
Apple has copied some of the most popular apps in the App Store - rgbrenner
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how-apple-uses-its-app-store-copy-best-ideas/
======
shanev
Since the App Store launched in July 2008 until Nov 2011, my app, Drum Kit,
was one of the top apps in the Music category. It went up to #2 at one point,
only behind Smule's Ocarina, and had over 10 million downloads.

The day GarageBand launched, my app went from something like #24 in Music to
#64, and downward from there. Fun times!

Interestingly, at an Apple conference sometime in 2010 (either C4 or WWDC),
some guy asked me all kinds of detailed questions about the custom audio
engine I wrote. Back then the "iPhone SDK" (now iOS SDK) audio APIs had too
much latency for a drum app. So I had to write my own in C++ based on Audio
Units (a low level C API). A tricky thing I had to do was mix multiple buffers
of audio to create the resonance effect drums make when you hit them
repeatedly (most prominent in cymbals). Later I found out the person asking me
the questions worked at Apple, on the team that made GarageBand. They didn't
launch with a blended resonance effect. When you hit a cymbal repeatedly, it
would cut off the sound and play the sound again. Ew.

People miss out when they don't try some of the more indie apps. A lot of care
goes into making them.

~~~
samplatt
I've made some (C#) code that applies an ambisonic convoluted reverberation
impulse response to an audio stream, but I'm hitting performance walls with
Unity & C#. I want to go C++ & Unreal, but every time I try to learn C++ my
eyes glaze over and I come down with a bad case of the Stupids.

Is there any "C++ for dummies with a bent for audio processing" material you'd
recommend?

~~~
ComputerGuru
I hate to just say it like this, but it’s unlikely that C# is really your
bottleneck. It’s more likely the approach or the libraries you are using that
are the issue.

Try a clean implementation of that particular logic in pure C# on .NET Core,
you should be able to get it working more than adequately fast. I’m saying
this as someone that (re)writes applications in C++ and rust to provide
pseudo-rt guarantees.

~~~
merb
yeah especially with Span<T> it's way easier to create high performance code,
while reducing GC pressure. Also depending on the Platform P/Invoke to C/C++
is also a solution that works quite better than on Java's JNI.

------
rgovostes
Of course Apple copies features—Camera+'s volume button shutter was initially
blocked from the App Store then wound up in the first-party Camera app. But I
don't buy the premise of the article.

There were dozens of flashlight apps in the store when iPhone OS 2 came out,
so the OS can never have a built-in flashlight feature?

That article's examples of "copied" features are also straightforward
evolutions of existing ones that have been around for years, but the author
doesn't mention that.

Sidecar, ostensibly a clone of Duet Display, builds off of the ability to
wirelessly extend the display to an Apple TV since Mavericks (2013). Regarding
Clue, the second release of the Health app added reproductive health tracking
in iOS 9 (2015). Certainly at the time engineers and product managers would
have been thinking about the future direction of these features.

In fact, it strikes me that Apple is _very_slow_ at making obvious
improvements, creating opportunities for third-party developers to make plenty
of money. Those ad-infested, 100 LoC flashlight apps made cash for 5 years
before the feature became part of the OS.

Whether copied or not, I'm extremely skeptical that App Store analytics are
influencing OS features. It's never been Apple's style to be analytics-driven.

~~~
heavenlyblue
I remember one of my acquaintances on Facebook shared a sad story of how the
app they developed was stolen by Apple: it trackedyour iPhone activity.

They went in detail about the “revolutionary” tech behind it: they made you
set up a VPN on your phone so that they could track all of your net activity,
from that they would estimate your screen time with the apps.

There was a long set of paragraphs on how Apple is taking advantage of
independent developers.

I mean - I hate the fact that I can’t change the default browser to Firefox,
too. But making the users set your logging VPN under the guise of “making your
life healthier by knowing how much time you spend on the phone” is another
level.

~~~
Zelphyr
Setting up a VPN that tracks all of your network activity? That makes me
queasy. Why should I trust these people to keep all that valuable network
traffic data private for me?

Apple didn't steal this idea. They may have implemented it in a better way
given their low-level system access but, in this case, and in my opinion, I'd
rather this be something the OS tracks for me for free by a company that
doesn't make their money off the sale of my private personal data.

