Phoneys, created by developer Adam Howell, is actually rather ingenious.
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Phoneys That entirely breaks the concept of the sticker pack.
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Apple's lawyers weren't happy that Phoneys got through the review process.
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Howell writes that he isn't sure what he's going to do — let Phoneys get pulled, so that those who already have it can continue to enjoy it in its current form, or update it so that he can continue to sell something that maintains Phoneys' original concept.
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On the other, if I don't make the updates, Phoneys will get pulled from the store next week, letting everyone who has already bought the stickers use them until they someday delete them, but upsetting all those who bought Phoneys thinking I'd update it with more stickers in the future.
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After downloading and installing Phoneys from the iMessage App Store, look for a text message you want to change.
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Phoneys is still in the App Store so if you want it, you might want to get it now.
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A hilarious new iMessage App called Phoneys lets you prank others by sending stickers that look exactly like iMessage text bubbles.
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The problem seems to be some combination of Phoneys using Apple's font and style and the company's disapproval of prank apps.
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Adam Howell first had the idea for Phoneys right around the time iMessage launched and he launched the sticker pack this week.
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However, not everyone is aware of how stickers work in iOS 10 just yet, which gives you time to enjoy an app like Phoneys.
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Phoneys' creator Adam Howell, who works full-time as a remote employee for San Francisco-based Lithium, likes to develop apps in his free time.
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The sticker pack is called Phoneys and as iMessage sticker packs go, the idea is pretty clever: The stickers are designed to look like blue iMessage bubbles.
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As of Friday night, Phoneys remains at the top of the App Store's charts for paid sticker packs, a position that Howell says it's been in since attracting some attention on Wednesday.
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On the one hand, if I update the stickers over the next week like Apple has so generously allowed me to do, I will be "breaking" Phoneys for everyone who has already bought it.
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It's not all that surprising — while Phoneys keeps its text message replacements good-natured, it's easy to imagine how some other sticker pack could take this concept and run with it to a much less appropriate place.
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Now that Phoneys is live, Howell says he plans to release another set of stickers to expand the current collection some time next week, and he's considering creating an app that will let people write their own "phoney" texts.
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And at a basic level, the results of using Phoneys can be downright confusing for someone who doesn't really get how iMessage stickers work; really, they could probably be confusing for someone who does get how they work, just because of how seamless this pack looks.
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The creator of Phoneys — a sticker set that replaces a friend's blue text message bubble with a fake one containing some sort of funny phrase — said today that Apple has asked him to completely change the app before this coming Thursday, or else it'll be pulled from the store.
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The stickers couldn't be blue or green, they couldn't use San Francisco as the typeface, and the app could no longer be marketed as a "prank" app, because Apple doesn't approve prank apps (even though I myself had never used the word "prank" when marketing Phoneys, others did, and I certainly understood where he was coming from).
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Its publications include Magnus Magnusson's Fakers, Forgers and Phoneys (2005), Trevor White's Kitchen Con: Writing on the Restaurant Racket (2006), Gordon Brown's Britain's Everyday Heroes (2007), Henry Allingham's Kitchener's Last Volunteer (2008) (with Denis Goodwin) and Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace's Aisleyne: Surviving Guns, Gangs and Glamour (2009).
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