When a small business has an idea it is their whole world. They think about it day and night and have to constantly improve upon it or die. A small idea can sustain a small business. A small idea to a large corporation though is a blip on the radar, and so has little incentive to continue being improved. This is now a tiny feature in a big company, mainly added for a keynote announcement and for marketing purposes, with little value to their bottom line down the road.
Prediction: Going forward I expect NightShift to improve at about the same rate as Finder.
F.lux was out for years before the big players finally realized what a good idea it was. It was copied without the slightest attribution or thank you. It may be legal, however not very ethical and rather dishonorable if you ask me. This path leads to a future where only big players exist. Invention by individuals is disincentivized if it will just get copied at the first sign of success.
That's not right. Apple also many times doesn't not iterate as much as the independent developer would. But they do effectively kill off the small guy's work nonetheless.
That doesn't sit right with me.
Regarding ideas. People say that about so many things especially with features the big guys take. With hindsight it is done even more.
Long-time Mac users have a term for this: Sherlocking[0]
It seems far more likely that a company without an obvious business plan might run out of money trying to sell software that seems to be an unnecessary duplication of features built in to the OS than for Apple to eliminate a feature they've only recently introduced and promoted.
I'm hoping neither happen, and I wish the f.lux team the best, but I definitely think you have the odds the wrong way around.
[0] https://carpeaqua.com/2013/10/18/stop-sherlocking-yourself/
Night Shift is a simple concept and there’s not a huge amount of different ways to do it. It’s something I consider analogous to copy and paste, a trashcan, or a clock in your dock.