~~~
kristofferR
It's a local VPN, all on device. Still a workaround, but data isn't being sent
anywhere though.

~~~
msh
How can a VPN be local? If there is no vpn server at the other end is it
really a VPN?

~~~
Crosseye_Jack
The phone itself is the VPN Server. Its a trick used for the app to look at
some of the network traffic.

Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 app does the same thing but for DNS, to capture the DNS
requests from the phone you need to create a "local vpn", but not all your
traffic is going though Cloudflare (yet, they do plan to add a VPN to the
1.1.1.1 app at some point).

EDIT: All Custom DNS settings apps for mobile connections on iPhone (I forget
if Android is the same) ate like this. I use nextdns and their app does the
same.

~~~
msh
Thanks for the explanation

------
1123581321
I’m sympathetic to my fellow product developers. As a user, I’m glad Apple
adds features to iOS without charging for updates, and does so using a
consistent and legible privacy/security model. Unlike on macOS, every
“sherlocked” iOS app costs Apple App Store revenue, so they’re working against
incentives to make a feature first-party. That suggests the decisions are at
least motivated by a belief in doing right by users.

Still, I’d like developers to be compensated for being put out of business.

~~~
benologist
The EU has grumbled about platform owners also being publishers so hopefully
they intervene at some point.

Look at how well-behaved Microsoft the iOS publisher is, compared to where and
when they have dominated as both platform and publisher.

I think we will all be better off when the iOS app store has a mandate not to
compete. Same with Twitter on their platform, Amazon with theirs, Facebook,
Google etc.

~~~
selestify
Was Office on Windows not well-behaved or something?

~~~
benologist
Many years ago when Windows represented close to 100% of computing, before
smartphones as we know them, Microsoft deliberately killed off competing
browsers by bundling IE for free and coupling it so deeply with Windows you
couldn't even uninstall it for the longest time. Just by being able to bundle
their own software they had a huge competitive edge because to use anything
else meant downloading browsers on dial-up internet, and they leveraged that
to destroy all other browsers' market share.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars)

    
    
         The first browser war ended with Internet Explorer 
         having no remaining serious competition for its market 
         share. This also brought an end to the rapid innovation 
         in web browsers; until 2006 there was only one new 
         version of Internet Explorer since version 6.0 had been 
         released in 2001.
    

It wasn't until Firefox that browser competition emerged again then some years
later Chrome followed. IE was so prolific iirc both Firefox and Chrome had
extensions that would actually use IE6 or IE7 to power a tab so you could
access sites with IE-only technology or support. After antitrust cases in the
US and EU the software bundled with Windows didn't really grow in variety
again, and we got browser selection choices and stuff forced upon Microsoft.

Today on iOS and Android where MS is only a publisher they compete on the
merits of their software instead of unfairly leveraging the platform. We also
see Twitter, Facebook, Apple and Amazon pretty wantonly leveraging their
platforms against the people using them to displace them with official
alternatives. I don't really feel like Google is or has been as predatory but
might just be out of my purview.

~~~
will4274
And yet... Every smartphone on the market bundles a browser and none of them
make it possible to disable or remove the browser from the rest of the OS
today.

History has proven Microsoft's argument - a web browser is a core part of the
modern operating system.

~~~
hollerith
On iOS you can use "parental controls" (Settings > General > Restrictions) to
disable Safari. It removes Safari's icon from iOS's app launcher / home
screen.

~~~
will4274
Just like add and remove features did in Windows of the era. However, the
bundled Webkit components like system web view are not uninstalled, the icon
for the front end is merely hidden

------
colejohnson66
Skimming through, I found this:

> Copying technology has gotten tech giants in trouble before. Two decades
> ago, the Justice Department and 20 states sued Microsoft, whose operating
> system Windows was dominant at the time, after Microsoft copied the Netscape
> Web browser and made its own version, Internet Explorer, the default option
> in Windows. Microsoft settled the case.

That’s not exactly why they were sued. It was because they made it hard to
uninstall IE and hard to install other browsers.

