Your best moat against low effort copycats? Stamina. Keep your app in the store, update it regularly, add support for new devices, add new features if appropriate, keep marketing and selling it, and keep polishing it. The copycats don't want any part of that. They want to make a quick buck with as little work as possible, hence the copying and plagiarizing. In a matter of weeks or months, unless they're making bank from it, their app will start to rot. If your app has staying power, then you will eventually rise above them all. And when you have another good idea down the road, cross promote between your own apps (but don't be obnoxious about it), and you'll begin to grow a user base who trust you. That's as good a moat against copycats as you could ever get.

I can’t decide if it’s depressing or not that so much of the web and the discussion on it now revolves around subjects almost entirely fabricated by AI. The OP is using ChatGPT to write, then replying with ChatGPT, all about an app he built with ChatGPT. I get that we live in the AI era but there’s something sad about real people spending their time engaging with something a machine just spit out. In this case, the OP isn’t even the main character in his own story, he’s just the fingers copying and pasting code and words. An intermediary. We’re not getting authentic interactions from him or discussing something he actually created with his own skills.

It’s like the teacher who stays up all night grading papers, giving thoughtful feedback and carefully reading each one, only to learn most were generated by AI.

And yes I know about dead internet theory. But it’s posts like these that really make me miss the 90s and early 2000s where the learning was real and so were the people.

It's not clear to me what you'd want the moat to be. It can't be the idea, because you don't hold ownership over the concept of checking USB device speed. The marketing copy is pretty clearly something you could DMCA but also it seems unlikely people are buying a USB connection tester because of the dev's origin story.

Nearly, if not all, every response by the OP is using ChatGPT. I'm familiar with it's common phrasing.

Common openers like: "You've hit on the", "You're right...",

as well as "exact right questions", "well-put response", "really appreciate", "I'm intentionally", "incredibly kind and insightful", "perfectly articulated", "incredibly thoughtful", <something> "is spot on", "completely agree".

ChatGPT has a tendency to qualify every verb with an adverb in-every-single-response as well as adding adjectives to various nouns to sound more intelligent.

edit: And looking at the Linux source for the Python script -- many tell-tale signs that it was 'vibe-coded' using ChatGPT. Comments for very obvious lines (most devs don't comment obvious things in-line).

Including this snippet that I always see in ChatGPT provided code:

# --- Your Existing Code (with minor adjustments) ---

The best moat is you.

Study an audience for their pains and worldview and what they buy. Earn their trust through writing and freebies. Then they will want to buy because it's from you specifically.

I can recommend https://30x500.com/

App cloning has existed forever. When Flappy Bird took off you could find dozens of similar clones. You could buy app templates from various websites to spin your own version of Flappy Bird. This has always been an issue for solo or indie apps because the apps are simpler, require couple of days to code and don't have money to fight copyright lawsuits.

There are app shops based in Eastern Europe and Asia - which can get an app up and running in matter of days. Some even sell done for you (DFY) services where they will find hot apps and clone it for you for a fixed amount. The idea being they get a steady stream of income and it is up to the buyer to ensure the app takes off and makes money over and above the amount paid to these services. This always mean apps have 7-day free trial with a subscription tacked on.

As for app curation Apple's interest is in having more apps and more developer revenue. It is same nearly every marketplace type sites.

When an app is simple and commoditized then moat depends on all of the things you mentioned.

Marketing is often a differentiator when you build a brand. For example there are tons of personal development coaches out there. But you know only few like Tony Robbins etc because of the marketing blitz and the brand name.

You can build a brand by actively participating with your users such that they prefer your app over the clones. Find ways to get into an Apple featured lists.

You can add features. But this might run into an issue of a bloated app with features no wants to use.

> My app's value is its simplicity

With or without the advent LLMs, it's an uphill battle to build a moat around a small (but nice!) wrapper around the output of a command-line tool shipped with MacOS.

> what is the moat?

Increasingly, and sadly, it's online services with a monthly subscription and no data portability. Get users in with a generous free tier and pull up the drawbridge so they can't get out easily.

I thought Apple would have caught them stealing your copy being they have this amazing process and all. Guess that’s all a myth.

The only way to win copycats and competitors is to just execute your own vision. The best example I know is Wolfram Mathematica. ~35-40 years of incremental development guided by the same "product owner/visionary", and there are no real competitors left and it is nearly impossible to build competing product now.

Clone it yourself 3 or 4 times. Rather than getting 1/6 of the traffic, you’ll get 5/10 of the traffic.

First, I’ll say congratulations! Sounds like you made something people really like, which is exciting and rare. Think of all the apps on product hunt that never budge. That’s awesome.

The business cycle from idea->software product->competitors is only getting shorter.

