14 DAY TRIAL // This year’s WWDC developer conference witnessed the introduction of several new apps and features for Apple devices, including Breath, a completely new utility integrated into watchOS that helps wearers of the Apple Watch relax by simply breathing deeper with smartwatch guidance.
And while the app was received with much fanfare by the audience at WWDC, developer Ben Erez claims that Apple is actually stealing his idea, and the app that will soon be available for all users updating to watchOS 3 is actually a clone of his app already available in the store.
It’s not a coincidence that Apple’s new feature is called Breathe, just like his existing app, he says, because the two are extremely similar and provide the same functionality.
“We’ve had the same concept, same spelling, similar 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,” Erez is quoted as saying by BGR.
6,500 downloads in over a year
While Apple refuses to comment on these claims, the developer adds that living proof of this ripoff is none other than the launch date of his app: April 2015. The “original” Breathe app, as he describes it, has been around for more than a year, and it has already recorded more than 6,500 downloads.
This isn’t the first time when Apple is accused of stealing someone’s idea and integrating it in into its products as a built-in iOS feature. F.lux, an application that provided functionality similar to Apple’s already-available iOS feature Night Shift, was removed from the store for no clear reason before reappearing at a later time, with Apple eventually deciding to offer identical features with the release of iOS 9.3.
It remains to be seen how Apple copes with these new accusations, but judging from the previous cases, expect nothing more than complete silence from Cupertino.