~~~
henryfjordan
There are a lot of parallels between what Microsoft did with IE and what Apple
is doing with basically the whole App Store. Apple will either eliminate
competition with their apps or use their position as the iOS creator to make
their own apps better integrated (namely Apple Music). Apple also makes it
impossible to install any software except what they've signed in the App
Store.

Seems to me to basically be the same case.

~~~
nothrabannosir
The crucial difference is the monopoly which Windows had but iOS doesn’t.

~~~
Mirioron
If you have an iPhone then you don't have a choice in which OS you use.

~~~
scarface74
You have a choice of not buying an iPhone - like 80%+ of the market.

~~~
Mirioron
But iPhones aren't the same as android phones. You can't run android software
on an iPhone and vice versa.

~~~
scarface74
How much software besides first party apps is iOS only?

Also, most of the popular non game apps are both cross platform and
subscription services that can run on either.

------
kposehn
This is an example of what I call "Feature vs. Product."

A classic example is Snapchat and Instagram. Snapchat was never something that
stood on its own, as everything that made it unique would easily be
duplicatable by Instagram, down to the tiniest feature. Theoretically, the
network of users would be the unique value but it was nowhere near Facebook's
size, and thus would not be able to truly compete. All it took was Instagram
copying most every good feature to dominate the space.

In the article's case, each of the apps (Clue, Duet, DoApp, Voxer) were
creating something that, while valuable to users at the time, was simply an
addition to the existing functionality and in no way was a valuable product
outside the context of the phone or iOS itself. Effectively, they were
features wrapped in an app that in no way stood on their own.

If you want to make a successful app in the App Store, make something with
value to a user that can stand alone.

~~~
yeldarb
You talk about Snapchat like it went out of business.. it’s a publicly traded
company worth $22 billion.

~~~
kposehn
Nah, it’s not out of business, but the point about there not being much of a
fundamental differentiation from Instagram that gives it unique value stands.

That may change over time as these things aren’t set in stone of course.

------
mastazi
I’m surprised f.lux isn’t mentioned here, if I remember correctly not only
Apple copied its functionality but it also prevented the app from being
published on the App Store
[https://justgetflux.com/ios.html](https://justgetflux.com/ios.html)

~~~
duskwuff
> …but also prevented the app from being published on the App Store…

The only thing Apple did to "prevent" f.lux from being published on the App
Store was to not offer any public APIs that could be used to implement it.
This wasn't some sort of deliberate decision to get in the way of f.lux; there
was simply no clear use case for an API to allow an app to change the behavior
of the screen on a global basis.

~~~
deadmutex
> there was simply no clear use case for an API to allow an app to change the
> behavior of the screen on a global basis.

A usecase is f.lux's functionality. There is definitely a clear use case. The
decision to expose the API could have other factors to it, but lack of use
case doesn't seem to be it.

~~~
duskwuff
An API use case for a single app is pretty hard to justify, especially when
it's coupled with other concerns like "but wouldn't this require the app to
stay running in the background" or "but what happens if two apps both try to
do this".

~~~
cma
How about an app for helping with colorblindness?

~~~
saagarjha
There are already accessibility settings for this.

------
dehrmann
What's the right model for this? It seems like this is a problem platforms
always run into. Early on, you need a third-party tool for some esoteric task.
If that task becomes commonplace, people start to expect it from the platform.
And how do you do it in a way that doesn't burn the developer community.

In 1998, it might have made sense that I had to use a third-party tool to burn
CDs with Windows, but by 2001, Windows XP shipped with this capability. And
this wasn't some large, IE-scale strategic play--it was table stakes for an OS
back then.

~~~
onion2k
Treat features like bugs and offer a bounty if you decide to implement
something a user did already. It could be part of the terms that the user has
to accept in order to be on the store. If it's a feature that lots of people
implemented (eg the flashlight) split the money between them.

------
0xCMP
IIRC many of the period tracking apps sold their user's data. Seems like a
good reason for Apple to introduce a version which uses the OS level features
to keep data synced and in the user's hands.

