Finally, Apple's racially diverse emojis are here

Until today, Apple offered twelve different train emoji, two different camel emoji and a smiling poo, but didn't really take the same approach to racial diversity. But now it's finally introduced a more diverse set of emoji to reflect the fact that not everybody in the world with a phone is white.

The much-needed update to Apple's iOS and OSX systems will also enable users to modify skin tones themselves with a specific emoji keyboard. It's a comprehensive update, with over 300 emoji characters being introduced altogether, including same-sex families. Previously, the only non-white emoji were a man with a turban, a chap with a Cossack hat and a Chinese man who was presumably intended to represent the entirety of East Asia.

Still, some people aren't impressed with what they perceive to be the new emojis for Asian people and hit out at the yellow skin tone, complaining that it looked "jaundiced". Others said that using a common cliche about Asian people was a step away from diversity, rather than towards it.

Asian skin tone in the new Apple emoji set is bright yellow. That seems more racist than racially diverse.
— kray kray (@krazyfrog) February 24, 2015

Who ever has a Bright yellow skin-tone? What does that even mean, Jaundice? Bright yellow emoji for Asians is racist enough, dear Apple.
— Nitish Murthy (@NiTiSHmurthy) February 24, 2015

32 flags have also been added for all those moments that you're feeling patriotic. Unfortunately, redheads are remain underrepresented – there are still no ginger emoji available.

As it stands, the update is only available to testers, but an official release with drop in the coming months, with Apple said to have been working on the update since March of last year. People of the world, soon you'll all be able to speak the language of now.