Ask HN: How to prevent Apple sherlocking your app?

[blindprogrammer]

How can you prevent, or at least make it difficult, for Apple to replicate your app's functionality within their platform?

* Is developing companion web and Android apps to link with your iOS app the answer?

* Or should you focus on making your app so advanced and sophisticated that Apple can't compete, like Procreate for iPad?

* Do you believe Apple will eventually absorb all features developers could create, forcing programmers to work for them or a handful of other corporations?

* Even if Apple creates a free, built-in replica of your app, will users still download yours?

This practice raises concerns about Apple's monopoly. It's similar to:

* A brewery constantly buying nearby bars and forcing unfair contracts on those it doesn't own.

* A car manufacturer copying suppliers' products and integrating them into their cars, pushing the suppliers out.

Isn't this a bad business decision? By squeezing out developers with each iOS version, wouldn't Apple's platform become less innovative by removing potential app ideas?

[Someone]

The risk always is there, but I don’t think you can blame large OS seller for it.

OS sellers also compete with other OS sellers, and have to keep adding features, or customers will stop buying their product.

For example: back in the 1970s, to draw bitmapped graphics, you used to have to buy a graphics drawing library, for a few hundred dollars. It likely shipped with fonts that you couldn’t use in a text processor that you had to buy from another vendor. The market for such products is a lot smaller today.

If you call any ‘adding a feature that you can buy from a third party’ Sherlocking, OS sellers cannot avoid being criticized:

- if they don’t add a feature, critics will say “why can’t their OS do FOO? You get that for free with Acme’s OS ”

- if they implement it in a basic way, they’ll say “their FOO can’t BAR”

- if they implement a competitive product they’ll say “Sherlocking”

⇒ I would limit “Sherlocking” to “largely the same feature with largely the same UI, and that UI isn’t obvious”

[blindprogrammer]

But isn't this constant idea that Apple and other OS providers should add more features to their platforms ultimately counterproductive?

If, as a developer, I knew I only had a couple of years at best before Apple replicates my app, would there be any incentive for me to create the app and pay Apple the $99 yearly fee?

The Apple App Store is a lot like a shopping mall with Apple as the landlord. Imagine you rented a spot from Apple in the mall to sell your products. Then, Apple, afraid of being left behind, starts creating the same exact shop next to you, selling the exact same products cheaper since it owns the mall. This would cause you to lose customers and eventually close down.

If this trend continues, there could come a point where every app is replicated by Apple.

These app owners would go out of business, and the App Store would become nothing but a catalog of Apple apps and other apps created by Microsoft, Facebook, and the like.

Is that good for the indie developers at the end ?

I can foresee a world where the indie software developer doesn't exist because the platform owners are essentially offering their products for free.

How about the customer ?

As Apple isn't obligated to provide anything good in terms of software, just a free alternative that's baked into the OS, would that even matter in the end?

[Someone]

> If, as a developer, I knew I only had a couple of years at best before Apple replicates my app, would there be any incentive for me to create the app and pay Apple the $99 yearly fee?

That “couple of years” could be enough incentive.

> As Apple isn't obligated to provide anything good in terms of software, just a free alternative that's baked into the OS, would that even matter in the end?

Nobody is obligated to provide anything good, but as long as there’s competition, the market will force suppliers to provide good enough stuff for the price they ask.

[Tagbert]

Sherlocking seems to be the exception rather than the rule. This year several of the features that Apple revealed do have the potential to Sherlock some apps, but most years that is not the case.

Look at window management. People have had to use third-party utilities for years to handle this function. Apple only provides a couple of ways to do it natively and they were very limited and rigid. People were constantly asking why Apple doesn’t include better window management. Windows has had this built in for several years. Finally, Apple did launch a window manager. Yes, it does the basics, but from what I’ve heard it is still fairly limited. It is likely that at least some of the third party tools will survive by providing more features and more options that appeal to advanced users who want more control or who don’t find the Apple solution to be a good fit.

[blindprogrammer]

I think Apple knows that in the desktop market, they don't have as much of a monopoly as they do in mobile. So they often neglect the Mac and its software because if they introduce a poor native app on the Mac, you can create your own and sell it without giving them a cent—an option that doesn't exist on iOS.

But on iOS, you have to pay them $99 a year in the USA to publish apps in the Apple Store. So if Apple creates a crappy knock-off of your app that is free and comes with iOS itself, most people would use that instead of yours.

[k310]

Apple seems to try out ideas before adopting them, by observing third-party apps.

I'd like to say, "write cross platform apps",the way Hypercard didn't, but the web can do that portably, "write once". Can you add functionality that Apple can't? (By some internal Apple decision or strategy)

Using Procreate as an example, Apple may not want to offer a super feature set, or incorporate super features in their legacy apps, such as image editing, files or music apps.

Other than "AI".

Break paradigms when others are all copying each other.

[blindprogrammer]

The problem with web-based apps is that although they free you from Apple and Google stores, they unfortunately introduce friction that modern users won't tolerate.

Sure, back in the early 2000s, when the majority of internet users were techies, this might have been viable. But now, if you don't have an app, you might as well not exist. As for AI, unless I'm creating the graphics cards themselves, I see AI being in the same boat as apps. OpenAI and Google will add more and more features until they become like Apple.

In the AI gold rush, you want to sell the shovels like Nvidia is doing now. Don't try to be yet another gold prospector by creating another chatbot wrapper that they will outshine in a few months.

[k310]

Conversely, since I notice myself spending time on HN (that does pay handsome information rewards), I am seriously thinking of moving all my note-taking to a new web-based solution, now that I dropped Evernote for laying off its entire U.S. staff.

That way, I can talk myself into closing some tabs and getting back on my personal focus. Low switching cost, or so's the internal conversation.

I like the analogy to the gold rush. Levi Strauss the big winner.

[nittanymount]

this is a common thing for platforms...

sadly, don't think there is a good answer... :-(