~~~
d35007
Apple also got a lot of flak for not including a menstrual cycle tracker in
their Health app. It was a popular sign of Silicon Valley’s male bias for a
while. To wit:

> Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Apple’s first diversity report
> did show that the company is mostly white and male. So it’s likely that
> menstrual cycles just aren’t a concern for a majority of the company’s
> employees. But that shouldn't be an excuse.

[https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/25/6844021/apple-promised-
an...](https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/25/6844021/apple-promised-an-expansive-
health-app-so-why-cant-i-track)

> But considering that plenty of other, extremely popular apps for menstrual
> tracking already exist (Clue and Period Tracker are two stand-outs), all we
> have to say is, thanks for finally including women in your world, Apple.
> Welcome to ours.

[https://www.health.com/pregnancy/apple-finally-adds-
period-t...](https://www.health.com/pregnancy/apple-finally-adds-period-
tracker-to-its-health-app)

> That Apple overlooked period tracking as a key function that roughly half
> the population would expect to see included in a comprehensive health
> tracking app is not entirely a surprise.

> Apple today is a company where only 30 percent of its employees are female,
> and only 20 percent of those in engineering positions are female.

[https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/09/apple-stops-ignoring-
women...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/09/apple-stops-ignoring-womens-
health-with-ios-9-healthkit-update-now-featuring-period-tracking/)

This last one comes from The Washington Post, perhaps demonstrating that
sometimes you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t:

> Apple notoriously ignored women's health issues as it developed previous
> versions of Health

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2015/06/17...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2015/06/17/apple-wants-to-know-if-you-use-protection/)

~~~
COGlory
I'll take the bait.

I don't get this. As an Android user, Google routinely leaves out features I'd
like in their apps. I just use an alternative app. Sometimes it's very
annoying because I want all the things on the same platform. But again,
usually there's an alternative app I can use. Why not just use a different
app? I mean, I get wanting everything in one app, but these quotes are a lot
less "I wish my favorite app had this useful feature" and a lot more on the
outrage side, which makes no sense considering the amount of features useful
to 100% of the population that Apple continues to leave out.

>Apple notoriously ignored women's health issues as it developed previous
versions of Health

Issues? Plural? Beyond menstruation tracking, what else is missing? Or is this
just another example of story padding?

I guess I just don't understand why this is any different from any other
missing feature from any app. Why is it apples responsibility to provide this
feature?

~~~
d35007
What bait? I just quoted what other people said. Once upon a time, the
Washington Post thought that Apple was notorious for ignoring women’s health
issues because they didn’t include a cycle tracker. Now it thinks Apple is
anti-competitive for including one. Like I said, you’re damned if you do and
you’re damned if you don’t.

~~~
COGlory
Not bait by you, but rather the bait in the way those articles are written.

~~~
d35007
My mistake. I jumped to a bad conclusion. Your statement made sense in
context.

------
csande17
Apple does this in other areas, too. In 2017, for example, they
encouraged/pressured video-streaming apps to integrate with their new "TV" app
which, at the time, they claimed was just an aggregator for all your streaming
services.

