In a new Beta of OS X given to developers today, Apple included one of their most anticipated features: emoji characters with six different skin tones. We heard about the new culturally diverse emojis back in November when the Unicode Consortium shared their plans for Unicode Version 8, but now we get to see the actual characters from Apple and can see how the skin modifier will work on our devices.
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The option to change skin tones seem to be universal across all of the standard emoji faces, including the Santa icon (above), the old man and woman, the police officer, and the families. The color of the emoji eyes are still either brown or blue, depending on the character, but no one can really argue that this is a huge step forward in terms of inclusivity. Other new emoji include an Apple Watch and flags for countries that were previously not represented. As of now, there is no release date for the official version of iOS 8.3 or OS X 10.10.3, but The Next Web reports that a public beta program is launching mid-March.
[via The Next Web]
