People feel very strongly about what constitutes a proper bagel – just look at the uproar that occurred in September over Cynthia Nixon’s bagel scandal. Apple also recently got on the wrong side of bagel lovers when they released images of their bagel emoji, which looked more like a cheap, store-bought creation than a true New York bagel. To appease their customers, Apple has already released a makeover of the bagel emoji, part of the beta version of Apple’s iOS 12.1 and not yet released to the public, adding a thick layer of cream cheese and making the baked good fluffier.
The controversy over Apple’s bagel emoji began after the Philadelphia Cream Cheese brand posted a poll on Twitter about the lack of cream cheese. Around 80 percent of the nearly 12,000 people who chose to vote were in favor of cream cheese.
We think that a #BagelEmoji without cream cheese is a #SadBagel, what do you think? #ItMustBeThePhilly
— PHILADELPHIA (@LoveMyPhilly) October 4, 2018
Philadelphia also organized a petition with the goal of reaching 30,000 signatures as a way to show Apple and the Unicode Consortium (the non-profit organization approves all emoji proposals) that “that the current dry, sad bagel emoji is unacceptable and needs to be updated to reflect the real thing—a bagel with a schmear of cream cheese.”
Though the petition has only reached around 1,200 votes, as of this afternoon, Apple took notice and replaced the icon with the updated cream cheese-stuffed version. The news spread fast over Twitter, where there were many different reactions, from questioning the importance Apple placed on bagels as compared to diversity to just laughing about all the work it took to create the updated emoji.
we have revamped the bagel emoji but still don’t have disabled human emojis, even though disabled humans make up 20% of the population. almost 60 MILLION people. #HellaInaccessible https://t.co/XHfwVPh3Mb
— ace tilton ratcliff ♿️ (@MortuaryReport) October 16, 2018
When I was choosing a major, my mom said something like “there will be jobs in your life that you can’t even IMAGINE right now.”
A decade-plus later, here we are. Someone’s job was to petition Apple to add cream cheese to the bagel emoji.
That’s a job now. https://t.co/nqQ6yTXPUC
— Haley Bohon (@haleybohon) October 16, 2018
All you bagel emoji complainers have it easy. Imagine being Italian and having to suffer through this pizza emoji atrocity for YEARS pic.twitter.com/VZhffx35xw
— Federico Viticci (@viticci) October 16, 2018
Now that we know Apple pays attention to users’ feedback, how long do you think it will take to get some Mac n’ Cheese?