I never thought I'd see this, but the January 2006 issue of MacWorld has a tip for disabling iChat's Smilies. What's so surprising is not that they printed such a tip, but that it's no longer a obscure option buried deep in some plist file in the iChat application bundle. Using iChat on OS X 10.4.3, there is a Hide Smilies menu right from the View menu.
After years and years of more and more smilies, what's causing the sudden backlash against them? Reading the tip a little farther gives a clue: business users. The example they give of when you might want to disable smilies is for sending Excel formulas, since =( is a sad face.
In a way, it's good, but in a way, it's just making it easier to conduct business activities over AIM, which we all know is not necessarily a good idea. So while I applaud Apple for recognizing the varied needs of its iChat users, I'm not convinced encouraging business use is wise, either. Regardless, it just goes to show that not everyone loves smilies, and that we're not crazy because we haven't added smilies to BitWise yet. Someday, maybe...