If you’ve noticed the ever-growing collection of emoji characters available on your Apple devices, the people to thank are the members of the venerable Unicode Consortium, a non-profit group that has been working to standardize the character sets for all the world’s languages and writing systems since 1991. The recent work on emojis is not without cost, however: a number of Unicode Consortium members think that the emoji characters are distracting the group from more important work. The chronicles of “Emojigeddon” make for fascinating reading, even if you don’t know a PUNCTUS FLEXUS MARK from a CAT FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY.

Smile has updated PDFpen and PDFpenPro to version 8, featuring file attachments, digital signing, audio attachments, measurement tools, and better export capabilities.

With the Continuity feature in OS X, your Mac can use your iPhone to receive and make telephone calls. Press “1” for more…

TextExpander, the text expansion utility from Smile, has added support for sharing snippets among a team, as well as a new Web site for managing your snippets. However, the utility now requires a monthly subscription fee.

The marquee feature in the latest versions of iBooks that arrived with OS X 10.11.4 and iOS 9.3 is integration with iCloud Drive. In theory, it makes syncing better; in reality, it can wreak havoc.

Science fiction writer Charles Stross, whose novels often turn on issues of economics and trade, looks at Apple’s current legal conflict with the FBI through an economic lens. He notes that Apple’s enormous pile of cash puts it into a position similar to that experienced by General Motors last century, when its enormous pension fund led the auto maker to become “an insurance company with a car-manufacturing subsidiary.” Stross suggests that Apple’s push for greater customer security is tied to Apple Pay and the company’s possible long-term strategy to use its cash hoard to create “a retail banking subsidiary to provide financial services directly.” Whether or not you can take that speculation to the bank, it is worth investing some time in reading Stross’s analysis.

If you use Google Docs, you may have noticed a new download option: Download as EPUB Publication. Unfortunately, the new capability is only marginally useful at present.

Apple is still making money hand over fist, but sales growth for all three of its major product categories has stalled or is in decline. Michael Cohen and Josh Centers don their analyst hats to try to explain why.

Writing for The New Yorker with tongue firmly planted in cheek, Greg Tannen channels what Apple’s release note writers really want to say in a joke piece about the upcoming OS X Haleakalā. (“No, don’t bother trying to spell it. It took us three tries, and we made the damn thing. Anyway, Haleakalā National Park is in Hawaii, which we thought was cool, and we’re doing this whole national-parks name thing . . . so, well, there you go. Haleakalā!”) Go read the full article, but not right now if it would be inappropriate to find yourself giggling in public.

At MacStories, Fraser Speirs takes a look at new education-oriented features slated to appear in iOS 9.3. These features include a Shared iPad capability, a Classroom app for teachers, and Managed Apple IDs (via an Apple School Manager portal). With this upcoming release, Apple is both renewing its education focus in a big way and attempting to goose iPad sales, which have slowly but steadily declined in recent quarters. In education, in particular, Apple is worried about Chromebooks, which are cheaper, easier to share, easier to deploy, and have keyboards.

If you’ve never read the terms and conditions that accompany your iTunes purchases, here’s your chance, as illustrated by artist R. Sikoryak.

Apple has dodged financial ruin for yet another quarter, reporting both record-breaking revenues and profits.

Apple’s iBooks Store now offers enhanced editions of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. A look inside reveals that the enhancements come courtesy of iBooks Author.

Apple has opened the iPhone 6s spigot. If you are one of those getting a new iPhone, but you have an Apple Watch paired with your old phone, there are a few steps you need to take to make your Apple Watch and your new iPhone happy together.

The Oyster ebook subscription service is shutting down operations over the next several months. Current subscribers will soon receive email with details of the shutdown and what it means in terms of their subscriptions. There have been reports that the company owning Oyster has been sold and that the new owners elected to close down the subscription service. The move leaves competitor Scribd as the primary ebook subscription service.