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Apple pulls app that let you turn your phone into a virtual iPod with click wheel

Apple pulls app that let you turn your phone into a virtual iPod with click wheel

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It was fun while it lasted

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Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Rewound, the basic music player app released last week that you could skin to make your iPhone look remarkably like an iPod Classic, has been pulled from the App Store, according to Rewound blog post published on Medium.

The blog says that Apple pulled the app because it copied the iPod’s design, charged for Apple Music features, and people could mistake the app for an Apple product. The blog makes the case that the app had a pretty basic interface that looked nothing like an Apple app, and the iPod classic skins didn’t come preinstalled. (You had to download them after you had already installed the app.) We’ve asked Apple for comment, and we’ll update this story when we hear back.

The iPod skins did look very similar to Apple’s classic design. Take a look at one my colleague Tom Warren installed. Seeing him use the old-school click wheel makes me nostalgic for scrolling through my beloved iPod I used in high school to listen to Evanescence:

The Rewound blog says the iOS app can’t be updated without “breaking the app for all 170,000+ users,” but the developer, Louis Anslow, says he will attempt to bring the app back in some way. On a GoFundMe page for continued development of Rewound, Anslow says he will “try some tweaks to get Rewound resubmitted” on the App Store and that the GoFundMe will help support development of a web app and an Android app.

But Anslow is also sending mixed messages about whether any of these will ever come out. On the GoFundMe, Anslow says it “isn’t clear if Apple will ever allow Rewound back on the [App Store],” and states that “we are not promising fully finished versions” of any of the apps.

So for now, since the future of Rewound seems uncertain, it seems like you’ll just have to keep waiting for your chance to relive the good old days of the iPod click wheel.