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Programming Apple

Developer Accuses Apple Of Stealing His Breathe App (www.bgr.in) 170

Posted by msmash from the fake-it-till-you-make-it dept.
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.
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Developer Accuses Apple Of Stealing His Breathe App More

Developer Accuses Apple Of Stealing His Breathe App

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  • Moral of the story... (Score:5, Informative)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:24PM (#52316435)
    Come up with an original app that Apple is less likely to steal and claim as its own.

    • Re:Moral of the story... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:34PM (#52316551)

      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.

      • No morals to be found there (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @02:15PM (#52317539) Homepage Journal

        I guess it's time to remind the technical community of Apple's behavior with regard to Konfabulator / Yahoo Widgets [wikipedia.org] 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 (Score:5, Insightful)

          by rgbatduke ( 1231380 ) <.ude.ekud.yhp. .ta. .bgr.> on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @03:39PM (#52318227) Homepage

          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 (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @04:11PM (#52318501)

            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

            • I agree. Apple is just weird, sort of a kinder gentler flakier version of M$. They run Unix as their OS, sort of, rely on the open source community for a pretty good chunk of their back-end Unixoid software at least, do HAVE a decent amount of OSS available, but at the same time they emulate the empire of evil at inopportune times.

              I keep wondering if one day they are going to learn the Sun Microsystems lesson the hard way. You can be a hardware company, or a software company, but if you try to be both yo

        • The old canard that Apple stole the idea is not true. The idea of pressing a key and having small widgets show up was done as part of the Apple //GS GUI in 1986.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by fyngyrz ( 762201 )

            karit, key presses aren't at issue here. Nor, more generally, are programs starting because "user input." That's not what either Konfabulator or Dashboard represent. They are entire ecosystems under which other small applications run, keypresses or no, either on the desktop or in an offset environment.

            It's not a canard. It's a bloody fact.

          • The idea of pressing a key and having small widgets show up was done as part of the Apple //GS GUI in 1986.

            Is that the one they stole from Xerox, or the one based on the one they stole from Xerox?

        • Yes, I remember how Apple shamelessly stole not only the functionality, but the look of Proteron's LiteSwitch. Sure, Proteron took the concept from Window's alt-tab window-switching behavior, but they added new functionality that allowed users to control apps' behaviors in ways that weren't thought of. They also included mouse drag-and-drop functionality.

          Apple took it all, except some of the power-features --probably to avoid a lawsuit, I assume.

          Apple has long-lost the devotion of the artists and power user

        • Does he expect a exclusive license to apps that remind you to do things? The guy wrote an app that reminds you periodically to breathe. I could write that in about 20 minutes. If the app is so simple that someone can re-write it then it wasn't very novel to begin with. If you write something that's so tricky or detailed or time consuming then the idea protects itself naturally. I think the saying is: easy come, easy go.

          Unless someone copies the code or assets verbatim, which is not what we are talking abo

        • 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.

          Brining a list of products that Apple has purchased or developed themselves into an Apple-rips-people-off meme? Okay.

          I guess it's time to remind the technical community of Apple's behavior with regard to Konfabulator / Yahoo Widgets again.

          From your own link:

          • The Yahoo Widget Engine (Konfabulator) has a very flexible application programming interface (API) based on Ja

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gnupun ( 752725 )

        Neither Picard nor Bill.G have a product featuring a touchscreen. Microsoft's 2002 tablet needed a stylus, like Palm Pilot. Pre iphone/ipad tablets were specialized PDAs for a very niche market. Smartphones, OTOH, are full blown computers having a huge spectrum of apps.

        • A stylus like this product from 1993? [wikipedia.org]

        • "Neither Picard nor Bill.G have a product featuring a touchscreen"

          Is that only because it was too expensive at the time to include in a consumer device

        • Re:Moral of the story... (Score:5, Informative)

          by BronsCon ( 927697 ) <social@bronstrup.com> on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @04:05PM (#52318455) Journal
          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 [wikipedia.org].

        • Palm Pilots used touchscreens. Crappy resistive touch screens, but touch screens nonetheless. You didn't have to use a stylus, a finger worked fine. No so good for writing though.

          Tablet PC's were available with multi-touch screens too, like the 2005 Lenovo XC60

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      We wanted a mindfulness experience that was felt throughout the day in smaller bits.

      http://i.imgur.com/44qOoU5.jpg [imgur.com]

    • how is apple stealing his app? the app is still there

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

      I don't know about original, but I don't think Apple will steal any of my fart apps.

    • Or when the prior art is over 2500 years old, don't freak out when someone mistakenly thinks it is public domain.

    • Re:Moral of the story... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fsagx ( 1936954 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @02:16PM (#52317551)

      The relevant section of the App Store Review Guidelines:

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

      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!

  • F'ing useless app (Score:5, Insightful)

    by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:24PM (#52316441)
    Reminding people to breathe warrants an igNobel prize.

  • Greater concern... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tvadakia ( 314991 ) <tvadakia@NoSPAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:27PM (#52316465) Homepage
    I'd be more worried that Apple used Deepak Chopra as a "credible" source.

  • Big guy wins, little guys loses. Suck it up and move on.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Would the little guy have been justified in getting a patent?

      • Would the little guy have been justified in getting a patent?

        For breathing? I am pretty sure I have encounted prior art..

        • It may be more useful to make an app that reminds people to think, since there sure are not many that knows how to do that.

          • Even better: let's quickly make an app where people can create all kinds of reminders, not just to breathe every once in a while. Perhaps even with a feature to set up periodic reminders. Oh waitâ¦

  • Duh...app stores exist to develop ideas to steal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:31PM (#52316523)
    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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 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

      • 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
      • Microsoft still does that too. For example:

        15 System Tools You Don&rsquo;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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        Apple is now 10x more evil than Microsoft ever was.

        Apple has 10 convictions for being a monopolist? The things you learn on the back of Hatorade containers....

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

      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?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      Yeah, this is about like Windows solitaire.

      It's much less like whatever Apple is calling it's own productivity apps these days.

    • Problem with this suggestion (Score:4, Informative)

      by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @01:14PM (#52316951)

      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.

    • 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.

  • Read the fine print apple owns the rights to your (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:34PM (#52316553)

    Read the fine print apple owns the rights to your code and ideas.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SB5407 ( 4372273 )
      Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but if not, mind citing the relevant parts?
  • Good artists create...

  • Compute damages... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DriveDog ( 822962 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:40PM (#52316613)
    like RIAA/MPAA do.

  • Breathe (Score:3)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:40PM (#52316615)

    Breathe in the air
    don't be afraid to care

  • Remember (Score:3)

    by M0j0_j0j0 ( 1250800 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:42PM (#52316649)

    Mindfullness, remember this, it will be your next most hated keyword for the 2016/17 season.

  • No breathe, no life (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "Mr. Miyagi was unavailable for comment."

  • Think (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @01:00PM (#52316811)

    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.

  • "Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      That's a poor paraphrase that doesn't capture the spirit of the original.

      Ironic that...

      • That's a poor paraphrase that doesn't capture the spirit of the original.

        He left a quote [quoteinvestigator.com] not a paraphrase. But anyway, the full version is:

        Ultimately it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what youâ(TM)re doing. I mean Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

  • 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.

  • 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.
  • 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.

  • It's Steve Christensen's SuperClock (plus many others [wired.com]) all over again.

    And.

    Again.

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