I'm a solo dev, and I wanted to share a recent experience as a case study on the current state of the App Store and indie development.

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.

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.

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/

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.

> 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.

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

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

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

The end game for software moats is patents and proprietary data

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.

> 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?

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.

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

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)

既然要公布与众，就要接受这种结果不是吗？

> 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.

DMCA the ones using your text?

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.

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.

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

Any idea where these copycat devs are from?

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.