More than eighteen months after Apple's first mention of deprecating the Unique Device Identifier, the company is set to finally begin rejecting apps that make use of UDIDs.

Apple has published a statement on its developer portal revealing that, from 1 May, the App Store will "no longer accept new apps or app updates that access UDIDs."

Instead, Apple suggests that developers update their apps to make use of the vendor or advertising identifiers introduced in iOS 6.

Saw it coming

Despite the likely impact, however, this announcement has been a long time coming.

Apple has reportedly been rejecting apps based on the particulars of their UDID use since March 2012 – a time when the company and its developer community were both facing questions from the US Congress on the issue of user privacy.

The end of the UDID isn't the only update to App Store policy mentioned on Apple's developer portal, though.

The company's latest developer briefing also states that all apps and updates submitted from 1 May must support Retina resolutions and the iPhone 5's four-inch display.

[source: Apple]