Apple has removed a number of copy-cat apps from the App Store, specifically plagiaristic titles such as Tiny Birds, Temple Jump and Numbers With Friends created replicated by developer Anton Sinelnikov. Apple has made similar moves against shady developers in the past, taking down 1,000 apps in 2008 after they noticed fake 5-star reviews in the App Store.

However, the problem is greater than just a few scam apps from a few shady developer. Most of us know that these titles copy from the real deal, specifically Tiny Wings, Temple Run and Words With Friends, but new users might have a hard time telling them apart, and get a nasty surprise after they’ve drop down money only to discover they’ve been conned into buying a fake app. That creates a bad experience and might make them wary of the App Store in the future.

For legitimate developers, they lose out on the income. It’s difficult and expensive enough, especially for independent developers, to get a hit title on the App Store. When and if they finally do have a hit on their hands, they now have to worry about scammers trying to steal their sales, damage their brand, and turn off their customers. Worse yet, according to developer Kode80, scammers rely on the outrage that follows their copy-cat apps to actually gain attention and drive sales.

Should Apple be doing more to prevent copy-cat titles from hitting the App Store in the first place, and should they be making it easier to report when they do? Apple long ago appointed themselves as gate-keepers and curators, but when it comes to copyright issues, they’ve followed the common practice of waiting for a complaint and then leaving the developers involved to fight it out. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it lets bigger, more established brands bully competitors out of the App Store.

Likewise, Zynga, one of the biggest gaming companies on the planet, has been accused of copying NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower with their new game, Dream Heights. Dream Heights doesn’t present itself as a copy-cat in the App Store the way Sinelnikov’s did, with similar naming and branding intended to cause confusion, but it does duplicate the look, feel, and gameplay of a popular independent game.

Where should the line be drawn, and should Apple be the ones drawing it?

Source: The Guardian, TechCrunch; image via @tapbot_paul

Apple has snuck a couple of new features into their apps pages in iTunes, specifically an information popup with tabbed content remarkably similar to how Google presents Android Market details. We know that in the past Android has been accused of copying Apple, but like Notification Center this time it looks like Apple is the one caught with their fingers in the copy jar.

The iTunes pop-up windows are activated by a new information icon which will appear when hovering over an app icon. The purpose of this is to make things easier — the information appears right in front of you now without having to click through and load a new page. Movies and TV shows are also getting in on the action, although they’ll have a play button to preview a clip of the video instead.

Source: MacRumors; @sdw

The Samsung Galaxy Ace, a new entry level Android phone, looks an awful lot like the iPhone 3G/iPhone 3GS. Samsung has a history of copying Apple’s design so this really shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Motorola and HTC both do far better jobs at providing real hardware alternatives to the iPhone, but Samsung’s growth in recent years sadly shows there’s probably a bigger market for Android lovers who want iPhones — even retro iPhones — not running iOS.

Kudos to Samsung. Instead of putting a lot of money and effort into design and marketing, they can spend it rapidly updating their existing phones to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Oh, wait…

Source: Cult of Mac

Samsung has seemingly stepped up its spat with Apple by releasing an ad that not only resembles an iPad ad but incredulously even uses one of the same girls that Apple has used in one of its ads.

The new Samsung ad is for its Galaxy Tab device, it shows a young girl using the device for various tasks like reading and gaming.  Apple used the same girl originally in one of its iPhone 4S advertisements. The Samsung ad is definitely shot in a very similar way to an Apple ad too. This is either one amazing coincidence or more likely Samsung is going out of its way to provoke and copy Apple. The iPhone 4S ad is below so you can see the same actor in both ads.

Source: TNW

Tap and hold is a multi-touch gesture that Apple introduced into Mobile Safari in iPhone OS 2.0. It triggered a popup a menu that allowed users to Save Image to the camera roll.

In iPhone OS 3.0 it’s been given a bit more power. Now, in addition to selecting blocks of text for Copy and Paste, when you tap and hold on a link, you trigger the same type of popup as the Save Image function, but instead you get the URL path for the link and options to Open (in the same page/tab), Open in New Page (tab), or Copy (the URL path).

If the link is also an image, you get all of the above options, with Save Image combined into the mix.

May not seem as sexy as MMS or Stereo Bluetooth but we heart this new functionality. It will make our lives easier, which is what OS updates should do.