My advice is to immediately rebrand as gracefully and effectively as possible and use all that activist energy to effect the transition.
They kind of have a point which doesn’t make them right, but they hold all the cards and you will lose this one and regret the wasted bandwidth.
This name is pretty rings rather badly in my ears, though I’m not offended by such things. I’d feel similarly if they had named it “fuck sleep”. I’m not offended by the word “fuck” but I don’t really want to buy products that are named that. Do apps need energy drink names to be successful? I’ve noticed a trend in talking about men’s balls in ads, manscaping, underwater fart jokes. It’s seems so much like idiocracy more then something offensive.
On the other hand a rose is still a rose. So I agree they should probably just rename it. I doubt there would be any major loss from doing so.
Then don't. How is this relevant? They say the app has been downloaded 500,000 times, so many people are fine with the name.
These stories keep coming; they should remind us that nothing is more precious than the open web, and all those stores or walled gardens, their "rules" and vague TOS are the ennemy.
Just because people use the app doesn’t mean they like the name.
They are not telling the author they can't call his app whatever they want. They are saying they will not sell it in their app store under that name.
And that's the bargain you enter into when you sell in a walled garden ecosystem.
But they were indeed selling it under that name for 6 years!
How would you like it if you spend a lot of money to advertise your company or product and create a brand value to it, to one day Apple telling you that they would like you to change the name or they will not distribute it on their store?
Yes, the app store is a closed environment where they can dictate some terms. But don't forget that the developers PAY THEM to use it, and as such their terms cannot trump the consumer laws that exist to protect against such abuse. (By the way, "my shop, my terms" have already faced legal scrutiny some of which were found to be illegal - popular ones include refusing to serve people of colour or gays.)