Simplify pulls its iPhone apps
Simplify, the company that authored mainly mobile music software, has pulled its apps from the Apple App Store, is not accepting new customers and has said that they are taking their company in a new direction.
Simplify Media specialized in helping you take your music and photos with you wherever you went: their iPhone apps allowed users to access their media remotely. Both Simplify and the follow-up app Simplify Music helped you to access your iTunes library from your iPhone or iPod touch. A similar application called Simplify Photo worked with users to do the same thing with their photographs. At least the first two of those apps made big noise when they were released.
The apps just disappeared, coincidental with an announcement on Simplify’s blog that the apps would no longer be available. Further, Simplify says that it will not be taking on any new customers for these applications, and although the recently pulled apps will continue to function, support may only last for three months. The announcement says further:
We are unable to share our future plans at this time but hope to be able to announce the re-launch of the technology soon. In the meantime, we will continue to operate the existing service for at least the next 3 months. Many thanks to those of you who have supported us and helped us improve Simplify over the last few years! We hope you will enjoy its future incarnations as well.
It’s hard to tell if the problems are financial or philosophical, or what will happen in general with the ideas that Simplify Media brought to the musical landscape. The company is being very closed-mouth about their plans, as the above quote from their site would indicate. It was an interesting experiment from a number of viewpoints, and one hopes that the lapse of functionality is not permanent.
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April 8th, 2010
This makes me wonder if perhaps there were some legal issues with the apps, or claims of stolen or borrowed code. There are many iphone apps that borrow code form one another or buy assets from a third party, so there may have been some overlap that infringed on someone else’s property..