14 DAY TRIAL // Apple started a new cleaning process of the App Store, with a report claiming Cupertino has already removed no less that hundreds of thousands of apps that violated the guidelines, but which somehow made it to the store.
TechCrunch writes that Apple is mostly looking to take down clones and spam apps, but at the same time, the company is also pulling apps that weren’t supposed to be there from the very beginning, as it’s the case of those created with a template or an app generation service.
This is the case of RSS apps or clones of Flappy Bird, which can be created with app generation services that are in most of the cases free to use. With small modifications to graphics and gameplay, thousands of Flappy Bird clones made it to the App Store in the last year, and Apple wants to take them down a soon as possible.
“Come up with your own ideas. We know you have them, so make yours come to life. Don’t simply copy the latest popular app on the App Store, or make some minor changes to another app’s name or UI and pass it off as your own. In addition to risking an intellectual property infringement claim, it makes the App Store harder to navigate and just isn’t fair to your fellow developers,” Apple says in its store guidelines.
New App Store coming with iOS 11
Furthermore, Apple is also trying to remove spam apps and those that haven’t been downloaded in a long time, especially because the company wants to provide users with a modern experience on their devices.
What’s more, Apple is also pulling apps that are not 64-bit compatible, as the firm is making the transition to 64-bit apps exclusively with iOS 11.
Apple will roll out a new App Store experience with iOS 11 later this year, so cleaning the store and removing clones and spam apps is part of the company’s efforts to offer high-quality content to its users. The company hasn’t provided any statements on this cleaning process, so it remains to be seen how many apps actually end up being removed from the store.