While Breath may seem like a manna from the heaven for millions of stressed netizens it is eerily similar to a App called ‘My Breathe’ developed by Ben Erez. Erez claimed that Apple is actually stealing his idea, and the app that will soon be available for all users updating to watchOS 3 is actually a clone of his app already available in the store. What lends credence to Erez’s claims is that Apple is calling its new feature as Breathe, just like his existing app, which he says, is because the two are extremely similar and provide the same functionality. “We’ve had the same concept, same spelling, similar functionality in the App store for phone and watch for over a year. We built the app because the existing mindfulness apps were insufficient in that they all focus on intense sessions of 5-20 minutes, once per day. We wanted a mindfulness experience that was felt throughout the day in smaller bits,” Erez told BGR. Erez added that living proof of this super ripoff by Apple is the released date of his App and Apple’s Breath feature. His App was released on April 2015 and has already clocked 6500 downloads, he says. Apple is not new to ripoff accusations. F.lux, an application that provided functionality similar to Apple’s already-available iOS feature Night Shift, was removed from the store for no clear reason before reappearing at a later time, with Apple eventually deciding to offer identical features with the release of iOS 9.3. Apple has refused to comment on Erez’s claims or give him compensation for ripping of his concept.
