I'm pretty sure emojis were all over the internet before apple - forums, chat apps, IMs etc? Were they the first ones to include them in the default SMS app or something?
iOS was the first place I was ever exposed to real emoji (in the US), and actual desktop OS support for Unicode colored emoji in any application seemed to be a reaction to the popularity in SMS.
But I'm no historian on this... anybody correct me if this is wrong?
Edit: timeline from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#History
> The emoji keyboard was first available [on iOS] in Japan with the release of iPhone OS version 2.2 in 2008
> The emoji keyboard was not officially made available outside of Japan until iOS version 5.0 [2011]
> Apple first introduced emoji to their desktop operating system... in 2011
> Google added native emoji support to Android in July 2013
> As of Windows 8.1 Preview [2013], Segoe UI Emoji font supplies full-color pictographs.
In retrospect, iOS's decision to combine full-colour emoji with standard Unicode mappings was genius.
Emoticons originated long before that. Heck, even before the internet. I know we were using them on Quantum Link before it became Q-Link, before it became AOL. I remember seeing them on Usenet and some of the networks like Bitnet back before all the networks were joined into the internet.
The iPhone was the first platform I ever saw unite emojis and emoticons in one place, though now everyone just calls them "emojis."
In the late 90s most forum software had image emoticons as well as animated ones. The Japanese have had emojis (which is where the name comes from) on their phones since the beginning of the century.
I am not sure what (if anything) Apple has to do with this.
So, entering :-) would render a smiley face sometimes.
However, it wasn't a Unicode character that retained meaning independent of the specific implementation.
Eg, :grr: might render on phpBB, but nowhere else.