emoji - page 5

Pull my finger: Some joker made a fart app for MacBook Pro’s new Touch Bar

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Touch Bar apps might get weird.
Touch Bar apps might get weird.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s magical new MacBook Pro hasn’t even shipped yet, but that hasn’t stopped one developer from creating the first Touch Bar fart app.

iOS developer Hung Truong churned out his new app, TouchFart, just hours after Apple released a new build of Xcode needed to make apps that support the new Touch Bar. Even though he hasn’t gotten to test it in a real-world scenario, you can watch TouchFart in action in a simulator.

Everything you can do with MacBook Pro’s new Touch Bar

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macbook pro touch bar
Want to try the new MacBook Pro Touch Bar without dropping a few grand?
Photo: Apple

Apple’s new Touch Bar looks like the most exciting new feature we’ve seen on the MacBook Pro in years.

Instead of fumbling to remember shortcuts, Touch Bar puts a handful of commands at your fingertips and dynamically adjusts to whatever app you’re in.

That sounds pretty magical, but what will that actually be good for? Developers will need to add support for their apps, so it might take a few months before Touch Bar really takes off. But if you’re doubting the usefulness of having a touch screen bar at the top of your keyboard, here are the cool things you can do on the Touch Bar.

iOS 10 review: It’s the little things that matter

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iPhone
Don’t miss out on iOS 13. Ditch your old iPhone now.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple’s iOS 10 update for iPhones and iPads is the biggest software refresh the iPhone-maker has launched in years, adding a host of major and minor new features that completely change the iOS experience.

I’ve been using beta versions of iOS 10 on my iPhone 6s and iPad Pro since June. While some of the high-profile additions to Messages, Photos, Apple Music and Apple News aren’t totally mind-blowing, the smaller tweaks make all the difference. With iOS 10, using Apple’s devices is easier, faster and far more enjoyable than ever.

This is the big iOS update you’ve been waiting for, but not for all the reasons Apple thinks.

iOS 10 is now available for everyone

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photos in ios 10
Photos gets a major upgrade with iOS 10.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The long wait for iOS 10 is finally over.

Apple’s big update for iPhones and iPads is now available to the pubic after months of beta testing, bringing a host of new features that include a huge revamp of Messages, an Apple Music redesign, third-party app support with Siri and so much more.

Apple wants an astronaut emoji (among other things)

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Get ready for even more emoji.
Get ready for even more emoji.
Photo: Apple

Astronauts and pilots are set to get their own emoji characters if Apple has its way.

The iPhone-maker recently submitted a request to the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee to add five more professions (artist, astronaut, firefighter, judge, and pilot) to the Emoji 4.0 update that is set to bring support for gendered emoji, a rainbow flag, and more.

Take a look at Apple’s proposed designs:

iOS 10 adds 100+ emoji to promote gender equality

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emoji in iOS 10
iOS 10's new emoji have more gender diversity.
Photo: Apple

iPhone and iPad owners are set to get a big batch of new emoji when iOS 10 lands on devices later this fall thanks to the addition of over 100 new characters that promote gender equality.

The latest beta build of iOS 10 seeded to developers this morning brings more gender options to existing characters like the surfer, runner, weightlifter, detective, construction worker and much more.

How to swap words for emoji in iOS 10

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iOS-10-QuickType-keyboard
iOS 10's improved QuickType keyboard is big on emoji.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

We hope you like emoji, because you’re going to be seeing a whole lot more of them when iOS 10 makes its public debut this fall.

Apple is introducing a new feature for its built-in QuickType keyboard that makes it easy to swap words for relevant emoji characters as you type. Here’s how to use it.

Hillary emoji let you play the woman card for real

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Hillary emojis are ready to slide into your DMs.
Hillary emojis are ready to slide into your DMs.
Photo: Hillarymoji

The battle to win the 2016 presidential election is heading to your iPhone’s keyboard now, thanks to a new iOS app that adds a batch of Hillary Clinton emoji to devices.

Aiming to excite millennial voters, the free Hillarymoji app comes with 20 pictograms of the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate doing everything from dancing in her pantsuit to deleting emails off her BlackBerry.

Apple is taking away your rifle (emoji)

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The rifle won't be made into an emoji.
The rifle won't be made into an emoji.
Photo: Andrew Stawarz/Flickr

Getting your hands on a rifle emoji is about to get a lot harder for all smartphone owners thanks to Apple.

The Unicode Consortium proposed earlier this year to add a rifle emoji as part of the Unicode 9.0 release this year, but according to a new report, the controversial firearm won’t make the cut after Apple campaigned internally to have it removed.

5 features Apple must steal from Android N

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Google's new operating system takes its name from colors.
Android N is coming this fall.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Apple’s next-generation iPhone and iOS 10 will have to fend off tough competition from Google’s biggest Android update in years when they arrive this fall.

Android N is coming with huge improvements and big features fans, and fans couldn’t be more excited. Some of those features are so good, Apple just has to steal them. Here are five we’d love to see in future versions of iOS.

This emoji iOS trick will change the way you search

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Yes, you can use emoji on iPhone search.
Yes, you can use emoji on iPhone search.
Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac

Emoji have rapidly changed the way we conversate in the digital age and now thanks to a new feature in iOS, they’re about to change the way we search too.

iPhone and iPad users can now use emoji as search terms in the iOS spotlight feature that’s accessible on any home screen by swiping down.

The feature is actually super-useful, though it doesn’t work with all emoji. Looking for a place to have a beer with a buddy? All you have to do is tap the beer emoji icon and Spotlight will bring up suggestions for drinking holes that you can open in Apple Maps.

