Yesterday was World Emoji Day. This year, that meant two things for users of the iPhone and iPad. First, the Unicode Consortium announced several new emojis that will be included in the next version of the standard, giving us a sneak peek at upcoming options for text messages and other uses. As William Gallagher of AppleInsider noted, eight new emojis were announced yesterday: Apple Core, Ballet Dancers, Bigfoot, Distorted Face, Fight Cloud, Orca, Treasure Chest, and Trombone. The Unicode standard offers general descriptions for each emoji, but individual platforms design their own unique versions. I suspect that in Spring 2026, we will see the Apple designs for these new emojis as they are unveiled in a future update to iOS 26. Second, if you subscribe to Apple News+ (either on its own or as part of the Apple One bundle), yesterday Apple added a new game called Emoji Game. This clever and entertaining casual game is worth checking out. The game provides you with a phrase that is missing some letters (think Wheel of Fortune) along with a clue. Players must select one or more emojis to fill in the blanks. For example, in one of the debut puzzles, the phrase consisted of two words. The first word, which was five letters long, turned out to be “DREAM.” To solve it, players needed to select two emojis—the sleeping face (😴) and the thought balloon (💭)—and drag them into the blanks. As for the second word … I won’t spoil it, but it did make me chuckle. I enjoy casual games like this on that don’t require racing against the clock or quick reflexes; they’re simply fun diversions that can be enjoyed in a few seconds or minutes. It looks like the Emoji Game is going to join other games like Wurdle and the New York Times crossword puzzle that are a part of my regular rotation. And now, the news 📰 of note 🎵 from the past week 🗓️:
- Rare earth metals are, according to Reuters, “a group of 17 elements” that are “used in a wide range of products including consumer electronics,” especially by companies like Apple. Despite their name, these elements are not “rare” in the sense of being uncommon, as they are found throughout the world. However, they typically occur only in small quantities and are expensive to mine. As that Reuters article notes, China currently controls about 90% of the world’s rare earth magnet output. Lisa Eadicicco of CNN reported this week that Apple announced a plan to spend $500 million over a number of years to buy rare earth magnets from a U.S. company, MP Materials. Some of these rare earth magnets will be produced from recycled materials, including used electronics and post-industrial scrap, at a new recycling facility in California. Apple will also help MP Materials to build a plant in Fort Worth, Texas, which starting in 2027 will eventually provide materials for hundreds of millions of Apple devices. This initiative will enable Apple to reduce its dependence on imports from China and increase the global supply of rare earth magnets. Apple announced that “nearly all magnets across Apple devices” in use today “are made with 100 percent recycled rare earth elements,” and Apple believes that it will have even more access to this critical material as a result of this investment.
- The upcoming watchOS 26 does not introduce many new features to the Apple Watch, but one that I am eagerly anticipating is the new wrist flick gesture, which can be used to dismiss notifications. Tim Hardwick of MacRumors notes that this feature will only work on three models: the Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2. Those are the same models that support the Double Tap gesture that was added in watchOS 10.1 (released on October 25, 2023).
- The Research app on the iPhone allows users to participate anonymously in various studies that utilize data from their iPhone and Apple Watch. I’m currently participating in one sponsored by Apple and Birgham and Women’s Hospital called the Apple Health Study. One study that is now completed is the Apple Heart & Movement Study, which started on November 14, 2019, and ended on March 1, 2025. Apple has now released an academic paper from that study, and according to William Gallagher of Apple Insider, the paper is called Beyond Sensor Data: Foundation Models of Behavioral Data from Wearables Improve Health Predictions. That may not be the most catchy title, but the findings are pretty interesting (although not yet peer-reviewed). For example, the data reveals that devices like the Apple Watch can be used to predict general infection with 76% accuracy, diabetes with 82% accuracy, and pregnancy with 92% accuracy. Impressive.
- Chance Miller of 9to5Mac describes an interesting feature coming to Apple Maps in iOS 26: the (optional) ability to (securely and privately) keep track of the places that you visit. I could see this being useful when, for example, I’m trying to remember an interesting restaurant or shop that I visited in the past.
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball explains why he is a fan of the MagSafe-compatible iPhone wallet and stand from Moft. It is $29.99 from Amazon.
- Matt Daley from iPad Productivity shares 20 iPad tips.
- Michael Teo Van Runkle of Ars Technica spent a week trying out the new CarPlay Ultra (currently only available in Aston Martin cars), and wrote a detailed report with lots of pictures.
- Emmy Award nominations were announced this week, and as Juli Clover of MacRumors notes, Apple did great, receiving 81 Emmy Award nominations. The shows with the most nominations were Severance and The Studio, but the other Apple TV+ shows nominated were Dark Matter, Presumed Innocent, Slow Horses, Shrinking, The Gorge, Bad Sisters, Dope Thief, Pachinko, Your Friends and Neighbors, Deaf President Now!, and Bono: Stories of Surrender.
- Erik Pedersen of Deadline reports that Severance, with 27 nominations, got the most nominations of any show from any network. The only other shows with over 20 nominations were The Studio, HBO’s The Penguin, and HBO’s The White Lotus. HBO (with 142 nominations) and Netflix (with 120 nominations) received the most overall nominations, although they had a much larger number of shows in contention. Apple TV+ had a more limited roster, but a high percentage of its shows received nominations.
- Marcus Mendes of 9to5Mac notes each category in which Apple TV+ got nominations. It got two of the eight nominations for Best Drama (Severance and Slow Horses), two of the eight nominations for Best Comedy (Shrinking and The Studio), and dominated the Comedy Guest Actor category with five of the seven nominations for five guest stars in The Studio (Bryan Cranston, Dave Franco, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsesse, and Anthony Mackie). It’s so nice to see up-and-comers like Ron Howard, Martin Scorsesse, and Bryan Cranston finally get some recognition.
- It’s not just the industry insiders who like Severance. Hartley Charlton of MacRumors reports that Nielsen has identified the most viewed original streaming titles in the first half of 2025, and Severance is #5 on the list. (I’ll also give a shout-out to the HBO show The Pitt, which was #7 on the list and which I really enjoyed).
- John Calhoun tells the story of how he came up with the crayon color picker for the Mac in the mid-1990s and almost got fired because of an Easter Egg in it. (I first became aware of Calhoun because of his game Glider, originally published as shareware for the Mac in 1988.)
- And finally, here is a new video from Apple called Clean Up Photos: Cat, which shows how you can use—or not use—this Apple Intelligence feature in the Photos app.