Siri clones, watch out: Apple has its eyes on you. At least, that's what the developers of Evi, a voice-powered digital assistant app, reportedly discovered this weekend.
TechCrunch reported Sunday that True Knowledge, the company behind Evi, got a call from Apple saying it was “going to pull Evi from the App Store” because the app was too similar to Apple's own Siri. Specifically, Evi was in violation of section 8.3 in Apple's developer guidelines: "Apps which appear confusingly similar to an existing Apple product or advertising theme will be rejected."
According to the TechCrunch report, Evi was going to be taken down from the App Store, no questions asked. However, according to The Verge, Apple is working with Evi's developers to reduce any damning similarities between the two AI services -- this as opposed to just pulling the plug on the app.
We went hands-on with Evi in late January when it debuted in the App Store, and found the app to be an efficient tool for voice-activated search, but not much of a personal assistant. And while we found Evi to be similar enough to Siri to classify the app as a "Siri copycat," it's still different from Siri in a number of key areas.
Most notably, Evi sources its responses from True Knowledge's database of billions of machine-comprehensible “facts." True Knowledge describes Evi's main focus as "conversational search," whereas Siri is more about directly hooking into phone functionality. For example, Siri has access to iOS 5 features like Calendar, Contacts and Reminders.
It's also worth noting that Evi can be operated through voice and keyboard input, while Siri is voice-only. And, of course, Evi is currently available in the App Store for all iPhone models, whereas Siri is strictly for the iPhone 4S -- though we wouldn't expect this to be a differentiation that impresses Apple.
Wired reached out for comment from True Knowledge on the current status of the situation, and we'll update this post if we receive any additional information.
However, True Knowledge's CEO, William Tunstall-Pedoe, did tell TechCrunch that his app is not "confusingly similar" to Siri per the language in section 8.3. Tunstall-Pedoe told TechCrunch, “I don’t think it takes too much of a leap of the imagination to realize that ‘confusingly similar’ is code for ‘competitive with’ -- and that all the user and press reviews along the lines of ‘Now you don’t need to buy a 4S – you can download Evi,' ‘better than Siri’ etc., have resulted in a change of heart from Apple about allowing its users to get the app.”
If Evi is ultimately booted from the App Store, it won't be the first time Apple tosses an app for cutting too close to home. In April 2011, a Mac App called QuickPick was removed from the Mac App Store for being too similar to Launchpad in OS X Lion. A company called App Stores BV also had its apps rejected (including a satellite navigation app called Navv) as the developer's name itself was too similar to Apple's App Store name. The company was let back in, however, after it changed its name to Wazado Mobile Applications BV.
And Apple doesn't just protect its own assets. Earlier this year, a number of copycats of popular iOS titles like Plants vs. Zombies, Tiny Wings and Words With Friends were cleansed from the App Store's ranks. This, however, falls under a different policy relating to copyright.
