Ever since it launched five months ago, Appidemia has been on a rough ride thanks to Apple’s app policy. After weeks of exchanging emails with the review committee, the team decided to pull a plug on their most successful app because it cannot meet iOS 7 policy changes.
Appricot’s founder and CEO, Igor Salindrija said for TechCrunch that in order for the app to work, it has to be updated but the last version just couldn’t meet Apple’s rigid set of rules. Cupertino-based tech giant has turned down the app because it mimics certain aspects of the App Store. Applications that include filtering, bookmarking, searching or sharing recommendations are not considered significantly different from the App Store, therefore they cannot be approved by Apple. This forced Apppricot, the company behind the app, to make a final decision considering the future of Appidemia.
“Appidemia is a social discovery app and as such was getting a significant traction as well as positive feedback from users who preferred our solution for discovering new and useful apps. This latest and absolutely necessary update was, once again, kept on hold and then rejected which frustrated the team”, said Salindrija.
Before the final decision to shut down the app, Appidemia has managed to acquire more than 200,000 users with an almost perfect rating in the App Store. However, none of this mattered to Apple as none of the versions were approved by their app review service. Clearly disappointed, Sallindrija told TechCrunch that his team kept changing the app so much that they ended up with something completely different from their original idea.
This was never an option for Appidemia. Since shutting down, the team has shifted focus to a different project aiming to disrupt cross-platform collaboration.
“This was the only option and we hope our users can understand this”, said Salindrija.