Part of that integration involved reporting which shows were watched when to
Apple. And now, they're using the data they collected from third-party
services to decide which shows to produce for their own offering.

~~~
scarface74
By 2017, _everyone_ in the industry knew that they were working on a streaming
media service and even after the announcement, Disney and other companies are
still adding support.

------
grey-area
This is not a new thing really, it's quite tricky for Apple as probably every
idea they come up with internally someone else has already had in some form,
so I don't see how they can avoid it, though they could try to be graceful if
they completely replicate a tool, and offer to buy it out.

Back in the day I produced a little shareware utility which was a speaking
clock for Mac OS. Apple took notice and I was invited to SF by someone at
Apple, but had other commitments at the time and couldn't go at the time. They
asked for partial source code (I think after a bug I reported to them) and I
sent it over, and that was the last I heard about it.

Soon after they introduced the feature in the OS and it is still there to this
day in Clock settings - Announce the time on the hour. I was actually pleased
about that, as I never made significant money from the utility anyway - I'm
not really sure if they were inspired by the tool but always suspected they
were.

------
tw04
Of course Apple copied apps from the App Store. As a developer you should
expect that, and the solution is pretty easy, just look at Shazaam.

Pick an app that's sufficiently difficult to copy, at which point they'll try
to buy you if they find the app sufficiently important to the platform. And if
not, they probably won't spend the capital to try to dethrone you. If you make
an app that say... changes alerts based on location, I'd probably expect it's
just a matter of time until they copy your app.

------
deftturtle
1\. Make a platform so locked down that basic features are lacking. 2\.
Prevent users from easily writing and executing scripts to add functionality,
like Greasemonkey. 3\. Sell apps that cover missing features. 4\. Improve your
original operating system, rendering paid apps useless.

I’d like to see Apple let AppleScript be executed on the Apple Phone. I’d like
to have more control over my device, like an Android. Maybe someday...

~~~
Yetanfou
If you want to have more control over your device I do not see why you would
buy one which you know does not allow this type of control. This is, after
all, the tool the market offers to take care of this type of problem:
competition. Use it.

------
mikl
Everything is a remix. Every app has copied some parts of its functionality
from elsewhere, and the world is better for it.

If Apple could only add features to iOS that isn’t covered by an app store
app, there would be almost nothing new they could add.

Sure, it is annoying for the devs who get sherlocked, but most such apps are
pretty obvious in the first place.

And this is not a new phenomenon. Given Apple’s focus on health these last
many years, it’s hardly a surprise that they’re adding period tracking. If the
period-tracking-app didn’t see this coming, they really need to hire someone
with a little bit of foresight.

------
BooneJS
Sherlock’d.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)#Sherlocked...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_\(software\)#Sherlocked_as_a_term)

~~~
panic
Yeah, anyone remember Konfabulator? Apple's been at this for a while.

~~~
scarface74
This is an old wives tale. Apple first had a keyboard shortcut to get to
widgets in 1986 with the Apple //gs.

------
kbumsik
To be more precisely Apple copies ideas not only from Apple Store but from any
startups.

One of the most notable one is Sidecar introduced in iPadOS 13. This is
basically a dual-screen feature paired with a macbook, which some startups
like Duet and Astropad have been doing for years.

~~~
dwaite
Sure, but it isn't like Apple moved into this market all of a sudden. They've
had the capability to use Airplay to wirelessly create a second display, as
well as built-in OS support for drawing tablet displays for _ages_.

Nor is it like it was some genuinely new idea. Nor did Apple copy their
technology, or violate some partnership agreement or noncompete/nondisclosure.
Nor is Apple violating some patent. Nor does Apple treat it as a product or a
revenue source or even a lead in to a new software revenue source - it is an
improvement to the platform.

If they sold product targeting Linux systems that did this, someone built the
wireless functionality into Wayland to do this and distros bundled the updated
releases, would those distros now be somehow acting "unfairly"?

So I don't quite know what "system of fairness" would be here - a platform
shouldn't evolve existing features if someone has a paid solution, even if
that solution only partially solves the problem or does so in an inferior way?

------
braythwayt
Like _all_ platform owners, Apple gradually commoditizes its complements. The
most extreme end of this behaviour is when they release a free app or feature
that wipes everyone else out (or drives them into tiny niches).

iTunes was a famous example: It instantly obsoleted indie music apps on the
Macintosh.

We had a good time discussing this fifteen years ago(!) when Cabel Sasser,
cofounder of Panic Software, wrote about the demise of Audion at the hands of
iTunes:

[https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/](https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/)

My own take on this is to think of building apps and services on top of a
platform as sharecropping:

[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-
orchard...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard.html)

This doesn’t mean I countenance Apple’s behaviour. Far from it. It simply
means I think of it as inevitable that platform vendors will court indie
developers and partners when they need them to grow the platform, then turn on
them when the vendor thinks it needs to commoditize their work.

Twitter and its indie clients is another example.

------
75dvtwin
I think it would be ok for Apple to create apps that fill a particular, yet to
be explored niche, or to create foundational quality and functionality
standard for a given area.

Sort of 'Apple-basics'.

However it is very anti competitive, and monopolistic to target mid/upper tier
product segments, against your market participants.

It would be like NASDAQ running their own brokerage business.

------
AshleysBrain
Hasn't this always been a risk for third-party developers - that the platform
owner might incorporate popular third-party features to the main platform? I
vaguely remember Microsoft Word used to have a third-party addon for a spell
checker, then made it built-in - and got sued by the third-party developer. I
think they lost though...

