standard Apple "We will decide what you can run on your own computer, not you" paternalism that we have come to know and expect, and that they have perfected over the decades.

That wasn't the standard on the Mac, and looks like it still isn't. That platform has a strong tradition of utility apps that add to or modify core OS functions, and when I looked up "essential mac utilities" today, I found recent listicles with items like Alt Tab (an app switcher), Magnet (window management shortcuts), and TinkerTool (change hidden system settings - exactly like emoji toggles for iPhone).

The iPhone was a big departure from that.

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