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.

Comments

Moral of the story...

[__aaclcg7560]

Come up with an original app that Apple is less likely to steal and claim as its own.

Re:Moral of the story...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the moral is to come up with an unoriginal app. If you make something new and unique and useful, that is what they'll steal.

Re:Moral of the story...

[Shakrai]

Come up with an original app that Apple is less likely to steal and claim as its own.

Obligatory.

Re:Moral of the story...

[JediJorgie]

For now. Remember that Apple has killed many apps for "duplicating built in functionality." It has happened many times.

Re:Moral of the story...

[fsagx]

The relevant section of the App Store Review Guidelines:

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#copycats

Also interesting:

5.2.5 Apple Products: Don’t create an app that appears confusingly similar to an existing Apple product

Now his app can be removed for the app store for being confusingly similar to the official app which came later!

Re:Moral of the story...

[BronsCon]

Those screens also reacted to finger input. The stylus was provided for increased writing accuracy and to prevent fingerprinting the fuck out of the screen. What was different about Apple's touch screen is that it was capacitive, like your laptop's touchpad, rather than resistive, enabling it to track multiple touch points at once (but preventing it from tracking non-conductive objects such as a pointy plastic stylus). An Apple's iPhone wasn't even the first to apply multi-touch to a display; that distinction goes to Mitsubishi.

Re:Moral of the story...

[msauve]

"I don't think Apple will steal any of my fart apps."

The perfect antagonist to the Breathe app.

F'ing useless app

[flyingfsck]

Reminding people to breathe warrants an igNobel prize.

Re: F'ing useless app

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree - the health benefits of breathing are indisputable!

Re: F'ing useless app

[Yvan256]

Yeah, right. I'm going to prove you all wrong. I'm going to stop breathing right now.

Hum okay, I have to admit it's a bit uncomfortable.

Actually, this is getting quite painful.

I guess you guys were right aft

Re:F'ing useless app

[GameboyRMH]

When an AC on Slashdot reminds you to breathe, he's an annoying troll. But when an app on an overpriced gadget reminds you to breathe, it's big business.

Re: F'ing useless app

[mbeckman]

Both Apple and the whiner stole the idea from God, who created the original app to remind us to breathe. It's called Death..

Greater concern...

[tvadakia]

I'd be more worried that Apple used Deepak Chopra as a "credible" source.

Duh...app stores exist to develop ideas to steal

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

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.

Re:Read the fine print apple owns the rights to yo

[SB5407]

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but if not, mind citing the relevant parts?

Compute damages...

[DriveDog]

like RIAA/MPAA do.

Think

[Pascoea]

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.

Re:Think

[Yvan256]

I have an even better idea. It's called "Watch". Every hour it reminds you to stop and watch your wrist, stare at your watch. That way you can remember how much money you wasted on a watch.

Re:Duh...app stores exist to develop ideas to stea

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Problem with this suggestion

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

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.

Re:Duh...app stores exist to develop ideas to stea

[Roger W Moore]

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.

No morals to be found there

[fyngyrz]

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"

Re:No morals to be found there

[rgbatduke]

Apple's tech approach: "embrace and fuck up"

Ahhh, it reminds me of the good old days of piracy on the open seas, when Microsoft ate Borland and Lotus and Wordstar and...

It's simple economics. Apple, like Microsoft, has a huge stable of code monkeys that they have to feed and water occasionally with Jolt cola and potato chips. In order to have enough spare capacity to be able to fix a critical bug in a timely way, maybe, they have to have maybe 50% overcapacity the rest of the time (and besides, hiring the best keeps them out of M$'s unholy hands even if they do nothing but social media all day). So they look for little projects for them to do.

There, they follow the tried and true M$ path. It is bone simple to wait for somebody else to take all the risk of inventing and developing a new concept or product, and then just use your spare cycles to clone it and make it your own. Since there are a zillion ways to write code, and since it is very difficult to get a software patent these days (and pretty easy to work around it or double dare them to sue you with their finite and your infinite pockets even if there is one) it is zero risk, and since you literally own the operating system and hardware and direct marketing channels, you simply cannot fail to take over anywhere from 1/3 to all of the market. M$ did it over and over again, sometimes leaving the risk taker alive but squeezed down to a tiny market (why kill the goose that lays golden eggs, after all) and sometimes just having goose for dinner. They would even do things like break the code of competitors (but not their own) when releasing OS updates. Who could compete with that, given all of the sales staff to remind customers of how "unreliable" a product has become but not to worry, ours is rock solid...

But this is evolution in action. Anyone dumb enough to develop for Apple or M$ who ends up being eaten alive after taking all of the risk is just being selected against for stupidity. The best you can hope for is that their developers are busy fixing bugs in their OS and that the parent company decides that it is faster to buy you out than it is to clone you and put you out of business.

rgb

Re:No morals to be found there

[Actually, I do RTFA]

What's strange is that Apple could turn things into a real positive. "We think this app's idea is so great we're adding it's core functionality into our OS." And add that they've either gave its creator $1,000,000 to buy the app, or gave the creator $500,000 as a thank you for spotlighting a need in our community.

I mean, it's chump change for the relatively few things they do it to, the PR is great, it means people would be competing to get noticed by Apple, and they could get that same company to try for a second hit by making them feel good and promoting their next apps aggressively.

Instead, they poison that well