~~~
Someone
It has been going on forever. As lower levels of the OS get commoditized, OS
providers have to provide more functionality if they want to continue making
money.

Back in the day, people would buy graphics libraries to draw lines on the
screen, buy utilities such as ZIP or defragmentation utilities, and each
program had its own logic for printing, with each of them, at setup time,
asking questions such as “what should I sent to you printer to get bold
text?”, “how many characters on a line does your printer support?”, and
“should I wait a bit longer between lines to make sure your printer is ready
to accept new input?”

Now, of course, Apple doesn’t need to make money on their OS, but I think they
are forced to move ‘up’ to compete with Microsoft.

------
pluc
They've been doing that since the early days of the Cydia store and jailbroken
mods.

~~~
saagarjha
They’ve also hired a number of people from the jailbreak community, FWIW.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/cUxGy](http://archive.is/cUxGy)

------
chmike
The cynicism of Apple is pathetic. Steve Jobs is reported to have said
[[https://www.pcmag.com/commentary/329826/why-steve-jobs-
went-...](https://www.pcmag.com/commentary/329826/why-steve-jobs-went-
thermonuclear-over-android)]:

> "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every
> penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to
> destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go
> thermonuclear war on this," the late CEO famously said.

------
gommm
I actually still miss Watson/Sherlock. It was a great timesaver. I always
wonder if Watson would have survived longer if Apple hadn't copied them and
then let Sherlock to rot.

------
prometheus76
Ask the developers of Delicious Library about this. Apple completely ripped
off their design and the functionality of their app without so much as a
thank-you.

~~~
wil_shipley
Apple certainly was inspired by the look of Delicious Library but I’m not
upset to have influenced them. For me the whole point of UI design is to move
the state of the art forward for everyone. I’d be disappointed if Apple didn’t
take my interface and use it, it’d mean Mike and I kind of failed.

I mean, I didn’t invent the push-button, but I use it everywhere in my apps,
as we all do. Someone, somewhere invented it first, and I thank them.

~~~
prometheus76
That is a mature and selfless viewpoint, and I'm impressed. I was a user of
Delicious Library at the time, and I couldn't believe my eyes when iBooks
showed up in the keynote. I haven't used a mac in a long time, but that
example of an egregious lifting of a design aesthetic has always stuck with
me.

Thank you for your years of sitting in a Starbucks with your friends to make
what was a beautiful and useful app. I don't use macs anymore, or else I would
still be a happy customer.

------
mjparrott
I much prefer features built in to my iOS than left as sketchy, personal
information stealing, gaping privacy 3rd party apps

------
ummonk
If you’re trying to make a living off a flashlight app, I’m not going to be
very sympathetic to your plight.

~~~
dwaltrip
This is a strawman.

------
kvartz
Apple shouldve bought f.lux instead of copying it. I believe flux even had a
patent for warmth values.

------
hkarthik
What is old is new again. This is just Apple’s version of Embrace, Extend, and
Extinguish.

