Apple adds cream cheese to bagel emoji after plain one was called ‘a monstrosity’

When bagel fans called Apple’s rather plain-looking bagel emoji ‘a monstrosity,’ someone must have been listening, reported Business Insider.

The company switched out the upcoming emoji in its ios 12.1 beta release for one featuring “both cream cheese and a doughier consistency more reminiscent of a fresh, hand-rolled bagel,” reported The Verge.

Jeremy Burge, chief emoji officer at Emojipedia, discovered the change Tuesday and announced it on Twitter.

The bagel’s part of a new batch of emojis slated for release this fall by Unicode, an independent computer industry standards group, reported Business Insider. But each tech company designs the icon used to illustrate the emojis on its platform.

Apple’s first attempt at a bagel emoji, released earlier this month, sparked widespread mockery online, reported Eater.

Grub Street dubbed it “a monstrosity,” while Pat Kiernan wrote on Twitter that New Yorkers, in particular, “demand more.” And Josh Brown jokingly wrote that he was “planning a march” to protest the insufficient bagel emoji.

Writing at Vox, Rachel Sugar found a greater sociological resonance to the bagel controversy.

“The outcry over the bagel emoji suggests that there are people who really do feel — on some level, even if it is tongue-in-cheek — that the bagel does represent them in some way,” Sugar wrote, “and that this anemic version (‘the most gentile bagel ever baked’) does a disservice not only to carbohydrates but to the rich diversity of American identity.”

The plain bagel design even inspired a Change.org petition calling for cream cheese sponsored by, who else, Philadelphia Cream Cheese. By Wednesday, the petition had 1,200 signatures.

Apple apparently went to some lengths to appease its critics — in a later Twitter post, Burge described the new emoji as “very detailed.”

The new bagel seemed to be meeting with more approval online.

Though there were, of course, still some naysayers who found the whole thing silly.

This story was originally published October 17, 2018 at 7:21 AM.