With this sort of app, I see popularity as your “moat”…

If Reddit is the top of your marketing funnel, win there. When I install a Mac app, I generally go with the one that’s most popular on the Mac apps subreddit, and has the most reviews / downloads, and has the biggest community. If everybody is recommending it, that’s generally good enough for me to try it. In that sense, once you have the lead, the winners keep winning, and the competitors eventually move on and do other stuff.

Again, congrats. It’s so cool to have built something people like.

The end game for software moats is patents and proprietary data

I built an iOS app that remotely connects to an android device and pushes an apk in a few days with claude code. I dont know anything about adb, iOS and Swift is alien to me.

So to answer your question, LLMs have lowered the bar substantially

I have seen this post a few hours ago on Reddit. Now I see it here at HN… Now I assume it is just a way for somebody to bring a lot of attention to their app. Nothing else. OP has a great way to promote, upvote their posts.

Just to explain, their app can be written in 24 hours, maybe in 4 hours with some vibe coding. This app does not provide more information than System Information app on macOS. And we are talking about it on HN. So yes, this is clearly to bring attention to the app, and get more installs.

I am surprised this submission has not been flagged.

Personally I works at least submit a DCMA takedown of the plagiarizing.

> In the last two weeks, at least five near-identical apps have appeared on the App Store.

This has always been a problem, TBH. I completely stopped releasing anything on any store after my first experience on Android, where I created an actual novel approach to a personal problem experienced by many, and found clones within the first month of it getting traction.

That was in 2014!

> My app's value is its simplicity. In an environment where simple, successful ideas can be replicated this quickly, what is the moat? Is it brand, speed of innovation, marketing, or something else?

"Something else", but I don't know what that could be other than "marketing dollars".

I'm struggling with this right now, having a (what I think is) a novel approach to using LLMs in a way that improves the practical performance on complex tasks while simultaneously reducing tokens[1], but it's such an obvious approach that it can be replicated by a CC-driven process in (probably) a week or so, for the cost of a $200/m subscription.

So until I have some idea of how to proceed in a manner that lets me retain whatever customers I can get from cold-start, I've put my release on hold and simply use it myself for now.

My best idea thus far (and probably what everyone will be doing soon), is to engage individual businesses and sell only enterprise licenses of this.

This doesn't make the problem go away, but it means that a truly useful product will be under the radar to at least make back some of the development cost before clones appear.

Two other things to keep in mind:

1. Posting on HN used to be a good way to get traction. That is no longer the case - your idea will be shamelessly vibe-coded and marketed to an already collected and curated set of leads before the discussion is even archived!

2. The traditional startup advice about release early+often then iterate on PMF no longer applies: as you asymptotically approach PMF, the clones are going to be only a few hours behind you. Todya, as things stand, I dare not attempt to find PMF in public - it will be done with my carefully curated list of leads, privately.

==========

[1] No, it's not caching!

All the predictable “suck it up” comments from the peanut gallery (it’s easy isn’t it when it’s not your app huh?) are missing the point: Apple charges a 30% tax on the App Store and yet the moderation and curation is basically non-existent. No you shouldn’t just be able to post a cheap clone piggybacking on someone’s success. Yes they should police that. And yes of course they should police clear IP theft.

I shared a book I was working on in a Facebook group I admin (with 10k members). It was just a book that I wanted to exist and read myself. I published it a week later. Then... little by little, similar books started appearing on Amazon. I didn't market it so much, so while mine was published first, it has way less traction than the others. It's a bit frustrating, but that's just the way the world is. People are leaches.

Like others have mentioned, though, your best bet is to just keep going. Keep pushing updates. Try to get reviews. Chances are, if they're copying your app, they're copying other apps. They'll never be able to keep up!

Developing for MacOS I would be really scared about being "sherlocked":

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)

> what is the moat? Is it brand, speed of innovation, marketing, or something else?

You could try and develop a brand and market it but I don’t think that would go well for something like this. Best case maybe you can game the rankings to stay number one but you’re probably up against professional app copiers.

So your moat is speed of innovation. Your basic app is copied. What new feature will enable you to stay ahead and drive sales? Or perhaps no feature can do that as the crowd grows so it’s on to the next app that doesn’t yet exist. What’s your new pain point?

I don't see an issue with copying your app if they copy what your app does.

You didn't invent the need for this info, you were just the first one to put it on the app store.

Copying your story and (I assume) graphics is definitely a reason to be angry. Like others have said, look into the possibility of DCMA takedowns.

> The app became unexpectedly successful, hitting the top 100 paid utilities

What's your definition of "successful"? Mac App Store volume is quite low, especially with upfront paid apps. You're likely averaging only a few unit sales per day, right? Maybe only one unit per day, and even that might be a generous estimate.

> A few open-source clones have also appeared on GitHub

Is your app open source? If so, that's probably why you're getting copycats.

