By Jason Snell

January 14, 2016 8:34 AM PT

Emoji report: Slight changes in iOS 9.3

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

This news from Six Colors Emoji Correspondent¹ Jeremy Burge: the iOS 9.3 and OS X 10.11.4 developer previews have some minor changes on the emoji front. (The most important of fronts.)

Reports Jeremy:

1. The Sleuth or Spy Emoji now supports emoji modifiers, which let you choose a skin color for the cartoon Sherlock. This was predicted in a proposal from last year.

2. In a blow to the diversity of jockeys, the Horse Racing Emoji no longer supports emoji modifiers. This is the first time an emoji has been stripped of modifier support on iOS / OS X.

I wrote late last year about how much I enjoy emoji and how Apple seems to really be embracing the form. The pace of additions and tweaks to the Unicode emoji standard is slowing, but not stopping. And Apple is clearly committed to have the best emoji platform on the planet.

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