New Apple software treads on apps, but developers untroubled

Apple's overhaul of the software for Macs and iPhones will add dozens of new capabilities, like group messaging, reminder lists and the ability to save Web articles for later reading.

But a number of those functions are already available through outside applications – some of which have been quite lucrative for the people who developed them.

The company's presentation of the new features Monday set off a flurry of discussion around the Web about the impact on the app developer business, which has generated a vast catalog of useful, quirky and entertaining programs and has helped propel Apple's profits.



But analysts who follow the mobile industry say Apple's behavior is not unusual in the ever-evolving technology business. Developers, they say, take a risk whenever they are developing a service on another company's software platform.

"As an apps developer, you have to figure that at some point, Apple could just add in your feature," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner.

He said Apple's upgrades were not necessarily a death sentence for the affected developers.

"It doesn't make those apps obsolete but challenges them to push their apps one step further than Apple's," he said.

Developers were putting a positive spin on what Apple's news might mean for their businesses.

Steve Martocci, one of the founders of the company behind a group messaging application called GroupMe, said Apple's plan to introduce a messaging service called iMessenger positions the two companies as rivals. But Martocci said he did not see Apple as a direct competitor because GroupMe users are not required to have an Apple device, as with iMessenger.

He said the company might even integrate iMessenger into its service: "It could potentially be another way for our users to consume and send messages."

Besides, he said, upgrades due next month will add new features that will broaden the app's appeal.

Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, a popular service and app that lets people save articles online to read later, said he was not unnerved by the news that Apple was planning to release a similar feature in Safari, its Web browser.

"I don't see it as an evil move or a rip-off," he said.

Arment said he was confident that his service, which includes social networking features that let people see what their friends are saving to read, was distinct enough to keep his customer base growing.

"They didn't clone the entire app," he said. "It's a very small subset of what the application does."

Arment, who sells his application for $4.99, said he hoped Apple's new feature would draw attention to the usefulness of such a service.

"My biggest problem isn't convincing people to buy my application; it's communicating what it is to them," he said. "If Apple shows people it's useful to save things to read later, it could really help me."

Arment, who said there were close to 2 million people using Instapaper, said the Safari feature could be a boon to his business.

"Fewer than 1 percent of iOS users have downloaded Instapaper," he said, referring to the Apple operating system. "If I can capture even a sliver of the entire iOS market, that's all I need to keep my business going."