FlickType developer sues Apple: the company removes his keyboard from the App Store and adds it to the Apple Watch 7

On September 14, Apple unveiled the Apple Watch 7 at its annual presentation, among other things. The company decided to add a virtual keyboard to the new models. It is a full-fledged keyboard on the watch screen, directly from which you can now write and send a message.

A user of Twitter remarked that it looked a lot like the FlickType keyboard, an app developed in 2018 specifically for the Apple Watch.

A developer of FlickType will sue Apple. He also published a letter from the company that he received the day before. It says that his keyboard app for the Apple Watch does not meet the requirements of the Human Interface Guidelines and, therefore, it will be removed from the App Store.

For the FlickType founder, this is not his first lawsuit against Apple — his first time was in March 2021. The cause was the App Store blocking updates to the app, followed by a slew of FlickType copycat apps that cheated downloads and ratings by trickery, according to The Washington Post. Then the developer accused Apple, among other things, of fraud.

Recall that litigation between Apple and Epic Games ended only a few days ago in the US. As a result, the court ordered Epic Games to pay Apple 30% of the income received through the introduction of alternative payment — it’s $3.65 million. The court also found Apple’s ban to use third-party payment systems for applications in the App Store illegal.