I understand the point here and agree to some extent, but on the other hand I think using a standardised set of emojis makes sense for cross-platform communication apps such as Whatsapp, as I think the meaning of some of them is reasonably subtle and those subtleties are very much influenced by the specific design - for example, the Apple "person with folded hands" shown in the article clearly represents prayer to me, whereas the original Google one looks kind of creepy with its screwed up face. I found this to be an issue when I had a windows phone - for better or for worse, emoji are used quite a lot, and I sometimes had to think back to the iOS equivalent to make sense of them, as they looked so different.

In my opinion Apple's take on emoji is both the most visually attractive (the proportions of the old Google ones are way off and the "slug" creatures quite visually unappealing) and the richest, so it's no wonder they have become the de facto standard. In fact, I'd wager emoji wouldn't have taken off anything like as well as they have if everyone saw the original Google versions, for example, as they lack the "cuteness" and charm of Apple's versions.

What might be nice is if Apple were to make them fully open source - I've wondered before what the legal status of apps like Whatsapp embedding them in their app is.

> the Apple "person with folded hands" shown in the article clearly represents prayer to me, whereas the original Google one looks kind of creepy with its screwed up face

I don't think Google's version of the character is supposed to represent prayer, but rather asking for a favor (which seems much more useful):

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PlaWxKgYl60/TSvvov-JHbI/AAAAAAAAAB...

http://stat.news.ameba.jp/news_images/20150114/10/9a/z1/j/o0...

http://cdn-ak.f.st-hatena.com/images/fotolife/r/ranmaru-24me...

yeah it's supposed to be the typical Japanese "pretty please?" pose. Extra reason why I really don't get what apple was trying to accomplish with the prayer hands.

The issue I have with Apple's emoji is that some of them (like the "praying one") just do not follow the "spec" described.

The hands totally don't match the "person with folding hands" definition of the Unicode codepoint. Might as well use wingdings...

The unified look is useful, just wish they would stick to things that match the description at the very least.

That's a fair point, didn't even occur to me!