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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.
I'd be more worried that Apple used Deepak Chopra as a "credible" source.
Unique.
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.
I agree - the health benefits of breathing are indisputable!
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.
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!