Apple Taking Down Emoji-Enabling Apps (or Making them Remove the Feature)
Lots (and lots) of you have become smitten with Emoji, the cute, extra smiley-faces that come to us from Japan and work quite well on the iPhone. That is to say, they work quite well if you’ve hacked them on or downloaded one of the several apps that turns them on on-the-sly.
Sadly, that latter option is no longer going to be available. Ars Technica is reporting that Apple has issued a global take-down notice on any app that enables Emoji on non-Japanese iPhones. More specifically, they’ve told developers with apps that enable it to immediately remove that functionality:
Existing applications that offer Emoji enabling beyond their base functionality have been ordered to remove Emoji support. Fung told us that Apple has required an immediate update to his Typing Genius program with the Emoji support removed. This same order appears to have gone out to all developers whose App Store marketing text mentions an Emoji feature.
The good news is that if you’ve already installed one of these apps or otherwise enabled Emoji, the little guys should still work just fine for you — that is, until Apple decided to use their best-of-class software updating system for the iPhone to push out a new ROM that, one assumes, will break it.
February 27th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
That’s sad. Not sure what the deal is with licensing Emoji in Japan. Any commenters have the scoop? Did the iPhone only license the… what? image rights? for use in Japan?
February 27th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Why can’t Apple just go with the flow?? Lighten up!!
February 27th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Get their auto plants out of here too.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
What up Apple? Why do you have to piss on everyone’s parade?
Let the masses have their tiny little pictures.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
WTF? Why should they care? Let us have our fun!
February 27th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Emoji is fairly universal in Japan, but the majority of US phones can’t display them at all. I would guess that played a part in not allowing the irritating little buggers stateside. Try sending a SMS message with Emoji to a non-iPhone, and you’ll see what I mean.
FWIW, I hate the things. The fact that they aren’t in use in the US is great with me. Means I don’t have to see them in texts/tweets that come across my phone.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
The ARS article suggest the reason might be licensing (although this seems doubtful) or (more likely) because turning on these things requires writing to a sandbox that developers were not supposed to write to.
If the COULD write to it, one would suspect most developers would assume that constituted permission. After all, that’s what permissions in the Unix environment are all about.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
I believe being unable to send emoji to non iPhones is the reason that emoji isn’t included in the software. But if we access it via a 3rd party app, then that should be fine. Require the developers to state in large letters that emoji is only visible on other iPhones or something.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Screw you Apple!.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Another thing is if a AT&T iPhone sends a icon to another iPhone but unlocked on T-Mobile and vice versa – the message never goes through. So these only work on the same network as well. But stopping apps from activating them… ehh… I’m sure Apple has their reasons but I say just let it be.
February 27th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
…. Hey Macarena!!!!
February 27th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
maybe at some point in the future north american carriers will want to allow these sorts of images in SMSes, but make it so you have to buy them as “character packs” in the same way they try to get you to buy ringtones.
if that’s the case, carriers could be behind this restriction, attempting to create a market for virtual goods.
February 27th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Would this include frostyplace which itself is a *** app. Well done apple yet again you manage to piss off your paying customers
February 27th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Luckily so far my IRC chat app ‘Rooms’ has been overlooked by Apple! … I mean … yey g smile
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/ba5mjp
February 28th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
when I send them to my girlfriends Blackjack II (AT&t) they only show up as boxes. I don’t think they are very compatible with a lot of things. Still, my jailbroken iPhone will still be able to use them!
February 28th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Yeah, those little boxes add so much meaning to the comments here. What a tragedy.
February 28th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
I love Apple but damn they pick at every little thing!
March 21st, 2009 at 4:42 am
These little buggers are plain annoying frankly… They pop up in irc and palringo alot thing is your paying for a seperate keyboard (which ok why isn’t apple attacking the Hebrew or Greek keyboard apps? it’s the same programing.) and only ppl that have that keyboard enabled can view them I say some developers should just develop a app post it on cydia and all jailbroken iPods and iphone’s can view’em or maybe they have Lol I’ll be jailbreaking my iPod touch so I’ll check my point is boo hoo and power to a jailbroken iPhone or iPod
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Soooo…..I still see them being sold on the app store and its already April 2, 2009……
Are they coming down or not—sounds like this blog is not accurate IMHO….