Apple has added 300 new emoji to the iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3 betas, but they’re focused almost exclusively on inclusivity — diversity in skin tones and country flags. The watch, phone, and computer emoji have been redrawn to match Apple’s current products, but it doesn’t appear that any of the new Unicode standard emoji have been added. Paul Kafasis, writing for One Foot Tsunami:

None of the emoji from the updated Unicode 7 spec are included. Apple continues to flip us the figurative bird by refusing to provide us with a literal middle finger. Diversity of races is surely a good thing, but where is the diversity for people who wish to communicate with widely recognized hand gestures? Surely we deserve satisfaction!

Apple might be too family-focused to include the ”middle finger” emoji, but there are 250 in total that could be interesting to add, including the ”live long and prosper” Vulcan hand, ”joystick”, ”cloud with lightning”, and many more.

(Sadly, ”tacos”, like ”poutine”, haven’t yet passed the proposal stage.)

iOS 8.3 is still in beta, and iOS 8.4 and iOS 9 are still forthcoming, so it’s possible we haven’t seen the last of the new emoji. While 250 is a huge number, a lot of them are variants that could be accessible through a long press gesture the way the skin tones are implemented now.

P.S.: In case you’re concerned about Apple spending time on emoji instead of fixing whatever bug is bugging you most — the person drawing emoji isn’t the person who’s tasked with fixing your bug. Messages is the most popular app on iOS, and adding fun things like new emoji has relatively little impact on production, but a huge impact on our ability to tease and troll each other.

If, like Paul, you’d like to see more of the new emoji from Apple, you can dupe his bug report via rdar://19925942.

Kickstarter darling Pebble is back with a new, color, crowdfunded e-paper smartwatch. Meet Pebble Time, crowdfunding for $159.

Today Pebble has announced the latest addition to its line of e-paper smartwatches, Pebble Time. Pebble Time is a newly redesigned smartwatch — both outside and in — launching today on Kickstarter, where early birds can get in on the action for less than two bills.

Pebble Time features and always-on, color e-paper display that aims to have the same 5- to 7-day battery life of the original Pebble and Pebble Steel. Pebble Time has a stainless steel bezel, a scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass screen and is 20 percent thinner than the original Pebble. The strap features a new quick release, so you can swap out bands at will. Pebble even built in a ”smart accessory port” so developers can build sensors and bands that interact directly with the watch.

”With Pebble Time, we’re launching completely new hardware and reimagined software while keeping all the things people love about Pebble.”

Pebble Time will also have a new version of the Pebble OS in tow, which will organize and display contextual information like weather, news, flights, and reminders chronologically on your watch. In addition to seeing current notifications, you’ll be able to read through previous notifications at any time. All current Pebble apps and watch faces will be compatible with Pebble Time as well.

Pebble Time is compatible with Android and iOS devices and is available now for $159 in three colors exclusively on Kickstarter. Shipping is set to begin in May of this year. After the campaign, Pebble Time will sell online and in stores for $199.

Read more on Pebble Time at Kickstarter

You knew this was coming, right?

For years and years and years and years and years and years now I’ve begged and pleaded for two things — a Files.app repository and DocumentPicker API from Apple to make iOS file management easier. Last year, with iOS 8, Apple provided the DocumentPicker as part of iCloud Drive. This year, with iOS 9, I hope they finally provide Files.app as well.

Last year I called the lack of Files.app and DocumentPicker ”one of the biggest, most frustrating holes remaining on Apple’s mobile operating system, and all the more so because it seems like a model for fixing it has been in successful use for years already.”

A lot of that had to do with ”app jails”, or files locked within specific apps, inaccessible any other way. DocumentPicker solved that, making files available to any app that called it up the iCloud Drive interface.

• iCloud Drive and DocumentPicker: Explained

The problem now is that we still need an arbitrary app to call up the iCloud Drive interface.

What we have now is analogous to Photos.app and ImagePicker, sans Photos.app. Instead of being able to open a single app and browser all our pictures, we have to go find an App Store app that’ll let us browse them.

It’s fine if your brain only ever works in an app-centric way. ”I wrote my article in TextEdit, I am going to go to TextEdit and open my article”. It’s less fine if your brain works in a file-centric way. ”I wrote my article, I’m going to go to my article and open it in whatever app will let me open it… Hey, TextEdit!”

Both are valid mental models, and supporting both makes files more accessible for everyone.

In a world with Files.app, that’s what I could do. I could go to TextEdit, open DocumentPicker, and choose my article. I could also go to Files.app, search for my article, and then use ”Open in…” to pick TextEdit or any other text editing app.

Or, you know, just search in an updated Spotlight that can see into DocumentPicker.

It’s not a filesystem any more than Photos.app is a filesystem. It’s a repository, a view, a way to sanely and safely present all documents in iCloud Drive in a way that empowers people.

Apple, rightly, prides itself on privacy and security. Every app exists in a sandbox and every file exists in the sandbox of the app that created it. In order for iCloud Drive and DocumentPicker to work, the system carefully and considerately moves data between apps.

Files.app would be an Apple app, however, which could ensure a high level of privacy and security for files. A ”Do you want to grant NewApp permission to access your files?” could further ensure both and and make any openings in the sandbox the result of direct user interactions, the same way Camera Roll access is handled today.

Thanks to Extensibility, you could also share directly from Files.app to any app or service that supports it. So if all you know is you have to get file A to destination B, you know you’re only ever one Files launch and couple of taps away. That’s remarkably less mental overhead.

It wouldn’t be a file system because it would avoid the hierarchy and complexity of the traditional file system. It would also avoid the complexity of not having a file system.

It would be a repository, much like Photos, much like Passbook, much like Health. And it would be important to a great many people, personally and professionally, and they need and deserve time and attention on iOS.

We’ve gotten our redesign. We’ve gotten our functionality increase. The iPhone and the iPad are light and powerful beyond our dreams. They are becoming our primary computer platforms. They are the glass through which we are viewing the connected world.

iOS 8 got us part of the way there. It gave us DocumentPicker and iCloud Drive. It made it so that our iPhones and our iPads are no longer terrible at something as important as file handling.

Now we just need iOS 9 to get us the rest of the way home. We just need iCloud Drive surfaced in a consistent place so we can get to it, and our documents, whenever we want or need to.

We just need Files.app

This feature request has been submitted as a feature request to Apple as rdar://19933856.

• How to use iCloud Drive: The ultimate guide