------
14
Well back when the iPhone first came out, my thoughtful Canadian carrier
Rogers thought it would be funny to sell me a phone that does not even take
videos but sell me a 1000 Video text messages with my plan. Hilarious I
thought, I just bought a 1000 video messages and this phone only takes
pictures. While looking into that I discovered the jailbreaking scene and
those guys hacked the phones to take videos. For people saying what the hell
is this guy talking about, when iPhones were first released they literally
could not take videos, only photos. The jailbreak scene was FULL of ideas that
apple eventually made standard on the phone.

------
tqi
It feels like the big issue here is not that Apple is copying apps in the app
store (everyone copies everyone) but rather that they are using proprietary
data (num installs, time spent, retention, etc) to guide their roadmap.

~~~
lostmyoldone
Plus that they are using API's nobody else are allowed to use, and that they
generally don't seem to abide by the rules of the app store themselves.

------
siempreb
Yes, curious what will happen with the private repositories on Github now it's
Microsofts'. Will no one in the company ever check what's going on?

------
newsgremlin
Good to see Apples business model has not changed at all since its inception.
Good to see a big company stick to its roots.

------
adambowles
Mirror: [https://outline.com/nJ84Ea](https://outline.com/nJ84Ea)

------
twodayslate
I remember a quote of sorts that went something like if your product relies on
another company then (you aren't a product or you are the product?). I
remember it being tossed around when Twitter was killing all the competing
applications. Anyone have a source or remember it better than me?

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zepto
I guess Apple can just preinstall the software and not put it in the store.

Maybe operating system design can be government regulated.

Or maybe they can be split up as she proposes to enable Samsung and Xiaomi to
have an advantage.

This just shows that Elizabeth Warren’s advisers don’t understand software and
that she is dangerously unelectable.

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awinter-py
from 7.10 in the facebook platform policy

> We can create apps or products that offer features and services similar to
> your app

Would love to be a fly on the wall in the room when this was added

[https://developers.facebook.com/policy](https://developers.facebook.com/policy)

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villgax
The worst hit I think is Duet Display

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yani
The same is happening with Microsoft GitHub Actions and the impact it has over
Travis CI.

~~~
beckler
Granted, Travis CI was sold to some private venture, and the first thing they
did was fire most of their engineers.

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AceJohnny2
Store brand copies popular product they distribute, news at 11.

(offtopic, I'm always in awe at how blatant Walgreens is, down to the
packaging style, sometimes having two _identical products_ just copying two
different competitors' packaging)

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panny
Since this is a Jeff Bezos' washingtonpost.com hit job, it's worth pointing
out that Amazon Basics does the same as well,

[https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/number-of-
amazonba...](https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/number-of-amazonbasics-
best-sellers-up-fifty-percent-in-a-year)

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itsangaris
Sans paywall: [https://outline.com/nJ84Ea](https://outline.com/nJ84Ea)

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mensetmanusman
Apps are like music in this case. Apple listens to the popular tunes and adds
thematic elements to their core. The use of the word ‘copy’ here is
misleading, because Apple could literally copy-paste, bit-by-bit, compiled
code banks into their core, but they don’t. They rewrite the theme.

Especially in the case of health apps that are meaningful, more humans
worldwide benefit when Apple includes it in the core (at some point).

What these App developers might want to do is file IP to protect core concepts
if they want 20 years of protection. Patents have a lifetime cost of ~$100k,
so it is a risk/reward consideration.

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psv1
I'm just waiting for the new version of Reminders in iOS 13 which will largely
kill the need for tools like Todoist/Wunderlist/Things.

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yoz-y
Todo apps are largely safe I think, because people have varying and strong
opinions about how task management should be handled.

What irks me is that the new reminders have killed the URL scheme support. So
no integrations from outside world either.

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modsiw
Isn’t this Apple’s entire business model?

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stock_toaster
"Apple sometimes listens to their customers and supplies things they want/ask
for"

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TheSoftwareGuy
And this is the reason intellectual property exists, to protect inventors from
being copied

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lostmyoldone
Unfortunately, IP law doesn't really help when the platform owner can just say
'no' and cut off your entire revenue stream, perpetually. While you might have
the law on your side regarding the IP, Apple seem to have the law on their
regarding their right to cut you off. For small Apple only businesses, this is
essentially a "license to kill", and you have no recourse but - possibly - to
cause enough bad publicity.

