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Developer Accuses Apple Of Stealing His Breathe App (www.bgr.in)
On Monday at its Worldwide Developer's Conference, Apple announced a new app called Breathe as one of the new headline features for watchOS 3, the latest version of its operating system for Apple Watch. The health-centric app reminds users to take a moment and breathe. But was it company's own idea? App developer Ben Erez is accusing Apple of stealing features from his app. What's worse, he adds that the company even used the same name for its app. Erez tells BGR India in a statement: We've had the same concept, same spelling, same functionality in the App store for phone and watch for over a year. We built the app because the existing mindfulness apps were insufficient in that they all focus on intense sessions of 5-20 minutes, once per day. We wanted a mindfulness experience that was felt throughout the day in smaller bits.
Come up with an original app that Apple is less likely to steal and claim as its own.
Reminding people to breathe warrants an igNobel prize.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
.. or was that Scorpion? I suppose it depends on your culture.. same results however.
I'd be more worried that Apple used Deepak Chopra as a "credible" source.
Unique.
Big guy wins, little guys loses. Suck it up and move on.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
That's not the goddamned point and you know it.
Remember when Microsoft kept getting flak for developing applications that replaced the apps that third-party app developers built for their platform? (e.g., remember WordPerfect, Lotus 123 or Netscape Navigator?)
This is just Apple following the model of all platform developers: let individual developers take the risk and initial revenues of developing a hot new app, and then build your own version of the most popular ones to collect all future revenues from that type of application.
What's the problem?
Read the fine print apple owns the rights to your code and ideas.
OK, I try to be a pretty open-minded guy a lot of the time. That said, this is the dumbest app I have ever heard of. I'm willing to grant that "mindfulness" is just a silly mis-translation of a foreign word meaning "meditation" or "memory" that has regrettably caught on. To be fair, the practice it describes is ridiculous superstition. This whole story is a big failure in more ways than one. I would recommend the developer of the app, anybody who has the app and anybody who practices "mindfulness" or the kind of silly superstitions it fails to adequately describe needs an app to help them remember not to breathe, for the sake of the rest of us.
Mozilla's first choices for the name of its web browser now known as Firefox were Phoenix and Firebird, but Phoenix was already a BIOS with an optional web browser, and Firebird was already a free database management system. Trademarks exist to reduce user confusion, including confusion between one free software project and another.
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but if not, mind citing the relevant parts?
Good artists create...
like RIAA/MPAA do.
Breathe in the air
don't be afraid to care
Mindfullness, remember this, it will be your next most hated keyword for the 2016/17 season.
"Mr. Miyagi was unavailable for comment."
I have an idea. It's a new app called "think". Every hour it reminds you to stop and think. That way when you are writing a piece of shit app, your watch will alert you to stop and think "do I really need an app to remind me to breathe?"
We can have ones called "shit", "drink", "eat", and "fuck", that way you don't forget about any of the other basic human needs.
Remember when Microsoft kept getting flak for developing applications that replaced the apps that third-party app developers built for their platform? (e.g., remember WordPerfect, Lotus 123 or Netscape Navigator?)
This is just Apple following the model of all platform developers
Except it's not. Microsoft only competed with Third Party developers... you still had to purchase the software and install it. Apple made this guy's app a part of their OS and even named it the exact same thing, basically guaranteeing that no one will ever buy the guy's app. Imagine if Microsoft had bundled Office directly with all versions of the OS and named each one "WordPerfect", "Lotus 123", and "Navigator"... The only one that comes close is IE being integrated into the OS and that caused MS a lot of grief.
Apple is now 10x more evil than Microsoft ever was.
"Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal"
If Apple's version of "Breathe" is built-in, how does it brings revenues? You really think people will buy a USD$550 watch to remind them to breathe?
microsoft used to bundle their own versions of the shitty shareware people used to write back in the 90's. they would wait for it to be popular and then code in their own version into the next version of windows. saved a lot of people money
Yeah, this is about like Windows solitaire.
It's much less like whatever Apple is calling it's own productivity apps these days.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This is just Apple following the model of all platform developers: let individual developers take the risk and initial revenues of developing a hot new app, and then build your own version of the most popular ones to collect all future revenues from that type of application.
Developer dude's app doesn't run on Apple Watch OS. It only runs on iPhones and IPads. Also, his app is free. Apparently there is some kind of special version of it you can pay $1.99 extra a month for. So yes, I'm sure that Apple saw the tons of revenue that this free app was getting from all 20 crazy people who actually think it is useful and decided that they just had to have some of that sweet cash for themselves.
Let's do an app in a really popular genre.
Let's do a mindfulness app.
Mindfullness is all about taking time to breathe.
Let's make an app to remind people of breathing.
Let's use all the relevant frameworks, tools and plattforms Apple has made available to us.
Let's use a really common name for the app the precisely describes its purpose.
Let's call it Breathe.
How original! I bet no one else have come up with this idea!
Profit!
Doh!
Only Apple users are so stupid you need to remind them to breathe. Do the world a favor and stop reminding them.
Apple has been accused of doing this sort of things many, many many many many times. Even before OS X ("macOS") and iOS, I also remember all kinds of features back in System 7/8/9 that started off as 3rd party extensions/programs but were pretty much fucked when Apple added something nearly identical.
I'm trying to think of a few examples where overnight a web site would be like "well, a clone of our app is basically in the new release of OS X...so we're out of business now." Can anyone with a better memory offer some examples?
