After Internet Outrage, Apple Adds Cream Cheese to Bagel Emoji

In a bid to appease bagel fans around the world, tech titan Apple has changed its emoji depiction of the breakfast staple so that it now includes cream cheese.

When the new food emoji were first announced last February, Twitter users immediately dragged the early mock-ups of the roll-with-a-hole, which was awkwardly arranged and contained no condiment whatsoever.

And when the final iOS emoji artwork was revealed earlier this month, the updated, but still condiment-less, design sparked even more outrage from bagel fans everywhere (and especially in New York).

Grub Street’s Nikita Richardson asked, “What midwestern bagel factory did this bagel come out of?” And in an explainer about the controversy, Vox’s Rachel Sugar wrote: “[T]he 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, 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 people at Philadelphia Cream Cheese even launched a Change.org petition to get Apple to change its design.

All of this complaining must have worked, because yesterday, the Emojipedia noticed that Apple had changed the bagel emoji with the release of iOS 12.1 beta 4. Here’s the side-by-side-comparison:

In addition to a clear blanket of cream cheese gracing the top of the lower half, the new bagel emoji also has a more vividly defined texture, suggesting that the dough was both boiled and baked. So far, the response from emoji users is very positive. Perhaps now, Samsung and Microsoft will also alter their bagel emoji, which are still dry as a bone.

The bagel backlash is easily the biggest food emoji controversy since Google introduced the hamburger with the cheese on the bottom of the burger last fall.

Update: And here’s the best tweet about the new bagel emoji.

• Apple fixes its new bagel emoji with cream cheese and a doughier consistency [The Verge]
• Tacos, dumplings, bagels: the complicated politics of food emoji [Vox]
• Apple Fixes Bagel Emoji [Emojipedia]
• Bagel Emoji Finally Added to the List for 2018 [E]