> It seems that derivative apps with plagiarized descriptions and app elements are being approved without issue. Does this signal a shift in App curation?

No. Apple's so-called "curation" has always been terrible.

OP, no offense, but your replies sound exactly like sycophantic AI, where every response starts with over the top praise.

There are two problems: 1. The Apple monopoly. They don’t have to care about indie devs because they own the market and are above the law. 2. Global marketplace. You can’t sue a nameless company in India for copyright infringement.

Apple's review process is mostly random and there's no hidden policy you can figure out.

IMO you should drop the DMCA hammer on the clones.

Just report them for copyright infringement. Apple will take the blatant cases down. The copy-cats that don't infringe are just a side effect of success, so... congrats?

Regarding Reddit, it's a great place to find users but also copy-cats. Stick to posting "I built a thing that solves a problem" and avoid the bragging "I made $N in N days" indie-hacker style. The latter doesn't help the app anyways.

Moat: there isn't one for a utility someone can build in a few days. It can still be a good business - you seem to have marketing savvy which is a big part of it.

One suggestion, on your homepage - the "See USB Connection Information in Action" the screenshots are much too small. Nice looking app!

How many hours did you put into this app? How much money have you made from it?

If it really can be written in a couple days (with or without AI) I would say you're lucky to make what? A few thousand dollars? (I'm assuming a top 100 app that got talked about sold at least 1000 copies for at least a few dollars each)

I had the same experience with an android app on play store a few years ago (when LLMs didn't exist yet) so this is nothing new.

As you said, I didn't mind others creating apps with the same idea, the issue is when someone takes your app, decompiles it, injects ads (mine is ad-free) or changes the author name, and publishes it. And I know this was the case because the app was a verbatim copy (except for the ads), bugs included.

At first I sent some DMCA, it usually worked, but not always. If you have time and you are bored do it, but keep in mind that if someone tries to fight back you'll have issues, and at that point you need to consider if your time fighting is worth more than the app itself (on my case the app was free so...no).

What I did learn is that plagiarism is something that some countries accept socially. In these countries taking a successful thing and copying it is seen as a "positive" achievement (like "hey, look, I was able to do the same as this other guy! I'm so smart!"). I understand this mentality, as long as only the idea is copied, but when assets or the whole app is copy/pasted, without giving any credit...yeah that's when you get angry.

when app store opened on ios i created a pomodoro app. I got some sort legal notice from creator of pomodoro technique ( some italian dude). I took my app down immediately.

DMCA the ones using your text?

既然要公布与众，就要接受这种结果不是吗？

Can you build a moat on someone else's property?

Cool, and good luck with it.

Any chance we’ll get it cross platform so it works on iPhone as well?

Listen, schedule some time and sit down to meditate on what I’m about tell you:

You have discovered first-hand an undeniable property of the human dynamic. There are elements of the human race that do not operate with integrity, and the sooner you digest this, the better.

It was hard for me to believe when I first saw it happen to me as well.

Humans will copy everything, the career path you take, the side projects you do, the way you dress, the way you talk, the major you pick in college, your style, your values, there is literally nothing beyond theft.

We constantly hear how there is a hiring crunch, but the reality is, people are piling into tech the same way they piled into IT in the late 90s. It’s a copy cat culture at best, unabashed ripoff/theft at worst.

They will copy you, follow you, steal from you. You won’t ever believe it unless you literally experience it first hand.

I may have a million people on HN try to counter what I’m saying, but I know for a fucking fact that, you, OP, will agree with what I’m saying because you just experienced it.

They’ll copy and steal from you, down to the very fucking scraps of a USB-C speed tester app. Down to the fucking scraps. Not undermining your product, but these type of people will copy your own personal diary and pass it off.

People steal. It’s much more common than you think. I lean heavy left, but I know just how much lying lots of Americans do to get government assistance. Thievery is beyond anything we can make sense of, it’s occurring on a grand scale. Entire personalities and looks are wholesale copied, repurposed, and resold all over social media.

There are entire roles at companies that collect money and credit for things no one with any integrity would partake in (project managers, a certain breed of managers, other developers). People cheat through college. People cheat on their spouses.

Thieving has gone so far that it’s second nature. No one even bats an eye at the fact that all of YouTube and TikTok is wholesale theft of each others entire persona, act and style. We actually believe this is normal.

You’ve discovered nothing short of one of the faces of mankind. All people are not just “good” and all people are not just “trying to do the right thing”. Large amounts of people are flawed and corrupt.

Now you know. I’m sorry, truly. Stay safe, keep your ideas to yourself and execute well and try to cover the rat holes these critters crawl through.

And most of all, don’t become a thief yourself.

—-

I actually 100% believe you when you say they even copied the origin story.

[dead]

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Any idea where these copycat devs are from?