Remember when Microsoft kept getting flak for developing applications that replaced the apps that third-party app developers built for their platform? (e.g., remember WordPerfect, Lotus 123 or Netscape Navigator?)
Wordperfect is still with us, 1-2-3 persisted until 2014, and Netscape was horribly uneven for a time, it wasn't all bundling.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And just look to the Windows Phone platform to see where their developers are now...
OMG, they spelled "Breathe" the same way that it's done in the dictionary. The horror! What are the odds? So that app was in the App store on June 5th? I daresay that Apple's PowerPoint presentation has been completed for longer than that.
Sorry, dude, but your 30 seconds of fame is slipping out of your grasp.
Didn't Apple steal the dock in Mac OS 8.5 and 9 from some shareware application?
By dock I mean the small power strip thingy that popped out and let you adjust the volume etc...
There is are literally at least TWO apps to remind people to breathe?
Aliens come kill us all, please.
Microsoft still does that too. For example:
15 System Tools You Don’t Have To Install on Windows Anymore
http://www.howtogeek.com/165522/15-system-tools-you-dont-have-to-install-on-windows-anymore/
The Windows 8 (now 10) list includes AntiVirus, Firewall, Disc Burning, PDF Viewer, etc.
App stores are social networks for developers: everything you put there belongs to the store manager. ..What, it wasn't like that!?..
If Apple's version of "Breathe" is built-in, how does it brings revenues? You really think people will buy a USD$550 watch to remind them to breathe?
Just remember that this app also runs on the $22,000 gold iWatch and if you are stupid enough to spend that much on a watch with a one day battery which will be obsolete in a year then you may need a reminder to breathe otherwise you might forget and then Apple will have lost a customer who spends $22k/year.
Well, it makes sense if you consider that the price of the watch took their breath away.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I guess it's time to remind the technical community of Apple's behavior with regard to Konfabulator / Yahoo Widgets again.
Have a great idea, beware Apple.
Of course, then they'll screw it up royally, just as they have with Aperture, Logic Pro, Final Cut, Dashboard, and most notably, Finder itself.
Not that such helps anyone's trampled business model any.
Apple's tech approach: "embrace and fuck up"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Remember when Microsoft kept getting flak for developing applications that replaced the apps that third-party app developers built for their platform? (e.g., remember WordPerfect, Lotus 123 or Netscape Navigator?) This is just Apple following the model of all platform developers: let individual developers take the risk and initial revenues of developing a hot new app, and then build your own version of the most popular ones to collect all future revenues from that type of application.
Yup. It happens everywhere. Look at the gaming industry. Every single company borrows ideas from others and then integrates it into their own game as they see fit. What Apple does is no different.
Or a dictionary Word. Just ask Microsoft.
I cant think of them all at the moment but growl was straight up stolen by Apple for notifications.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
I have prior art people!
Considering there is a hit song about this entire concept... i don't think anyone could claim it to be original.
I wish i had mod points
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
just tried it. it's nicely designed but there's almost nothing to it.
LOOL!!!!!
All he has to do is modify his app to remind you to breathe.. and then present an image of a naked woman.
Then sit back and profit.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
would apple really do something like that? /sarc
microsoft used to bundle their own versions of the shitty shareware people used to write back in the 90's. they would wait for it to be popular and then code in their own version into the next version of windows. saved a lot of people money
Like what? What software did they do that with?
Apple always has the advantage, take music streaming for example. They waited out the music industry pushback on streaming music until it proved a viable model then they created their own, shipped it with their product, integrated it with their services and apps like Siri and the default Music app to push others out of the market, this is even worse than Microsoft's anti-trust behavior of the 90s. They have private APIs that 3rd party developers cannot use, 3rd party developers cannot integrate with Siri for example or set the default mail app.
Or for an even more concrete comparison to Microsoft just look at the web browser, they ship it with the OS, they actively stop you from removing it and they claim you can't remove it because it would break fundamental OS functionality...oh where have we heard that before? But what is worse is that unlike Microsoft, Apple prevent you from installing another browser (Chrome and Firefox on iOS are just UI skins for the embedded webkit browser) which is like if Microsoft did all the shit they did with IE but also prevented you from installing Firefox or Chrome.
Didn't get mad when Apple copied the drive repair, duplication, and even file recovery tech we made our business on. We just moved on knowing they and every other large company always copies what works for others. No use getting mad over it.
It's Steve Christensen's SuperClock (plus many others) all over again.
And.
Again.
Apple invents mindfulness and mental well-being. Think Better.
.
.
.
Insert blonde joke here
"Probably" isn't good enough.
"Probably" is as good as you'll get for a legal question posed to a public forum, because most of us don't want to spend beaucoup bucks to hire a lawyer just to reply to a comment on Slashdot.
This really is one of the most insulting features Apple has put into their devices. They are basically saying that we are incapable of breathing without their products! APPLE THINK WE ARE DUMB AS SHIT!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Oh FFS, this is about as bad as when Windows finally got Zip compression built-in, cry me a river WinZip.
Apple has 10 convictions for being a monopolist? The things you learn on the back of Hatorade containers....
Brining a list of products that Apple has purchased or developed themselves into an Apple-rips-people-off meme? Okay.
From your own link:
So they used a programming language, to make some apps.
Er. Ma. Gerd.
I guess it's time to remind the the technical community of the Apple Newton, which was all about running small apps, long before Konfabulator or smartphones came around.