In a time of national and international strife, it’s good to know people can still fight about the little things, too. In this case, it’s a bagel. Not one you can eat or cover with cream cheese, lox, onions, and capers. No, it’s the new bagel emoji—more specifically, the one drawn by Apple that will appear in the 12.1 update to its iPhone and iPad operating system.
Apple’s bagel’s too smooth, they’re saying. It looks like it was made by—and worse, sliced by—a machine, people complain. This puts the company on one side of the great schism between freshly made bagels—which should be eaten without toasting, and which may be frozen for later enjoyment—and mass-produced bagels extruded by heartless machinery, and which immediately go into sub-zero conditions.
Apple's new bagel emoji pairs best with individual cream cheese packets from a professional conference buffet. Pic.twitter.com/hf6da7XJmr
— Sophie Vershbow (@svershbow) October 3, 2018
There’s room for both kinds, as the massive sales of freezer bagels show. But this mishegoss leaves Apple open to a lot of tsorres. Translation for the gentiles: Apple’s nonsense opens it to troubles, at least of the humorous kind.
This frozen supermarket bagel emoji is not respectful of my heritage https://t.co/467PCng2hN
— Amanda Katz (@katzish) October 3, 2018
https://twitter.com/GaviGeller/status/1048294157037576192
And, of course, brands get into the act, like Kraft’s Philadelphia cream cheese.
Hey @Apple and @Unicode,
Your new bagel emoji definitely needs an upgrade. Don’t worry, we’ve fixed it for you. You’re welcome. #WheresThePhilly #ItMustBeThePhilly pic.twitter.com/1hiMEywH2P— Philadelphia Cream Cheese (@phillycreamchs) October 4, 2018
As did H&H Bagels in New York.
Sorry, @Apple – The beauty of a NY bagel is their delicious imperfections… and schemer, of course. 😉 What do you think? #HHBagels #BagelEmoji #Apple pic.twitter.com/pU7pd3hBSp
— H&H Bagels (@HHBagels) October 4, 2018
Some attribute the problem to the difference between coasts.
Apple’s upcoming bagel emoji is SAD. The rift between west coast and east coast grows ever larger. Pic.twitter.com/kPkBn73lHg
— 👨🏼💻☕️ (@Mrphillipawood) October 3, 2018
But let’s roll things back a moment. Emoji largely get adopted by the Unicode Consortium, a trade group that mostly handles how the characters and symbols (“glyphs”) of languages, scientific notation, and other fields get expressed and name so that one letter or Chinese character appears identically on every device and in every operating system.
Groups petition to add emoji, creating proposals for things like dumplings, a woman wearing a hijab-style headscarf, lobsters—and bagels.
If approved by the consortium, each operating system maker and some social networks and other platforms—like Twitter, Facebook, and Slack—create a graphical design that matches the style of their existing set.
In Apple’s case, the semi-serious online furore is over how un-bagel-like its depiction of the round bread is.
People who adore the handmade nature of a bagel, even at a chain shop which produces them by the hundreds of millions, like a bagel that shows a human was involved.
But cutting it open with a serrated bread knife is the key. The irregular, slightly torn faces present more surface area than machine-sliced perfection, allowing better adhesion of oleic-based condiments.
That apple bagel emoji is nuts. Everyone knows real bagels look like this: pic.twitter.com/MJlveCZHuw
— john "as b/4?" Fink 🐀 (@adr) October 4, 2018
But those who prefer or tolerate one kind of bagel or the other largely agree on one thing: Apple’s bagel! So dry. Where’s the cream cheese?
