No Emoji For Your Thoughts

After a variety of teases since the Windows 11 announcement, on July 15th, Microsoft announced that Windows — and all of its products, for that matter — was about to get a major emoji redesign.

And in my opinion; these look just gorgeous.

Aah, the innocent times…

As the Windows 11 previews started to roll out, the old Windows 10 version 1607 emoji design persisted. The Windows 11 release came near and the realization came: “here we go again, this isn’t going to make the cut, is it?”.

And so it happened. Windows 11 launched with the old Windows 10 emoji set, updated to support Emoji 12.1 and 13.0. And you know what? Fire, if they need more time to polish it up. Sure, why not. Features get delayed, it happens. We’ll have to wait for another year to see them out in the wild (read: outside the Windows Insider Program), but hey. Whatcha gonna do?

Meanwhile, Microsoft continued to refer to these 3D-esque emojis as the new emoji set for Windows 11. On multiple occasions. In all of its communication, the 3D-rendered icons were used.

There was however also a flat version of the set around. Right from the start. The only place you’d find those flat emojis however was the “Inside Windows 11” page on the Windows Insider Program website. All the way at the bottom, a group of 5 (or 6, I can’t remember, and the page has been reworked since) flat emojis in that style.

When I saw them for the first time soon after the Windows 11 announcement, I thought “ho nice, new emojis” and nothing much else. Then a few weeks later Microsoft announced an entirely different set, the set you see here above.

Given everything, this should have been yet another red flag in Windows’ gigantic red flag-park.

But I thought “ho maybe these were just early explorations, we’ll see I guess when they start using them in marketing too”. But Microsoft didn’t. Beyond that 1 single image on the Windows Insider Program website, these emojis *never* showed up again. Every single time Microsoft mentioned these emojis, it was accompanied by the 3D-rendered versions. Heck, they specifically called out that they opted for 3D in the announcement blog:

We opted for 3D designs over 2D and chose to animate the majority of our emoji.

And this is by far not the only time they explicitly mentioned that the 3D emojis were in fact the new emoji set for Windows 11.

It’s not about the emojis

But in all honesty, this issue here isn’t really the emojis. The flat emojis are fine. Sure, I very much prefer the more dynamic 3D-emojis Microsoft has been showing off for nearly half a year now, but the 2D-variants are also an improvement over the old ones, be it more subtle.

But no, in the sentence “Microsoft lied about the emojis”, the “emoji” part isn’t the problem. It’s the “lied” part.

So while yes, “scam” is perhaps not the right word here, the fact of the matter is that this very much is deflecting the issue. Microsoft has mentioned time and time again that the 3D emojis are the Windows 11 emojis. Microsoft has time and time again used the 3D emojis as marketing material. The 2D emojis haven’t ever showed up beyond a small image at the bottom of a subpage on the Windows Insider Program website (as far as I can tell).

This isn’t the case that Microsoft “simply used the wrong graphics”. Are you telling me that Microsoft “simply used the wrong graphics” for nearly 5 months straight without anyone at Microsoft saying “hey, maybe not use the wrong graphics”? Are you telling me Microsoft “simply used the wrong graphics” in the — for fucks sake — announcement blog post? Where they even specifically called out the fact that these graphics — that were wrong, remember — were in 3D?

What exactly stopped Microsoft from using the emojis that they now claimed were always intended to be the Windows 11 emojis in any of its marketing material?

It’s about the lies

This isn’t the first time that they did this. They did it with Fluent Design, they did it with the People Bar, they did it with Timeline, they did it with various apps, etc. They showed of amazing new features and then failed to deliver.

And for the record, this isn’t so much design that is the problem.

You see, it is one thing to show of a new feature with one design and then deliver that feature with a different design.

The problem with announcing one set of emojis and delivering something entirely else is: design *is* the feature here.

I for one am sick of this nonsense. Not the fact that Microsofts design is inconsistent or that they can’t deliver on time.

It’s the lies…

It’s the goddam lies I’m sick of.