Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

unsung.aresluna.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 95 posts

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

#51

Post by philistine »

Zak wrote: post #30
ryandrake wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hazehover is a new rising superstar. It darkens the unfocused app windows. So I guess it's a dark star ;)

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

#52

Post by basilikum »

tomashubelbauer wrote: post #31
threetonesun wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Decorative emojis in headings and lists help me skim documents faster than I'd otherwise be able to.

How?

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

#53

Post by SoftTalker »

Aerroon wrote: post #47
esafak wrote: post #15

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

They obviously make communication worse. I frequently trigger the stupid emoji keyboard by accident on my phone and every time I do I wish it wouldn't exist. It also doesn't help that we already had perfectly acceptable emoticon systems beforehand that were better than current emojis because they were customizable.

You can disable it. I did.

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

#54

Post by SoftTalker »

esafak wrote: post #15

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

I think they are overused and thus lose effectiveness. I don't really like them and don't use them myself but I'm not going to fight a battle over them.

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

#55

Post by acheron »

Aerroon wrote: post #47
esafak wrote: post #15

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

They obviously make communication worse. I frequently trigger the stupid emoji keyboard by accident on my phone and every time I do I wish it wouldn't exist. It also doesn't help that we already had perfectly acceptable emoticon systems beforehand that were better than current emojis because they were customizable.

I disabled the emoji keyboard the first time it showed up and have never had it on since.

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

#56

Post by acheron »

threetonesun wrote: post #24
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.

/s is incredibly dumb as well. “Hey look everyone, I made a joke! Aren’t I clever?”

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

#57

Post by crazygringo »

something765478 wrote: post #16
esafak wrote: post #15

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

I believe they do. When people talk in person, there is a lot of non verbal communication that give context to their words (smiles, shrugs, side glances, etc). Even when it's just people talking over the phone, the way they pronounce words carries information (it's a lot easier to tell if someone is being sarcastic if you hear their voice, for example). So, emojis are useful for providing that missing context.

I don't know why you're being downvoted, but it's exactly this.

Pre-emojis, there were so many times I misinterpreted a text, or had a text misinterpreted. Something that is obviously a joke or sarcasm or teasing with non-verbal communication, can come across as an insult without it. When somebody adds a wink emoji or similar at the end, it changes everything.

Emoji are fantastic at communicating tone and attitude alongside the text itself. They're not a 1-1 correspondence with non-verbal communication, or a perfect replacement, but they vastly improve the chances that something playful isn't misunderstood in a negative way.

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

#58

Post by badc0ffee »

lelanthran wrote: post #43
nancyminusone wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone else remember the brief time in the mid 2000s that these were called "smileys" and damn near every webpage ad wanted to install a questionable IE 6 toolbar so you could "get more smileys"? Quality kid memory for me. I also remember watching another kid click on an ad for a free ipod and then enter in his home address and other personal info.

Smileys were something else (pure acid, like this :-)). ISTR the brief time you mention calling these things emoticons.

IIRC "smileys" were what you got from fonts like Wingdings, and I believe those were short-lived. You could type :) and MS Word or Outlook, for example, would "helpfully" give you the Wingdings happy face, which would show up as a J for anyone who didn't have that font.

:-) and friends were "emoticons" for decades.

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

#59

Post by vee-kay »

bityard wrote: post #49
nancyminusone wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone else remember the brief time in the mid 2000s that these were called "smileys" and damn near every webpage ad wanted to install a questionable IE 6 toolbar so you could "get more smileys"? Quality kid memory for me. I also remember watching another kid click on an ad for a free ipod and then enter in his home address and other personal info.

The wikipedia entry for emoji is missing this entirely, but "smileys" were quite popular in various instant messaging apps (AOLIM, ICQ) and web forums. I was fairly sure they go back as far the mid or late 90's but I can't seem to find any hard evidence of that. (I was into computers at the time but didn't see the point of IM apps or forums when IRC and Usenet already existed.)

Yahoo Messenger had amazing fun animated smileys, and it was a fantastic Instant Messenger as well. Too bad Yahoo went to dogs, I was hoping Yahoo Messenger got bought out by Microsoft so that beautiful UI could be integrated as MS Office chat. Instead, Micro$oft acquired Skype, mainly for its VOIP ability, and it took years to integrate it into MS Office as MS Teams, which is a boring tool (but it is effective for video conferencing and basic chat purposes).

I miss those animated smileys.

Even WhatsApp and other popular social messaging platforms (Instagram, Signal, etc.) don't have them. Instead, we got GIFs (whose online gallery takes ages to load in WhatsApp, in recent months, at least on my phone) and animated stickers. sigh

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

#60

Post by OptionOfT »

sph wrote: post #39

Throwback to the days HN had emojis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3547056

Testing if it still works:

> I just tried this, sending from Verbs (iOS 5 supports emoji since forever), and yes, I can see the with no problem whatsoever :-)

I just tried this, sending from Verbs (iOS 5 supports emoji since forever), and yes, I can see the with no problem whatsoever :-)

Edit: completely swallowed!

Post reply on HN