Former Apple Intern Looks Back at Designing First Apple Emoji in 2008

[NightFox]

And STILL no pirate-related emojis

Regardless of how fast I could crank one out

Stop sniggering, all those in the UK.

 

[deferredAnon]

I guess the moral of the story is: Hire more interns!

 

[Teammm]

They knew that the Eggplant emoji would be a staple.

 

[adnbek]

And we still can't search for them

Almost as useful is typing out a sentence or words and then switching to the emoji keyboard. The words in orange can be tapped to change to emojis.

 

[artfossil]

Good, now I know who to I will address hate-mail...

In all seriousness, design is hard and I'm sure these were challenging as it's a new paradigm of communication and while unicode is setting that xxxxxxx = smiley poop, bringing text to life is very hard and these are universally understood and transcend language barriers and even culture.

However, I hate emoji. I block people who use and I won't participate. I also don't really use iOS except reading email and news so I don't understand why someone would scroll through thousands of cartoons instead of just typing :thumbs up: with their keyboard.

I think emoji are a result of software keyboards being too slow and crappy over physical ones. Typing on a keyboard is far more efficient and its why it took me so long to give up a Blackberry as my getting things done device. I loathe typing on iPhones and generally switch to my mac or call someone when a text conversation goes beyond 2-3 messages. So I guess emoji is for that? I still think it's something kids do kind of like voicemail is dead but for some reason audio messages via iMessage aren't?

Anyway, cool story and awesome resume item and while I understand they faced great challenges in this, I still think emoji things are effing stupid. What's so hard about just a smiley face?

: -)

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my time for emoji!

 

[JustMartin]

Meh. And 10 years on we're still being told emojis take precedent over iOS improvements that really matter.

Who’s telling you that?

 

[Burger Thing]

MR story in 2027:

Former Apple Intern Looks Back at Developing High Sierra in Late April 2017

 

[dogslobber]

These Emoji were awesome because they were created under Steve's watch.

Very astute observation. The reason they were perfect was because Steve would have said they were $h!t and they'd have been redone until Steve stopped saying they were BS. There were only A players under Steve's watch. Now we have the current disasters that are ongoing. Are you an A player, Tim? Bring back Scott F before it's too late.

 

[subjonas]

How sad. All that attention to detail for naught because in actual use the emoji is usually only 2mm tall.

 

[scrapesleon]

Still waiting on a bit lips emoji

 

[btrach144]

All I can say is, thank god Apple put all this time and effort into this ongoing project, and did not waster their time on something pointless, like longer lasting/larger batteries.

Apple assigned a freakin intern to the project.... how much less would you want them care about emoji?

I agree that Apple is losing their touch but a graphic designer isn't going to design better batteries.

Complaining is fine but make sure to do so in a sensible manner.

 

[OlliFlamme]

Good, now I know who to I will address hate-mail
...
Ya di ya di ya
...

What's so hard about just a smiley face?

: -)

Indeed, these archaic smileys are still the best. Maybe it’s a generation thing...?
¿:-/

 

[JosephAW]

Why they don't roll out emoji updates for previous iOS versions baffles the mind. Not everyone can install iOS 7, iOS 10 or iOS 11 but are still using iMessage.

 

[YoYoMa]

This thread is why Apple's great

 

[Altis]

They were better back then.

- Not one continuous scrolling list...
- 'Recent' list doesn't change app to app, confusing what to expect there
- Not so many that the list is endless

 

[OlliFlamme]

Apple assigned a freakin intern to the project.... how much less would you want them care about emoji?

I agree that Apple is losing their touch but a graphic designer isn't going to design better batteries.

Complaining is fine but make sure to do so in a sensible manner.

Wel, to be honest, who is complaining about a point well made? That guy was just expressing his freedom of speech.
Sorry, but where do you see the need for the illogical reference of a graphic designer having to fit inthe position of a product developer to make btrach144‘s point stick?

Apple and not caring about emoji’s? Come again... that’s perhaps why it was so keen on having Federighi demo the revolutionary animoji feature during the iPhone X demo. He had done so during an irrelevantly long time, after it already had been an extensive topic during the intro?

Secondly... Steve personally scrutinised the ones which this article is about... would you reckon he didn’t care?

It was a hassle for Apple folks to get on par with the Android folks to use these idiotic things, Steve knew it was a key feature to implement in order to reach a wider public.

So, in all fairness: battery life not having revolutionised at the same rate, is indeed a relevant point made in a very sensible matter, if you’d ask me that is.

The pot and the kettle...

 

[msephton]

Raymond is Raymond Sepulveda http://www.xanthic.net/

 

[supercoolmanchu]

Very astute observation. The reason they were perfect was because Steve would have said they were $h!t and they'd have been redone until Steve stopped saying they were BS. There were only A players under Steve's watch. Now we have the current disasters that are ongoing. Are you an A player, Tim? Bring back Scott F before it's too late.

Scott Forstall is exactly where he needs to be. Which is also the same place Tim Cook needs to be.

 

[adamjackson]

¿:-/

I don't even remember that one.

 

[ErikGrim]

And we still can't search for them

Well, you can. Type the word and the corresponding emoji will be suggested.

 

[badNameErr]

It's true, they really do get interns to do the work!

 

[ErikGrim]

AH YES! WOW now that takes me back! -

lol

There was a story??

 

[Jimmy James]

All I can say is, thank god Apple put all this time and effort into this ongoing project, and did not waster their time on something pointless, like longer lasting/larger batteries.

It's an emoji friendly battery. Heaven forbid you'd want to do much else.

 

[freezelighter]

Now THAT was an iPhone with acceptable size.

All those sick and crazy phablets after iPhone 5s are simply too huge.

6,6s,7,8,X - everything is too big and slippery.

iPhone SE is the last good iPhone.

 

[zentraedi]

I think it was Apple that really caused the popularity of Emoji in the US. I got my first iPhone in 2010 and found the Emoji to be amusing. I sent a few to my friends, but they all had Android phones at the time and couldn't see them. Apple led the charge on this.

I would credit SoftBank. The iPhone wouldn't have been successful in Japan if SoftBank hadn't pushed Apple in to include these, being vital to basically all mobile texting in Japan.