Less than one week after news about Rewound, an app that turned your iPhone into an iPod, began making the rounds, the app has been pulled from the App Store.
A Rewound blog post goes into some details on what's happened with the app (via The Verge). Apple is said to have pulled Rewound for copying the iPod design, charging for Apple Music features, and because people could mistake the app for an Apple product. In response, developer Louis Anslow says that Apple "got salty" and that Rewound was designed not to infringe on Apple's trademarks and that the skins were created and downloaded by users, not included in the app.
As for what happens now, Anslow says that Rewound can't be updated and resubmitted without breaking the app for the current 170,000+ users. A new GoFundMe has been set up and is seeking €50,000 to aid in the future development of Rewound. Anslow has plans to build a web app that "can cache to your iPhone homescreen and load like an app with an icon just like a native app".
Anslow is also planning to develop an Android app and to try and make some changes to the iOS version of Rewound and resubmit it. However, there's a warning that Apple may not allow Rewound back in the App Store.
Rewound offered a heavy sense of nostalgia when you installed one of the iPod skins, giving you your Apple Music tunes in an interface that looked and worked like an iPod. The bad news is that skins also appear to have caused Apple to take notice of Rewound and pull it from the App Store. It's unclear what kind of changes Rewound's developer could make to get the app back in the store while keeping that nostalgia available, but if you really want to make your phone look like an iPod, you may have to hope that the web and Android apps get made.
Did you try Rewound before it got pulled from the App Store?
