Apple has copied some of the most popular apps in the App Store
Of course Apple copies features—Camera+&#x27;s volume button shutter was initially blocked from the App Store then wound up in the first-party Camera app. But I don&#x27;t buy the premise of the article.<p>There were dozens of flashlight apps in the store when iPhone OS 2 came out, so the OS can never have a built-in flashlight feature?<p>That article&#x27;s examples of &quot;copied&quot; features are also straightforward evolutions of existing ones that have been around for years, but the author doesn&#x27;t mention that.<p>Sidecar, ostensibly a clone of Duet Display, builds off of the ability to wirelessly extend the display to an Apple TV since Mavericks (2013). Regarding Clue, the second release of the Health app added reproductive health tracking in iOS 9 (2015). Certainly at the time engineers and product managers would have been thinking about the future direction of these features.<p>In fact, it strikes me that Apple is _very_slow_ at making obvious improvements, creating opportunities for third-party developers to make plenty of money. Those ad-infested, 100 LoC flashlight apps made cash for 5 years before the feature became part of the OS.<p>Whether copied or not, I&#x27;m extremely skeptical that App Store analytics are influencing OS features. It&#x27;s never been Apple&#x27;s style to be analytics-driven.