Man the Pistol unicode mess has always given me mixed feelings

Apple indeed lead the design change, but they did it unilaterally without the input of Unicode. So the standard is still saying that the character represents a pistol, and all the fonts are ignoring that to have it a squirt gun instead, so as to be compatible with a specific Apple font rather than compatible with unicode.

~~It might have been a mistake for Unicode to introduce Pistol in the first place (I wonder how it was chosen, can't look that up right now),~~ Pistol apparently came from Softbank, so Unicode was probably including it for compatibility with existing encodings.

IMO it would have been technologically more sound for UI designers to hide it in a UI or font designers to omit it entirely, than to replace it with another graphic with significantly different meaning. Emojipedia demonstrated the potential for confusion with this cheeky text message example.

Of course by this point we're stuck with water gun so Twitter is just needlessly adding to the mess and Unicode should give up and redefine or add errata to the symbol.

'make it look more badass'

I'm so tired of that man. I'm rethinking my idea that capitalism is good and this is meritocracy in action.

E: also just annoyed he went with an 1911, and not something like a Mateba, or the Chiappa Rhino which look futuristic but are real (the barrel is aligned to the bottom cylinder not the top), and fits into the previous patterns of revolver icons.

E: more on I'm so tired of that man