The developer of the pack of stickers Phoneys for iMessage says that Apple has contacted him to communicate bad news: the company warns that it will remove the application from the App Store if it is not modified significantly.
Phoneys, which is still available in the App Store at a price of € 0,99, offers stickers that are similar to the bubbles in the Apple Messages app. With this, users can replace their friends' messages with funny alternative texts.
Phoneys could be withdrawn for infringing Apple's trademarks
The application has managed to reach the number one position of the paid applications in the iMessage App Store. Apple initially approved the application however, now ensures that the store does not accept "joke" applications and that the current way in which the stickers contained in Phoneys are displayed violate Apple's trademarks.
Developer Adam Howell received a phone call from Apple shortly after the Phoney sticker pack took the top spot in the iMessage App Store as the best-selling app. An Apple representative states that The Phoneys application infringes Apple's trademarks as it uses the San Francisco font and the same green and blue bubbles as the native messages of the app. Apple also claims that Phoneys cannot be marketed as a joke app. Regarding the latter, Howell says that he has never referred to his app as a joke app, but at the same time acknowledges that he can understand why the media and others thought that way.
The call
If it remains as developed by its creator, the Phoney sticker pack will be withdrawn by Apple within a week however, the company has given Howell this time to update his creation complying with the guidelines of the App Store.
Apple's lawyers weren't happy that Phoneys made it through the review process. Stickers cannot be blue or green, they cannot use San Francisco as the font, and the app can no longer be marketed as a 'prank' app, as Apple does not approve prank apps (although I myself I never used the word 'joke' when I marketed Phoneys, others did…). They were not going to withdraw the application […] They gave me a week, until next Thursday, to fundamentally change that the bubbles look nothing like iMessage bubbles, instead I would look for something closer to «cartoon comic bubbles animated ». I said OK, thank you very much Bill, and this was the end of the conversation.
It will not be the same
It is clear that updating the application by replacing bubbles that are similar to iMessages with stickers that look like bubbles in comic books is not really a solution, as it completely destroys Howell's purpose when he devised his app. The name does not help either, "Phoneys" invites us to think of something fun, they say from 9to5Mac, "since it makes it seem that the recipient has written something different."
With the changes proposed by Apple, lPhoneys stickers will no longer be confused with iMessage bubbles and consequently, the application will lose its reason for being.
Despite the complaints, it is also evident that this app was in a "gray area" from the beginning. Howell himself acknowledges that his wife was surprised when Phoneys was approved. But still, it was approved without discussion by Apple, which shows that something went wrong in the verification process and that now, once it is a popular app, perhaps, it should not be withdrawn.
At the moment, it is the first sticker app for iMessageAs far as we know, it could be removed from the App Store. What will its creator do? Will you renew it or will you let it "die" because changes cause it to lose its essence?