Apple Asks Toyota to Remove Theme & Ads from Cydia

A recent Toyota advertising campaign hit the headlines a couple of days ago, after the car giant released a theme for the iPhone publicizing its Scion car through the jailbreak application Cydia. Toyota’s deal with Cydia was short-lived, however, after a request from Apple saw the theme removed from the ModMyI repository.

The theme was available from Cydia since February, but wasn’t famous until it was picked up by news websites yesterday. It seems Apple only got wind of the Scion theme after the news broke, and contacted Toyota to request that it removes the theme and ends the advertising campaign.

Velti, the advertising agency used by Toyota, contacted Kyle Matthews – founder of ModMyI – and asked him to take the theme down:

I received a call from our contact at Velti this evening as well as an email asking me to please take the theme out of Cydia. On the phone, he explained Apple had contacted Toyota and requested they remove the theme and stop the advertising campaign. They (Velti) in turn contacted me relaying the message. The reason Velti listed for the removal request of the theme emailed through our dev portal was “Toyota’s making us take it down…” Toyota had agreed to do so to “maintain their good relationship with Apple,” our Velti contact told me on the phone.

Despite a federal ruling that made jailbreaking legal last year, Apple obviously doesn’t approve of the process and is clearly determined to try and control it, rather than accept the huge community of people that enjoy hacking its devices.

Needless to say, if you didn’t grab Toyota Scion theme yesterday, you’ve missed out!

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