I think it goes beyond Apple's market focus, like you say, obviously Apple has to cater to the needs of consumers cos its a business first, tech innovator second. It's obvious that a lot of its decisions, as a company, will be made based on what will maximise their profits. That bit I can understand, and I'm sure many here who ridicule emojis can understand too, like Apple's decision to cut discounts and benefits and essentially empty their stock during the back to school promotion, it's not cool but I get it it's a business.
The problem is though, many people here became fans of Apple because of its dedication to great products that generate a great experience. Which many I think feel, Apple does less of nowadays. I'm neither a dev nor a graphic artist, a lot of my work involves basic content creation and general marketing, while data science is a small hobby I'm starting to develop. I personally have great interest in technology and want to see companies push their potential, that obviously isn't limited to Apple, I expect Samsung and Microsoft to keep innovating as well.
You mentioned Steve Jobs, and I agree that he's not exactly a character for all, it's a straight split, either you like him or you don't. The general portrayal in media or literature is that he was a visionary tyrant and whether that's true or not it did translate into product development with Apple gaining its 'walled garden' reputation. Many of the fans were happy to pay the extra costs and stay in that walled garden because Apple created a positive experience for many and it continued to innovate to improve that. Sometimes it meant listening to consumers, and sometimes it meant going its own way.
I think people are pissed at the emoji focus because that's just not Apple. When everyone else was competing with who can build bigger phones, Apple decided that 4 inches are a perfect size for people to use their phones in, I think Jobs would have signed off on the 4.5 inch screen but the general idea is that 5.5 inch is just too big. (before people start bashing me saying big phones are great and that Apple now makes them too, just consider if phones really need to be that big to perform their function as phones) Apple stood its ground to push innovation in what it believed was the right way.
Now... Present day Apple focused 30 minutes of a WWDC keynote discussing updates to a messaging app (15 of which were dedicated to emojis) And like you said it was because it has to cater to the consumer needs. But that's the whole problem, it was selling and not innovating. It used to be that you could blindly trust Apple to make an amazing product but now it needs to sell to you.
Also, Apple speaks of its products as tools for creatives, a tool that can unlock human potential and add more onto it. I personally didn't see too much focus on that in their OS developments, instead I saw 'me too' features to cater to their most profitable markets. I was a bit unfair a few posts back when I said it was acting like a pre-teen kid who just discovered messaging and emojis (I said that because a lot of its features have been on other platforms for ages, heck even paying contacts has been around in WeChat, Kakao, Paym, etc. Apple isn't innovating!!)
The only way the focus on emojis makes sense is that it's an attempt to further take over in the Asian market where emojis and stickers are massive and the messaging market is difficult to penetrate due to the aforementioned apps. So for them to turn it into a fully fledged open platform makes perfect business sense, they have to adapt to generate more profit. Which again is the root problem that Apple no longer charges people for innovation but instead it tries to milkout more from loyal customers.
TL
R - Issue isn't necessarily the emojis but that Apple doesn't innovate, instead of thinking of different ways to innovate it puts out 'me too' products, features, services with the sole intention of maximising profit and not improving user experience.
