February 19th, 2009
Ripping off iPhone apps (updated)
Ars Technica posted a story about a new scourge plaguing the App Store: 100% complete app ripoffs. An app called Classics: Jane Austen (sorry, no link love) pictured at right, is a complete rip off of an excellent iPhone book reader called Classics ($3), pictured on the left.
It appears that shady developer Diego Dominguez Ferrera of Ubiklabs has completely and unapologetically stole several aspects of the successful Classics app including the background pattern which is a pixel exact copy of the wooden background found in the original app.
And he doesn’t stop there, Ferrera also stole the page flip sounds and the app’s feature list from Classics. For good measure he also lifted the bio snippet of Jane Austen word-for-word from the Wikipedia entry.
Shameful.
Apple really needs to add a “report this app” button to all apps in the App Store for cases like this.
Update: Ferrera has added a note to the top of his App Store description that reads “Coming soon new graphical art.” Gee, ya think?
Image: Ars Technica
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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