In addition to the healthy news that Apple plans on adding renewable energy to their resume, the iPhone company is also planning on diversifying its emojis by including other skin colors.
First spotted on the Twitter timeline of iMore editor-in-chief, Rene Ritchie, the word has been confirmed by Apple today. The change will occur in the newer versions of Apple's iOS and OS X operating systems. To be able to access this beautiful array of skin colors, users must select an emoji, then hold and tap your preferred appearance.
The inclusion of this racially diverse emoji upgrade comes after the Unicode Consortium, an industry standards group, first proposed the idea back in Nov. 2014. In fact, according to 9to5Mac, the extended emoji support was available in the last preview build. Now, the latest version will be made available to any users with access to the pre-launch software.
Tim Cook has been pushing for more diversity and greener efforts since March of last year, when MTV Act emailed the Apple CEO. Upon receiving that correspondence, the Unicode Consortium partnered with Apple and published a draft technical report regarding using modifiers to introduce other emoji skin tones, and was co-edited by Google's Mark Davis and Apple's Peter Edberg.
Included alongside the various skin color options for emojis will be new country flags that add to the limited original set. Clocking in at 32 to the total group, new countries will be introduced that go beyond Europe, Asia, and North America. These choices will be available in the Travel & Places section of the emoji keyboard on iOS or special character palettes in OS X.
The new range of colorful emojis should be included in the next public release of iOS and OS X, but an exact date still eludes us.
