Developer disputes Apple's take on 'FlickType' removal

Kosta Eleftheriou, developer and vocal App Store critic, says it took a year of appeals to get his "FlickType" Apple Watch keyboard on the App Store, with those hard-fought gains potentially wiped clean now that Apple "Sherlocked" the app.

Apple introduced the QuickPath keyboard during the unveiling of Apple Watch Series 7 on Tuesday. The feature displays a full QWERTY keyboard on Watch's diminutive display and allows users to slide a finger to type, with on-device machine learning leveraged to anticipate subsequent words.FlickType, which was introduced in 2019 and unceremoniously pulled from the App Store for violating then-active guidelines restricting keyboards on Watch, uses a very similar swipe-to-type mechanism and user interface. In response to the introduction of QuickPath, Eleftheriou posted an App Store rejection letter from 2019 to Twitter and referenced an ongoing lawsuit related to the matter.

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