Today is the 10th Anniversary of Emoji on iPhone

[Tozovac]

I’d hardly say emoji do something text cannot. Maybe for someone new to the language. English writers got by without them for thousands of years afterall.

On the other hand, cavemen got by with emojis before text/language....

A well-timed single emoji text message absolutely allows for expressing certain communications with nuances way better than any text-based message ever could...especially to your significant other at times. Picture is worth a thousand words, etc... Same for giving someone a "certain look" at times...

You should try it sometime. Cone on in, the water's fine.

 

[ghostface147]

And I only use like five of them.

 

[Jaytee89]

The first thing I do when setting up a new device is disable the emoji keyboard. I no longer have to see them and get a bigger easier to hit “.?123” button. Win-win.

I never even really used emoticons back in the 00’s. Not really sure how emoji are taken so seriously with international standards and stuff, it’s hilarous to me..

That’s why I prefer the keyboard on the X and beyond.

 

[19callum93]

Like 3D Touch.

I LOVE 3D Touch!

 

[purplehaze0]

And what a life enhancing addition it has been:

On November 21, 2008, Apple released iPhone OS 2.2 to users in Japan, introducing an emoji keyboard and emoji characters for the first time ever on an iPhone. At the time, the latest iPhone to be released was the iPhone 3G, which launched in June 2008 with iPhone OS 2.

The emoji keyboard in 2008 (left) vs 2018 (right), via Jeremy Burge/Emojipedia​

Emojipedia has provided an in-depth look today at the first iPhone emojis, explaining that despite Apple's decision to restrict the emoji keyboard to Japan in iPhone OS 2.2, some apps unlocked the keyboard for users outside of Japan. This was the first time that third-party apps were even available on iPhone, since iPhone OS 2.2 also introduced the App Store.

The launch within iPhone OS 2.2 predated emoji support in the Unicode Standard, which now makes the characters universally interchangeable between devices and operating systems.
Emojis then gained traction in iOS 4 and Mac OS X Lion, but these were still not widely supported across regions. Not until iOS 5 in 2011 did Apple introduce the emoji keyboard setting that allowed anyone around the world to access the characters by tapping the Globe icon on the iOS keyboard. In 2012, Apple introduced 376 new emojis with iOS 6 and switched to Unicode-compatible code points for the emojis.

iPhone OS 2.2 emojis from 2008​

One of the latest updates on the emoji timeline came in 2015, when Apple introduced new emojis for the first time in three years with iOS 8.3. This was the year that Apple also enabled the emoji keyboard to all iOS users by default, whereas before each user had to go into the Settings app, find the keyboard settings, and manually add the emoji keyboard.

In total, the number of emojis has increased from 471 in 2008 to 2,776 in 2018, thanks to the introduction of swappable genders and skin tones. Head over to Emojipedia for more details about the emoji anniversary, and to check out a long list of changes that some of the emojis have had over the years.

Article Link: Today is the 10th Anniversary of Emoji on iPhone

 

[jezbd1997]

Meh, 10 years later and this is my home Internet connection:

I leave my house and drive to work and sometimes I see 3G. I live out int he woods now though...I just thought we'd have nationwide 3G by 2018 but we're still really far behind.



"friend" is a loose term. We were AIM/iChat buddies back in 2001 and friends on Spymac. We stayed in touch until around 2011 when she stopped returning my texts or emails. I don't really blame her for that and we had a good run as far as time-wasting AIM buddies go. The thing is, when people become famous, everyone wants something from them and their social capacity is still limited to that of what a human can take as far as interactions go. She needed nothing from me and I wanted nothing from her (as far as business deals go) so why spend time with someone who can't do anything for her when she has millions of people in business who can throw money at her. Nothing wrong with that but the time we spent texting could be better spent with someone like MKB and he actually brings her revenue and an audience. we had lunch a few times, I introduced her to people at Macworld, Twit and Justin.TV (I told Michael and Justin to reach out to her and offer her a live-streaming setup back when I was doing it). I have nothing against her at all, she really is a nerd and a geek and it hurts me when I see comments about her being a bimbo idiot. She's really a great person and comes from simple roots and just loves Apple and the Mac...but I haven't spoken to her in 8 years so not much to say about her now.

Wow! I used to watch her a lot on YT and still do from time to time, just find that pretty cool!!

 

[Brandhouse]

And we've got too many of the damned things.

 

[Tozovac]

Dang. I almost forgot how ugly this icons were back then

Speak for yourself. At least some icons were breathtaking to look at. These were works of art in my opinion, compared to today’s which look like any talented fifth grader could create.

 

[MacBH928]

As some one who have been on the internet for a very long time... these are one of the worst smilies I have ever seen. Also not sure why they keep adding to them stuff no one ever uses-a black female firefighter , a handball player, a VHS tape... who uses this stuff? just adds clutter. There are 8 emojis for the moon with every phase.

 

[fairuz]

They were (and still are) nice to have, the original set that is. But then they added tons of useless junk.

 

[Solomani]

Remember the old days when users who weren’t in Japan had to hack their phones to get Emoji and it made you the coolest person in high school?

No. I don't remember those.

But I remember the days when people made cool ASCII text designs.

 

[Pakaku]

I liked using them for flair here and there, like in front of an iCal group name, but almost never in an actual conversation. In general they always felt really lifeless and bland, for little icons meant to represent emotion.

I guess I've just been spoiled by hanging out on art websites with dedicated emoticon galleries, which were all designed by pixel artists, and had far more personality (and variety) than an icon set defined by a unicode standard.

 

[Aston441]

FrostyPlace!


This post reminded me to dig up this SMS convo I had with a friend on January 23rd of 2009:

I was quite literally blown away receiving these. ...also damn the iPhone 3GS had a TINY screen!

August 2008 Home Screen:

Wow that's beautiful. I'm so sick of flat interface.

 

[Mike MA]

Would my life be the same with only having to chose from 471 Emojis like in 2008? Yes.

 

[Tozovac]

Would my life be the same with only having to chose from 471 Emojis like in 2008? Yes.

Would my life be better if iOS were still non-flat and still rather intuitive? Yes, a bit.

 

[macduke]

The Western world may think they are leaders of the planet, but they are so far behind compared to some of the older cultures. The US is only now just catching up with widespread chip-and-pin bank cards, which is based on SmartCard technology used widely 20 years ago in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card​

"The first mass use of the cards was as a telephone card for payment in French payphones, starting in 1983."​

The Mac itself didn't even launch until 1984. Puts some perspective on things. European and Eastern countries are way ahead of the US technologically.

We’re far from leaders of the world, especially post-2016, but to say we aren’t leaders technologically is just comical. Sure our banking system is outdated, but that’s just one system.

So you’re saying that Silicon Valley hasn’t had a significant impact on technology around the world? Because that would be a very weird thing to say given that everyone is running either iOS or Android. We have so many app developers here and startups creating new services that blow up into international phenomenon. Not to even mention macOS and Windows.

We also developed the early internet, Bell Labs developed the first cellular technology, and Motorola developed the first handheld mobile phone. There are dozens of other companies like Qualcomm, Intel, IBM, AMD, Nvidia and others who have developed nearly all the chips that people use to communicate, process data and display computer graphics, among other things. We’ve made more than enough contributions to the world to have fundamentally altered the path of technology and be considered a leader in that regard.

When it comes to specific implementations of new standards, it has always been difficult because we are very spread out across a larger country. This is especially true for implementing new wireless standards. I get that it’s a fun thing to crap all over the U.S. now because of what happened in 2016, and I get it, but it’s still pretty disingenuous to ignore all that we have done technologically.