It's not all doom and gloom with Apple's announcement, however; the firm is also reaffirming a commitment to diversity. Amongst the new emoji are a rainbow pride flag and a single-parent family, while female and minority versions of many of the sports players and other professions (such as construction workers, private investigators, and police officers) will also make appearances. In a statement, it said:
Apple is working closely with the Unicode Consortium to ensure that popular emoji characters reflect the diversity of people everywhere.
Emoji are usually approved and implemented by the Unicode Consortium without any fuss, but gun depictions have become increasingly unwelcome on certain platforms. Apple and Microsoft successfully lobbied earlier this year to have a proposed rifle emoji removed from a new round of universal emoji released in late June. Microsoft's pistol emoji is also a toy gun, but the icon remains lethal-looking on other platforms including Google's Android.
Writer - Liam McClelland | @Liamicy