Microsoft has dared to go where Apple and Google have so far feared to tread, becoming the first big consumer OS vendor to add the "middle finger" emoji to its software platform.
Flipping the bird in emoji form has been around since the middle of last year, rolled out as part of the Unicode 7 update. But "Reversed Hand With Middle Finger Extended Emoji" wasn't supported in Windows 8 or 8.1. The emoji, which also goes by the names "Middle Finger," "Rude Finger," and "Flipping The Bird," will be available in Windows 10, according to Emojipedia.
The middle finger symbol still isn't supported by Apple's iOS and Mac OS platforms or Google's Android and Chrome software. So Microsoft will be first out of the gate with this one, though Redmond has been slower than some to get on the emoji bandwagon in recent years.
Emojipedia has a nice chronology of emoji availability in Windows, detailing how Windows 8 was the first Microsoft OS to support the popular textual symbols, but only in black-and-white versions. It wasn't until Windows 8.1 that Redmond got around to supporting color emoji.
With Windows 10, Microsoft is looking to take the lead in some emoji-related areas. Per Emojipedia, the next-gen OS will set the default skin tone of emoji people to a race-neutral gray, breaking from the bright yellow skin tone used by Apple and Google. Emoji people in Windows 8.1 have a default skin tone of light pink, making them white folks, essentially.
You can adjust the skin tones of many of the available emoji people in Windows 10. Emojipedia said there are five skin tone options in addition to neutral gray—pale, cream white, moderate brown, dark brown, and black.
Microsoft has also tinkered with some of the emoji in its stable for Windows 10, for example adding an emoji woman's face to its Haircut Emoji and making some changes large and small to an assortment of emoji faces. Meanwhile the Information Desk Person goes from a blocky silhouette in Windows 8.1 to a winking, animated woman much like the same emoji in iOS and Mac OS.
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