This was true of Microsoft in the 1990's. Just ask Gary Kildall among others.<p>My personal brush with this was in a startup I was at 3 years before RFC 2616 (HTTP compression). We had developed a client proxy and server that would not only compress HTML pages but also bundle in a zip file all the images (TCP connection ramp up time was a thing) and it dramatically sped up page load on what was then a slow internet.<p>Microsoft came sniffing, on the pretense they were interested in buying our company or at least licensing. But then they ghosted us, and if I recall correctly, those features ended up in IIS and Internet Explorer as proprietary extensions, when Microsoft was trying to embrace and extend the web to beat Netscape.
This has been true for many. many iOS releases. The good apps that become essential eventually get built into the operating system. This happened with sleep trackers, menstruation trackers, numerous other HealthKit apps, SwiftKey/Skype, Tile (the AirTag-like thing), camera features borrowed from the best third party camera apps, the list goes on and on.<p>Building for iOS is a great way to show Apple that there's a market for something :)
I find it funny how people just don't learn from history.<p>There is even a term for it, and it comes from the same exact behaviour from the same exact company: <a href="https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-company-sherlocks-an-app/" rel="nofollow">https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-co...</a><p>Apple don't care one iota for any developer on their platforms.
Counterpoint: When we were developing a smartwatch for brain health, I was invited to give a talk to the Apple watch team in 2013. What I talked about was up to me and from the questions asked I was able to see behind the curtain of what the team was working on. In follow ups we talked about the science and user experiences but wasn’t asked to divulge any secrets. Had Watch launched with or included the capabilities, maybe I’d feel differently, but I understand in the time since why brain health is so challenging even for the big companies. I pushed them to include blood oxygenation for athletes given that application would lower component costs for us with patients. And yet, says a lot, the team took years to get that right.<p>By contrast EKG and PPG were already being commoditized by the time Watch included those capabilities. AliveCor and Valencell do both really well, but the protectability is not as deep a competitive moat.
The other half of this is how Apple <i>never</i> shares anything or collaborates outside its walls. I can't tell you how many good engineers I know who took a job at Apple and then immediately disappeared. Websites taken down, GitHub projects removed, all trace of their professional work scrubbed off the Internet now that Apple owned all their time.<p>I get how valuable the secrecy is for the company but it's not good for the individuals who work there or for the profession.
I'm okay with them entering a market. They do their stuff well.<p>What I'm very much not okay with is that they don't play by their own rules. They're the only company that can provide the services iCloud provides. Their apps regularly get capabilities that no other app can have.<p>Platform advantage is a big problem that needs regulation. I hope that the Digital Markets Act is an attempt at this, but I worry that it won't go far enough and not touch the areas where I think it's the most needed.<p>Come on regulators, start treating Apple like Microsoft. If you can force Microsoft to unbundle IE and Teams, why can't you make Apple unbundle iCloud? They're a monopoly on their platform and their platform is the only option many users have (for a variety of reasons).
It’s not just the big guys who steal ideas. Unless you have an agreement in place prohibiting a partner from copying the ideas you shared with them, they are generally free to do so.<p>Get a sharp lawyer and never just sign someone’s “boilerplate NDA”. At the very least, understand what you are allowing the other party to do with the information you share. If you push back, even Apple may have an alternative NDA they’re willing to sign that is less promiscuous.
People are (correctly) upset when Apple, Facebook, Google etc have anti-poaching agreements. Then whenever developers switch companies, and similar features are announced, this is the inevitable response.<p>Either employees should be able to move around freely, spreading the knowledge and skillsets in problem domains or they should not be able to do so. The legal frameworks are patents and code copyright. I'd like to see patents go away in general, but the abuse that is alleged here should be examined<p>All that said, the statement here that "apple steals people" is fundamentally and ethnically wrong. People are not owned by corporations.
In the past I always wondered why Apple would ship a custom browser and email client for iOS/MacOS - they should provide core functionality of an OS but that line seems to have blurred with "customer experience".<p>Microsoft is doing nearly the same thing via Office365 - OneNote,Office,Teams and Edge rather than WebView2.<p>It is hard using a third party program on Windows because it is so glaring obvious it looks rather weird.
I've been following the Masimo situation and their case seems pretty strong (though IANAL).<p>But in many cases the "product" is actually just a feature, not enough to sustain a whole company. And I say this by having made that very mistake myself years ago, and having learned from it.
Can't you get them to sign a contract before the brain rape starts that they pay close to acquisition sum when features resembling yours based on similar decisions end up in their portfolio?