[dTal]

The practical upshot of such a policy would be everyone shipping their own fonts instead of using Apple's system fonts, just to be safe. This would be nothing but trouble - bloated app sizes, more ram pressure, uneven look and feel, and diminished influence on Unicode.

A now-deleted tweet by a different developer facing the same issue stated that Apple apparently clarified by saying that using emoji as "media" was forbidden, but "content" was okay. Whatever that means.

Between this and the gun/water pistol thing, it really seems like Apple thinks of Unicode as their personal playground, and simply do not think through the network effects of their policies at all.

[egypturnash]

IIRC the general thrust of Apple's problems with the app in the now-deleted tweet was "hey you are filling a quarter of the screen with a giant emoji, they are only to be used as little images inline with text, they are not your own personal clip-art library".

[stock_toaster]

> using emoji as "media" was forbidden, but "content" was okay. Whatever that means

From what I read other places, it meant that if it was non-variable and shipped with the app (UI, app data, etc) then it was "media" and not ok. If it was user supplied (like a text message), externally loaded (web page), etc... then it was "content" and ok.

[TheCoelacanth]

So if a users presses a button that says "Do X":

Then the app sends a request to a server to do X and based on the response looks up the text that shipped with the app saying "X completed successfully" which it displays using the system font, that is fine.

Then the app sends a request to a server to do X and the server sends back the text "X completed successfully <smiley-face-character>" and the app displays it using the system font, that is fine.

Then the app sends a request to a server to do X and based on the response looks up the text that shipped with the app saying "X completed successfully <smiley-face-character>" which it displays using the system font, that is against the rules.

That seems incredibly arbitrary and nonsensical if that is an accurate description of the rule.

[wlesieutre]

The minor use that occurred to me is Slack's "You're all up to date :tada:" when you pull up at the bottom of a channel to load new messages.

Another link was posted suggesting that Apple's reversed this stance. If not for that, would Apple have been making Slack get rid of the party popper because the user didn't type it? It sounds like yes.

[trevyn]

>Apple thinks of Unicode as their personal playground

Apple has thought of Earth as their personal playground for a long time; arrogance runs deep in their company culture. Steve could get away with it because he was arrogant and right most of the time. Today, ancient & obsolete arrogance is Apple’s biggest flaw, and is causing them to drift more and more out of touch with reality.

[gregknicholson]

Apple seems to avoid interoperability wherever they think they can get away with it.

Even in really weird ways, like: to install any software on your Apple phone you had to use Apple's music player. (Is that right? I never owned one, and it sounds daft, but plausible for Apple.)

Text and video messaging was low-hanging fruit, thanks to XMPP etc not taking off. With that network effect in place, it's a short leap towards a subtly-incompatible text format, so buying Apple's stuff becomes the path of slightly less resistance.

I don't know whether this is an aggressive strategy; or whether they care only about their customers' satisfaction and not at all about interoperability.

[earenndil]

> to install any software on your Apple phone you had to use Apple's music player

Uh...no? Not sure where you got that from.

[innagadadavida]

You sound pretty arrogant yourself, is it generational?