iPhone users, fear not: Apple is listening to your demands, assuming your demands involve a peach emoji that looks a bit like a bum. If you have other demands, those will have to wait. We’re dealing with the bum issue here.
The company had previously caused dismay among users due to a small change implemented in the first beta of iOS 10.2, the next update to its operating system for iPhones and iPads. As part of a general push by Apple to replace classic emoji with new, “realistic” versions, the update contained a new version of the peach emoji. Replacing the angular, contoured peach of the past was a new, rounder fruit, with a less prominent cleft running down its middle.
Unfortunately, the number of people who send the peach emoji when they mean “peach” is apparently much smaller than the number of people who send the peach emoji when they mean “bum”. Because, you see, the peach emoji used to look like a bum.
The change doesn’t seem to have been a deliberate attempt to prevent rudeness among emoji. For one thing, the aubergine emoji remains curiously phallic both before and after the redraw (that was considered so naughty that Instagram started straight-up filtering searches for that emoji from their results entirely, in an effort to combat porn on the platform). For another, the redraw affected almost every emoji on Apple’s platform, with a general push away from the cartoony, exaggerated style that originated years ago to a more photorealistic art style, particularly for objects and animals.
That redraw led to generalised objection, with Buzzfeed’s Charlie Warzel arguing that “the ambiguity that helped turn emoji into its own means of expression is being quickly eroded”. But the peach’s redraw was particularly criticised, for removing the most popular use of one of the most popular emoji.
Apple has apparently heard the complaints; the latest version of the beta features a new version of the Peach emoji. Still redrawn, it now looks like a photorealistic version of the old emoji. Which, in a way, is progress.