My partner in the Bombora project sent me a link to another app in the Weather category on iTunes. We’re constantly looking at what our peers are doing – some have some great ideas and there’s nothing wrong with being pushed forward by someone else’s solution to a coding or UI problem.
This morning’s link was different. It seems that another app, NOAA Buoy Data Reader, went ahead with an interface that seems very, very familiar. I’ve posted some comparison shots below – our app on the left, theirs on the right. They didn’t even bother to use different colors for the status icons.
What comes next? I don’t know, we’re discussing internally. That said, it’s just bad form to rip off someone else’s idea and there’s a big difference between being inspired by other good work and just being lazy.
On a final note – a UIToolbar and a UITabBar on the same screen? Really? Ughh. They didn’t copy that from us.
