We have been recently approached by Apple’s Developer Support Team and was told to remove “broken LCD” references from the product description of iSurprise. A few days after we have fixed the product description, we received another phone call telling us to remove the cracking animation effects from iSurprise.

Why? we asked.

Their rational behind this request was that Apple is getting too many phone calls from their customers telling them their devices have become broken by using iSurprise.

What? (We were speechless)

The cracking stamp from iSurprise is just one of many effects that users can choose from, and it’s not the default option. This means the user has to deliberately select the option. Once the application is shut down by pressing the Home button, all the effects are gone. When you return to the application by relaunching, the full screen setting is automatically disabled  so that the menu bar on top will be shown and the user is forced to set it back to full screen mode again. There is zero possibility that user will come to think that their iPhone has become broken as a result of using this application.

Well, after a long talk, we were given three options.

1) Apple will take the application down from AppStore.
2) We remove the application from sale.
3) We remove the cracking feature from iSurprise and upload the new binary for approval.

We have reluctantly chosen #3 as our choice, and the new binary has been uploaded for Apple’s approval. This week will be probably the last week you can purchase iSurprise, with the broken LCD prank effects.

From time to time, Apple’s app approval policy changes, (for example, iFart was something not allowed in the AppStore for quite some time) so we hope that Apple will eventually open up the gate for these types of prank apps in the near future, but until then, farewell iSurprise!