A bitter process hangs over Apple Watch’s new scrolling keyboard

His lawsuit alleges that in January 2019, Costa Eleftheriu had every reason to believe that Apple was about to close the deal. Apple keyboard head delightful His FlickType keyboard app for Apple Watch talks about how many mistakes he made. “Apple should buy this from you,” the man shouted, saying that “this could be an important feature of the watch.” He showed it to the Apple Watch team on January 24, where a senior engineer allegedly also appeared.

Eleftherio received a letter from Apple that night, but it was not what he expected. One afternoon, the company apparently decided that Apple Watch keyboards were breaking the rules. “In particular, the app is a keyboard for the Apple Watch. For this reason, your app will be retired from the App Store at this time. ”

Apple on Tuesday unveiled its own slide-out keyboard app along with a new Apple Watch Series 7…

Eleftherio was blocked.

This is not the first time. Apple has long sought inspiration from app developers, copies their ideas and integrates them into their operating systems for free. (This is called “Sherlocking” because Apple copied many of the features from the third-party Watson app to the desktop search tool Sherlock in 2002; here are a few most crash Examples of.)

But this is not your typical case of whether a developer should be entitled to their income or whether users deserve a job for free – and not only. Why Apple forces users to pay for a new watch to get it… When Apple blocked its app two years ago and continued to fight it over updates, the company became an enemy of Eleftheriou. He became one of Apple’s biggest critics, earning a reputation as a con artist. Indicates this consistently and effectively Apple is bad at preventing fraud Which deprives ordinary users of large sums of money.

in March , File a claim against a company because of your claimHe claimed that the company continued to refuse and discontinue the Apple Watch keyboard for several months in an attempt to get it to sell it to Apple for a cheap price. “Apparently Apple thought that the plaintiff would simply abandon its app and sell it to Apple at a discount.” Read the complaint…

Here’s the part you might be thinking about: “Wait, didn’t Apple ban all Apple Watch keyboard apps in 2019?” or “Didn’t Eleftherio tweet this rejection letter and say ‘I’ll see you in court’ two days ago?”

Programming is a little confusing, right.

Yes, Eleftherio filed the lawsuit about six months before the Apple Watch Series 7 was announced. It’s unclear what impact Sherlock will have on the lawsuit, and he won’t say. Your lawyers advise not to talk too much with journalists.

But no, Apple hasn’t ditched nearly all Apple Watch keyboard apps in 2019 – Eleftheriu believes his app was the chosen one for this transaction. Shift keyboard In fact, it came out in February 2019 and even partner apps that include Eleftheriou’s keyboard technology (complaints called Nano for Reddit, Chirp for Twitter, Lens for Instagram) would work.

Apple Diz On the edge Over time, she changed her mind. Initially, the company didn’t think the keyboard should take up the entire small screen of the Apple Watch, but decided otherwise in 2019 after seeing the potential and stating that it has supported Apple Watch keyboards ever since. The company basically admits that the removal of the Eleftheriou app was a bug and states that it quickly fixed the problem.

But Eleftherio disputes that last point, saying it took a year of appeal and re-submission of his keyboard to get back to the store. “from [January 2019] Um, I discussed the acquisition of FlickType with them at the same time, while this was denied. “Initially, Apple pretended that these appeals also failed.” The Application Review Board has evaluated your application and determined that the original disapproving comments were valid. Please note that the results of all appeals are final, ”says a letter to Eleftherio he received in May 2019.

In the complaint, he argued that the Apple Watch keyboard extension was not approved until January 2020, a year after the abrupt removal. When FlickType finally came out for the Apple Watch, it became the number one paid app in the entire store, making $ 130,000 in its first month, he claims, and was named One of the Highest Paid Apple Apps in 2020… This is what he uses as the basis for his financial losses in the process.

This does not necessarily mean that he is too worried about finances right now. “FlickType came in, yes, I hope it disappears over time as features are now enabled,” he says casually. He adds when I ask, “I don’t have a day job, but yes, this is not a big financial problem for me.” I wonder if he earned well? When he sold his keyboard company Fleksy to Pinterest Almost five years ago. (Microsoft acquires SwiftKey keyboard for about $ 250 million Just a few months ago.)

Eleftheriou says FlickType was “mostly a hobby,” but his other hobby — tracking down rogue apps and catching App Store crashes — also stems from the whole situation. He was tired of seeing the success of competing apps, including scams, after his app was blocked by App Review.

and last month, Eleftheriou publicly ditches popular iPhone keyboard for the blind After many rejections due to what he called the latest misunderstanding of Apple’s app review team about how their app (and the company’s VoiceOver screen reader technology) works.

“We have over forty bounce history. [sic] Pages full of repetitive, unreasonable, and irrational bounces frustrate and delay end users rather than benefit them. And looking at the app isn’t just a waste of time. It is also very emotionally draining, ”he wrote at the time.

Apple told me it was also their fault. The company says it now understands that the keyboard does indeed meet its requirements and has clarified this to Eleftheriu several times, repeatedly urging him to submit the app again. Apple prefers not to film it.

But Eleftherio says that’s enough. This is the statement he sent me:

I’m happy to bring the accessible FlickType keyboard back to the iPhone when Apple finally fixes broken third-party keyboard APIs in iOS and allows developers to somehow compete with Apple’s own keyboard. They also need to ensure that all reviewers receive basic VoiceOver training – we keep getting rejected because reviewers don’t know or even understand how to use VoiceOver.

I’ve spent thousands of hours developing my app, working on a lot of keyboard API issues and reviewing the app, so I’m really looking forward to Apple’s improvements and will re-submit the FlickType VoiceOver keyboard once enough progress has been made. in these areas.

On the other hand, I also invite Apple to provide developers with access to their history of disapproval. Apple is currently hiding this from developers and refusing to provide it upon request. It is unacceptable for Apple to send us disclaimers that disappear after a short period of time and cannot be accessed again.

He is especially annoyed by the unfair advantage of the Apple keyboard in that it does not use native APIs, and the lack of functionality of those APIs. This Apple publicly promised many years ago…

Technically, the iPhone keyboard extension is gone because of Eleftheriou, not Apple. It is still in the current version in the store. Submit a new version that removes the extension, the version currently pending Apple app validation.

In the meantime, Eleftherio will take his keyboard and go home.