Almost six months ago we told you about Kosta Eleftheriou, the developer of FlickType. The latter is a QWERTY keyboard app for the Apple Watch. The developer said Apple wanted to buy FlickType to use as a native keyboard for wearable clothing. But when he rejected Apple, things started to get ugly and Eleftheriou said that Apple then began allowing simulated rivals to go free on the App Store.
Kosta’s theory is that Apple allowed FlickType’s rivals in the App Store to damage its app’s position among Apple Watch’s keyboard apps, so revenue would dwindle and pressure Elefteriou to sell the app to Apple at a lower price. The developer sued Apple and, in the court documents he filed, this theory was explained as follows: “Obviously, Apple thought the plaintiff would simply give up and sell its application to Apple at a discount.”
Apple removed the app from the App Store for a period of time and also rejected another version of the app that would take notes. Apple denied Eleftheriou’s claims in its lawsuit and yesterday, while introducing the Apple Watch Series 7, the tech giant introduced QuickPath. This is a QWERTY keyboard that allows Apple Watch users to type by tapping the letters on the keyboard or swipe to select a letter. Enterprise machine learning predicts the word the user is trying to type.
So after yesterday’s event at California Streaming and the introduction of the QuickPath feature for the Apple Watch Series 7, Eleftheriou tweeted at Apple and wrote, “See you in court.” The developer says he was not referring to a new lawsuit, but was commenting on the lawsuit that had already been filed before Apple introduced QuickPath yesterday.
The tweet contained an Apple letter dating back to 2019 when FlickType had been removed from the App Store for the reasons stated in the letter. Apple reinstated FlickType and promoted it last year during a “Best Apps of 2020” promotion.
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