Here are some of the emoji you can use for search:

10 things you should know about Google’s Gboard keyboard

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gboard
Gboard is probably the best third-party keyboard on iOS.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Google now offers its very own keyboard for iOS, and it’s awesome. It’s packed full of useful features like glide typing and built-in search, and it has a clean and simple design that’s a pleasure to type on. It’s probably the best third-party keyboard on iPhone.

But there are 10 things you should know about Gboard before you get set up.

How to use Facebook’s new Reactions emojis the right way

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Wonder how Facebook users will react to this new software.
Wonder how Facebook users will react to this new software.
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

Trying to express your empathy for a friend’s grief, or your outrage at a recent political post, has been a Facebook conundrum since day one. No one wants to Like things they don’t actually, well, like. It’s just too limiting.

That’s why Mark Zuckerberg and Co. just rolled out Facebook’s new Reactions, five new emotional icons that we all get to use in place of the familiar thumbs-up Like button (which is still there, thank goodness).

The new Facebook Reactions system has rolled out to the web and your iOS devices today (via the Facebook app). Here’s how to respond to Facebook posts with a bit more color.

Face palm, bacon, water polo and 71 other emoji may be coming to iOS 10

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Some of the new emoji in Unicode 9.0.
Some of the new emoji in Unicode 9.0.
Photo: Emojipedia

iOS 10 may come with a big batch of new emoji, including pictograms for things like shrimp, croissant, owl, wrestlers, a bunch of hand gestures, a shrug emoticon and more.

The Unicode Consortium has recently accepted the updated Unicode 9 emoji set that contains as many as 74 new emoji that companies like Apple and Google will be able to add to their software keyboards. The consortium will make a final determination on which emojis to add later this year, with the release of Unicode 9.0 set for June 2016. That’s pretty good timing for Apple which is expected to unveil iOS 10 at WWDC in June, with a public launch scheduled for the fall.

Here’s the full list of new emoji:

The easy way to add emojis to everything on your Mac

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Emoji for all your textual needs.
Emoji for all your textual needs.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre / Cult of Mac

In Apple’s Messages app, you can easily add emojis with a quick click on the little happy face icon in the iMessage text field. If you use a chat app like Slack, you can do the same.

But what if you want to add an emoji to an email, a letter, or any other text field? Turns out there’s an often-overlooked menu item (with a corresponding keyboard shortcut) that lets you do just that.

Check it out.

Weirdest of 2015: This year’s most blistering insults

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Apple fanatics got up to some strange stuff in 2015.
There was plenty of trash talk to go around in 2015.
Image: Stephen Smith/Cult of Mac

Cult of Mac's Best of 2015 In addition to rounding up the best stories of the year, we’re also showcasing the weirdest of 2015, and we can’t do that without including the sickest burns people laid down over the past 12 months.

It’s always strange when companies and CEOs snip and snap at each other like annoyed children. We should expect them to be above that sort of behavior, but guess what? They totally aren’t.

Here are some of the most blistering insults of the year.

God help us, Kim Kardashian now has her own emoji

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Kim Kardashian wants to takeover your keyboard.
Kim Kardashian wants to takeover your keyboard.
Photo: Kimoji

Ever been in texting conversation and found yourself completely unable to express yourself because there’s just not an emoji of Kim Kardashian’s breasts?

It’s unfortunate that society has come to this point, but if you answered ‘yes’ to the question above, there’s finally an app for that. Kim Kardashian now has an official emoji app — called Kimoji (get it?) — that brings more than 250 emoji and sticker designs to help you convey the deepest thoughts of your soul.

So long language! An emoji is named ‘Word of the Year’

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This keyboard from EmojiWorks is a quicker way to express your feelings via emoji.
The emoji on letter "H" is your word of the year. Seriously.
Photo: EmojiWorks

Oxford Dictionaries has named its pick for Word of the Year — and it’s less a pick than a pic. That’s right: out of all the newly popular “words” to capture the “ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015,” the winning choice is 😂, a.k.a. the “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji.

Sign of the changing times, or a desperate attempt for Oxford Dictionaries to stay relevant? You decide.

How to change Twitter hearts back to stars (or any other emoji)

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The Internet is not happy with Twitter's change of heart.
The Internet is not happy with Twitter's change of heart.
Photo: Twitter

Twitter decided to take a step toward Facebook today by changing its star icon for favorites into a heart icon and calling them Likes.

The changes have not gone over well, with many Twitter fans questioning the decision while others are just down right angry that Twitter took away the best way to say, ‘I saw your tweet, but don’t want to reply to it.’

Luckily, there is a way to change the hearts back to stars when using the social network through a browser. You can even change the hearts to a beer, poop, unicorn, or any other emoji and it doesn’t require much work.

Here’s how to strike back against Twitter’s new hearts icon:

Poop now at your fingertips with new emoji keyboard

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This keyboard from EmojiWorks is a quicker way to express your feelings via emoji.
This keyboard from EmojiWorks is a quicker way to express your feelings via emoji.
Photo: EmojiWorks

There’s now a faster way to flip the middle finger or display a steaming pile of poop – along with your other favorite emoji.

EmojiWorks has introduced what is probably the first portable keyboard with built-in emoji shortcuts. Each letter key displays two or three different emoji, which can be inserted into a message by pressing a dedicated emoji key.

Cast a dark shadow with iOS 9.1’s hidden emoji

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Left Speech Bubble iOS 9.1 emoji
Well, you tell us.
"Drawing": Evan Killham

Pro Tip Cult of Mac bugYou’re probably excited about all of the fun new emoji characters that you just got in iOS 9.1, but one of the new additions won’t show up on any of your keyboards.

The “Left Speech Bubble” emoji isn’t part of the official canon yet, but Apple went ahead and added it, anyway. Here’s what it looks like and how to add it to your pictorial lexicon.