Emoji Apps No Longer Welcome in App Store Following Native iOS 6 Support
Apple's iOS devices have long carried at least partial support for emoji, picture characters popular for text messaging in Japan but also gaining interest in countries around the world. Initially the feature was unlocked only for Japanese customers, but over time the company has broadened access to emoji and now supports several hundred emoji characters for all users once they enable the special emoji keyboard.
With iOS 6 bringing expanded emoji support, it appears that Apple is beginning to address the significant number of emoji apps in the App Store, sending out notices to developers informing them that their apps have been removed from the store because they are no longer useful given the built-in emoji support now available. MacRumors has heard from several developers who received such notices, and a number of other developers have mentioned them on Twitter, so it does appear to be a concerted effort by Apple.
Hello XXXX,
We are writing to let you know your app, XXXX, has been removed from the App Store because it is no longer needed to unlock Emoji.
Since iOS 6 now provides Emoji support to all users, your app is no longer in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines <https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/approval/guidelines.html>
2.12 Apps that are not very useful, are simply web sites bundled as apps, or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected
If you have questions about the removal of your application, please contact App Review at appreview@apple.com. Please include the App ID and the name of your application in your email.
Thank you and best regards,
App Review
While Apple's notices state that the apps have been removed from the App Store, they do in fact seem to still be available, so it is unclear exactly what Apple's timeline for taking the apps down may be.
A number of the developers have noted that Apple seems to be targeting any app listing emoji among its features, not just those that are designed solely to enable emoji characters. Consequently, these developers argue that their apps are indeed useful and provide functionality beyond that offered in iOS 6 itself.
Popular Stories
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
There are widespread reports of Apple users being locked out of their Apple ID overnight for no apparent reason, requiring a password reset before they can log in again. Users say the sudden inexplicable Apple ID sign-out is occurring across multiple devices. When they attempt to sign in again they are locked out of their account and asked to reset their password in order to regain access. ...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
Apple used to regularly increase the base memory of its Macs up until 2011, the same year Tim Cook was appointed CEO, charts posted on Mastodon by David Schaub show. Earlier this year, Schaub generated two charts: One showing the base memory capacities of Apple's all-in-one Macs from 1984 onwards, and a second depicting Apple's consumer laptop base RAM from 1999 onwards. Both charts were...
Top Rated Comments
Some of them were even charging money for something that is built in.
2) Not all iOS devices can run iOS 6. Some are limited to 3.1.3, 4.2.1, and 5.1.1.
2a) I hope Apple allows new apps to be submitted if they are for iOS 3.x and 4.x devices *AND* specify in the description that you do not need to use a program if you are running iOS 5.x or newer.
3) OMG THANK YOU! I *hated* seeing that top apps #6, #10, #15, #20, etc, etc, etc were all PAY Emoji apps. Some review were from people buying them for their new iPhone 5, not knowing Emoji were already unlocked.