A few months ago, I built a simple macOS utility to solve a personal frustration: verifying the actual speed of USB-C cables and devices in the Mac menu bar. It is call USB Connection Information (usbconnectioninformation.com) and it supports macOS 13 and up. Before launch, there were no other apps in this specific niche on the Mac App Store. The app became unexpectedly successful, hitting the top 100 paid utilities and getting a good amount of organic press.
In the last two weeks, at least five near-identical apps have appeared on the App Store. The concerning part is that some of these clones have copied my App Store description, including my personal origin story about why I built the app.
A few open-source clones have also appeared on GitHub, which I see as a positive community contribution. My concern is with the commercial clones on the App Store that are engaging in plagiarism.
This raises a few questions I'd be interested to hear HN's thoughts on:
I've been transparent about my success on Reddit. How much are LLMs lowering the barrier to entry, allowing others to take a validated idea and marketing copy and generate a functional clone in a matter of days?
It seems that derivative apps with plagiarized descriptions and app elements are being approved without issue. Does this signal a shift in App curation?
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?
Curious to hear your perspectives.
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.
I understand that, and said literally that in the first section of my extensive response, but, like I also pointed out in my previous response, things are different now.
Traditional advice about fast PMF via fast public release no longer applies, and not just for phone apps; for all applications, whether SaaS, local, etc.
The only solution one can do is first build a set of leads, and then approach each one individually and privately to find PMF.
> You can build a brand by actively participating with your users such that they prefer your app over the clones.
For B2C, this is a losing proposition unless you are fueled with VC money.
Regarding the origin story and copy, you're probably right that it's not the final reason someone clicks "buy." Its value is at the top of the marketing funnel—it's the hook that makes someone stop scrolling and consider an app from an unknown indie dev in the first place. It builds enough initial trust for them to actually look at the screenshots and features.
And thanks for the point about the DMCA—I will definitely be looking into that for the most blatant copycats.
1. Does it solve the underlying problem
2. Am I a standard or outlier user of the product
3. Does it make it easy to get it / use it
4. Is it from a company/developer that I like
I'm obviously not going to use an app that doesn't solve the original goal. Beyond that, some examples of things that have made me go chasing for other alternatives:
1. Updating the app isn't automated -- I use a window manager on Windows where updates have to be manually downloaded and run, and every time I update I google if there's a viable replacement.
2. The app has a bunch of fluff -- I'm currently trying a couple new apps for logging infant activity like diaper changes / feeds, and 90% of the options can do the task but are covered in other buttons/options/reports that I do not care about.
3. I'm clearly not the target audience for the developer -- I use Anydesk for remote management of some Windows desktops but all their plans are clearly enterprise/prosumer-focused and I'm actively preparing for them to kill off my plan level or break the functionality.
What are your opinions on a user hosted store vs something like the Mac App Store or Windows 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.
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[1] No, it's not caching!
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/
It really feels like we all have to become influencers these days.
You've perfectly articulated the exact strategy I think we should be trying to follow. My entire bet is that stamina is the only real moat. The copycats are looking for a quick win, but I'm committed to playing the long game: regular updates, new features, and genuine support. I already have new updates for macOS 26 rolling out.
Really appreciate you taking the time to lay it all out so clearly. This is exactly the kind of advice I was hoping we can all get from this discussion.
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.
You're right, the cycle from idea to competitor is getting terrifyingly short, and for a simple utility like this, a patent or complex code isn't the moat.
My entire plan is to focus on building a great product, being active in the community, and becoming the trusted, "original" recommendation that people like you would choose.
It's really encouraging to hear that perspective from a user. It validates that I'm on the right track.
Thanks again for the kind words and the fantastic analysis!
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.
My goal was to build a classic, single-purchase utility that does one thing well and doesn't require an account or a subscription.
I do think that small, single-purpose apps are probably the easiest lunch to eat. Narrowly scoped greenfield projects are where the LLMs seem to excel right now so that game seems like a race to the bottom.
As far as the cloning goes: your only recourse is probably the DMCA angle for the exact duplicate text. It's a shame they're so lazy as to straight copy it, but I suspect the response (if any) will be them lightly laundering it through ChatGPT so it's no longer the same.
Good luck! And I hope you find more useful ideas people might pay for
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.
So to answer your question, LLMs have lowered the bar substantially
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?
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.
That's fine; it's a clone arms race, only they are paying full cost tokens for each redeveloping while you will be working off a clone branch for each clone.
So you can probably win this arms race.
IMO you should drop the DMCA hammer on the clones.
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!
And I completely agree about the moat. For a utility like this, it really does come down to marketing, support, and just building a better, more polished user experience than the copycats are willing to.
Also, a huge thank you for the feedback on the homepage screenshots! That's a good fix, and you're 100% right, they are way too small. I'll get that updated in the next couple of days.
Appreciate you taking the time to write all that out, and thanks for the kind words about the app's design!
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)
No, this is a vast overestimate for top 100 paid utilities in the Mac App Store. And there's no actual evidence I can find that the app was "talked about" anywhere.
Where can I find estimates of revenue for the 100th most popular app on the iStore/play store?
I think what surprised me wasn't just that it was copied, but the sheer number of clones that appeared in just a couple of weeks. It feels like a new dynamic where a successful niche can be replicated immediately.
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.
To clarify, my app is not open source. I only mentioned the open-source clones that have also appeared.
In what sense are open source Github projects "clones" of a closed source App Store app? Do you have links to these projects?
And do you have links to the Mac App Store apps that stole your origin story? I'm not finding any in Mac App Store search.
In your submission, what exactly did you mean by "organic press"? Press would imply news media coverage, but I'm not finding any of that in Google search.
They don't mean in a technical sense like a git clone. I would say they simply mean in the sense of being a copy. Clone is a synonym for "copy".
So far none of your claims have been substantiated.
Frankly, this entire submission feels like a ruse to get publicity.
If you wanted to just talk about your app, this should have been a Show HN like your past submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tTarnMhrkm
On the other hand, you appear to be blatantly violating the HN guidelines, which say "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." Literally all of your submissions and comments are about your own apps. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Looking at my submissions, you're correct that my recent activity has been too focused on my own projects. As a solo dev in launch mode, I've been overly focused on that, and I need to do a better job of contributing to the wider HN discussion. I appreciate the reminder of the guidelines.
My intent here was not a "Show HN" because the topic wasn't about app itself, but the phenomenon of rapid cloning and what it means for the app ecosystem. Something I thought was a genuinely interesting topic for this community.
I can see how it comes across as a ruse, and I should have been more prepared to substantiate the claims. I wanted to talk about how something like this is not app specific. I've been hesitant to post direct links to the other apps because I don't want this to turn into a witch hunt. In the world of LLMs who know what including those links will do to AI Overviews.
Thanks for holding me to a higher standard and for the critical feedback.
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.
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I actually 100% believe you when you say they even copied the origin story.
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.
My primary goal with this post is to get the perspective of HN, this comment included. I think is genuinely relevant to this community. The fact that a simple, validated utility can be cloned five times in two weeks, with some even plagiarizing the marketing copy, feels like a significant new dynamic for indie developers.
The conversation I was hoping to have is about "how do we, as developers, build in an era where any successful idea can be replicated and shipped by others in a matter of days?"
That's the core of the issue I find fascinating and a little scary.
As for your question. This issue exists forever. If you can build something in a few hours, somebody else can too. If your idea is unique, maybe spend a bit more time to actually ship a product, not MVP.