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cronix
Many ios features were copied from cydia as well, especially early on.

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soraminazuki
While it may be that Apple has an unfair advantage regarding the App Store
ecosystem, this particular example seems ridiculous IMO. Period tracking
doesn't seem like something new, and it's quite a stretch to suggest that
Apple copied the idea.

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KaoruAoiShiho
Anti-trust, break up the app store + hardware.

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Causality1
"Good artists copy; great artists steal"

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terasepu
Xiaomi must have an amazing team of artists!

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idonotknowwhy
Yep! I love their products. Their Roomba and Fitbit clones are great and so
much cheaper and they make great powerbanks.

The Jaybird clones from "Taotronics" are another great money saver, and the
audio quality is better too.

Almost forgot their sonic toothbrush and wiha screwdrivers (I don't even know
what they're clones of)

~~~
Fnoord
> [...] and they make great powerbanks.

Do they? From what I understood they don't have good efficiency.

> Their Roomba and Fitbit clones are great

(Haven't checked their Roomba.)

The Amazfit Bip cannot disable Bluetooth. Battery life is decent though.

> Almost forgot their sonic toothbrush and wiha screwdrivers (I don't even
> know what they're clones of)

The iFixit screwdriver set is the one I got. What I paid for it (during a
Black Friday deal) isn't that much off the wiha screwdriver set from Xiaomi.
And you support an organization which is part of the Right To Repair movement.

I got one of Xiaomi's Bluetooth speakers as well. I also got a Dafang camera
of them. They're both decent and cheap, but not great. Which sums up my Xiaomi
experience. Its not as if Xiaomi is so good quality; rather the rest from
China is terrible, and we accept it apparently as such (yes some Western
brands also deliver abysmal experience but then you got decent warranty).

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_pmf_
Ideas are worthless.

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codesternews
How to bypass paywall?

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adambowles
Mirror: [https://outline.com/nJ84Ea](https://outline.com/nJ84Ea)

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rblion
capitalism encourages this type of behavior. does it not?

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Krasnol
Does it though? Copyright anyone?

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rblion
you can't copyright an idea for an app, a name yes. you can patent something
though but there are always ways around that.

I'm not agreeing with Apple, just stating an observation.

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Krasnol
I meant copyright as a vehicle of capitalism contrary to this behaviour where
something that works, is bluntly copied without caring for the individual. You
know: "for the greater good" of the system.

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dzonga
apple's biggest con was convincing the poor uneducated masses both in tech and
out of tech, that they need mobile apps. most functionality out there, can be
replicated by web apps. but hey, let apple run a racket

~~~
cultofmetatron
iPhone originally only supported web apps. demand for native apps was so great
Jobs was brought kicking and screaming into it if anything

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sunflowerfly
Apple was the first to develop what we know as an Office suite on the Lisa.
Due to developers crying foul over competing with them they let Microsoft
copied it and developed MS Office. The first version arrived about two years
later. They no longer seem concerned about competing with developers.

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Mathnerd314
In some sense developers are already ripping off their users, because they've
made the app but are still charging for it / monetizing it, even after it's
paid back the development costs and then some. Many apps don't reach that
threshold and live in the minimal adoption range, but it's hard to assign
blame to Apple for that. And the apps talked about here are the popular ones
that have presumably recouped their initial investment many times over. So the
complaints in the article read like "I was getting paid tons of money for
doing almost nothing and then Apple stopped it."

I imagine in a better world the business model for apps would be simpler,
something like a vulnerability bounty program but instead an app bounty
program. Same with Amazon, maybe they could acquire Kickstarter and provide
product development services instead of sniping new products. And in both
cases the end user would get it for unit cost (0-ish for software, more for
physical stuff). It requires people to get used to buying products months away
from release though, not sure how to address that.

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yoz-y
Why would the later customers be entitled to free stuff once the first round
of clients paid?

What about updates?

