You are correct. The graphics for this year’s WWDC have been toned down considerably. Last year’s graphics were 100% cartoon characters.
Because it will get their attention. And the rest of us will look at the ad mo matter how they tailor it.
It’s a matter of getting the most bang for their (advertising) buck.
I would agree. Apple almost certainly has a graphic artists team. If they can take some time to draw the new emoji as they’re added to the Unicode standard, well, that’s part of what they’re paid for. The act of adding the graphics, once drawn, to the system font(s) can’t require a lot of engineering effort these days.
1 Like
I most certainly miss Susan Kare’s Dogcow, Smiley Faced Mac, the original pull down menu as well as seeing her City fonts and other icons on almost all of the documents printed from the original Mac. And I’m glad her trash basket is still in use, but fortunately it’s been many years since her crash bomb was necessary. Kare was certainly one of Steve Jobs’ best hires, and they put together an extraordinarily great design team. They made sure that Apple was always the most easy to learn and use OS, and they totally upended the entire computer industry.
1 Like
speaking of “frown emoji”, here’s an ugly downside of 16.4.
i’m in japan and trying to learn the language so that contracts &c aren’t so scary. one of my drills is to enter a reading for a word and try to find the corresponding kanji character. note that for any particular reading, there may be 20-100 characters that you get to choose from.
so for example, here’s looking for a character that’s read “sho” しょ:
wait a minute: what are all those ugly emoji characters doing there? it didn’t do that in 16.3 and earlier.
as others have written in this thread, where have all the adults gone at ? this emoji rubbish is for children and morons. i’m fine with it existing but it should be optional. that it’s so in my face is deeply offensive.
complained to @applesupport. they suggested turning off the emoji keyboard. d’uh! turned that off many releases before and – bless their pointy heads – hadn’t been automagically reënabled. their second suggestion was send product feedback. only the feedback page still hasn’t 16.4 listed as the version you’re complaining about.
i’m so sick of apple and their feature creep and their inability to fix long-standing annoyances. biggest bugger is i just gave them another $3k for a new computer. because what’s my choice? the competition (what competition?) is even worse …
I was very annoyed to find that the default format in the Camera app on my iPhone 13 appears to have been switched to “High Efficiency” from “Most Compatible” after the iOS 16.4 update. I’m not 100% certain it was the update itself, the act of editing a photo on the iPhone, or maybe something else that did it. I only noticed the change because the last few photos I sent through the iOS Messages app weren’t displaying in Messages on an older Mac.
Something has changed in Quick Look. When I Quick Look an animated GIF file, it plays once, then stops instead of cycling. After this, it gives me a spinning gray waiting icon on any graphic file I try to Quick Look. If I restart the Finder, it works again until I try to Quick Look a GIF. My work flow is all about Quick Look!
Viewing an animated GIF in gallery view does the same thing. Which is even more annoying somehow. A finder bug! Unless my new MacBook Air is special!
And here’s what VoiceOver in Weather maps means—I was wondering.
1 Like
And this may be of interest to some:
Battery Capacity Reporting on Apple Watch Series 4, Series 5, and Series 6 (44mm)
Apple Watch Series 4 and Series 5 will recalibrate and then estimate maximum battery capacity more accurately after updating to watchOS 9.0. Apple Watch Series 6 (44mm) will perform this recalibration after updating to watchOS 9.4.
I installed Ventura 13.4 beta last night and it looks like Apple took care of the problem. Aerial works on both monitors now.
1 Like
Ah, great news. I’m traveling this week but will update when I get home. My main concern was that this was an “only me” problem 
My phone just got the 16.4 update. FWIW, the bug causing the Weather app and widget to not present any data seems to have been fixed.
1 Like
I’m still on 16.3.1, and neither the widget nor app were displaying data for a few days, but now it’s back. I think the Weather app problem was server side and nothing to do with iOS version, and it’s just a coincidence that it came back around the time you upgraded to 16.4.
I’m afraid it’s the exact opposite here. After the 16.4 update I for the first time saw app and widget not present updated data. It’s very intermittent though. At times it updates just fine, others it doesn’t and no amount of restart/reboot will change it. It appears unrelated to cellular vs. wifi or specific network or anything else I could discern.
So my guess is what we are seeing is not related to the update per se, but rather server side issues. And when it comes to Weather.app there were more of those already before, as we learned.
1 Like
The Weather problems this week are definitely server-side. Apple’s System Status page shows they have been having issues:
I’ve seen those status issues. But this problem has been going on for weeks now. And it started (at least for me) with the prior iOS update (16.3.1).
For years I have been using XLD to change audio formats. Since 13.3 it stopped working.
Looks like this may have been intentional.
https://www.mothersruin.com/software/SuspiciousPackage/faq.html#finder-open-with
The criticisms of emojis are rooted in stereotypes and remind me of the old Unix guys that complained GUIs were toys designed for stupid people who couldn’t use a real computer. Lots of types of people use emojis for lots of different reasons. As for why Apple lead with them in the release notes: they were the only user facing new feature. Other things affect people’s use and experience, but are more tweaks behind the scenes.
1 Like
If teens are a secondary market, why does the iCloud website also feature stupid teen cartoon characters?
1 Like
Because Apple’s ad targets are usually NOT laser focused on specific age markets. As I mentioned, even if an ad for iPhone, Air Pods, etc. features a teen, chances are good that many Gen X and baby boomer parents and grandparents will be paying for it.
There’s the size of the markets:
And this:
And Apple’s products don’t compete with Metamusil, etc.