--- Title: How Apple Destroyed Mobile Freeware Date: 2020-08-14 Category: cyber Status: published Tags: big tech, antitrust, feudalism Ad: Why there's no good calculator for the iPad anfscd: A rant about calculators redirect: blog/2020/08/14/why-theres-no-good-calculator-for-the-ipad/ --- I have a memory from when I was very young of my dad doing the finances. He would sit in his office with a computer on one side and an old-fashioned adding machine on the desk. While he worked on the spreadsheet on the computer, he would use the adding machine for quick calculations. {: title="this one is from GIS but it looks just this"} A year or two ago I had a very similar experience. I walked upstairs to the office and there he was, at the same desk, spreadsheet on one side and calculator on the other. Except it was 2020, and he had long ago replaced the adding machine with an iPad. There was really one noticeable difference between the iPad and the old adding machine: the iPad was awful at the job. My dad was using some random calculator app that was an awkwardly scaled iPhone app with an ugly flashing banner add at the bottom. So of course I said "Hang on, why are you using that ugly thing? This has got to be the worst calculator ever, just use the built-in one." Except, as I found out, there isn't a built-in calculator app for the iPad. If you want a calculator for your iPad, you've got to rely on the App Store. And boy, does the app store not deliver. I must have spent twenty minutes looking for a good calculator app, but every single one was either loaded with ads or cost money[^att]. [^att]: At the time. Now, there's plenty of software that's worth money, but a simple calculator isn't. Simple math operations are kinda the baseline for computers. And, it turns out, in an even halfway-functional software market, people will be [climbing over each other](https://listoffreeware.com/list-best-free-calculators/) trying to make the best calculator program and release it for free. So why isn't that happening here? "Adding things" isn't an exotic use case; it's not like nobody has thought of it before. And the iPad isn't some new market; it's a mature space that talented people have been developing for going on [more than ten years now](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2010/03/05iPad-Available-in-US-on-April-3/). No, the culprit here isn't developers or users, it's Apple. ## Apple's Interference The only way to install programs on your iPhone is through the App Store[^appstoreonly]. Distribution is a "service" Apple provides members of [its development platform](https://developer.apple.com/programs/whats-included/), and one it can revoke at any time for any reason. So, if you want to write software people can use, there's just one company who can "allow" that. (In order to use Apple's development software, you also have to do your work on Apple hardware using a licensed copy of Apple's OS X.) Currently, the "privilege" of belonging to the Apple Developer Program costs a whopping $100/yr for individuals, or up to $300/yr for enterprises. [^appstoreonly]: There are a few exceptions to this rule. Apple developers -- and developers only -- can "sideload" programs on their own device using their ID, but this can't be used to distribute programs. There are also enterprise programs, i.e. apps for employees of the company only -- but this requires a special, expensive license with Apple. No matter who you are, Apple tightly controls what you can and can't do with your phone.  This is where the problem lies. Unlike with other development, developers are losing money out of the gate. As opposed to the negligible cost of hosting software yourself (or distributing it for free on platforms like GitHub), cost becomes a very real factor for Apple developers. Developers *must* be extracting at *least* $100/yr from their customers, or they're losing a *lot* of money. This dynamic -- caused entirely by Apple's policy -- essentially removes the possibility for quality freeware altogether. That means no decent calculator.  And extracting $100/yr with your calculator app isn't easy. One of the "features" of the Apple Developer Program is, [in their words](https://developer.apple.com/programs/whats-included/), allowing you to "keep 70% of your sales proceeds." So, even if you *do* make $100 in a year, Apple is keeping 30% of that.[^30] Unless you're confident you'll be able to get hundreds of purchases a year, you need to charge your users a subscription fee or make the app a pretty expensive one-time purchase. [^30]: There is a currently unfolding story about action Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, is taking action to protest the 30% cut. You can find [plenty of good reading about that](https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/14/fortnites-safety-and-fairness-ban-actually-hurts-users-and-developers/), but the story is breaking.  Apple likes this system so much they're extending it to all their platforms, including home computers. With the (relatively) new [code signing requirements](https://developer.apple.com/support/code-signing/) and [notarization](https://www.macrumors.com/2019/12/23/apple-mac-app-notarization-february-2020/) for desktop apps, Apple wants to monopolize their desktop applications, too. (This move caused all *sorts* of problems, and continues to haunt the Mac ecosystem, but I won't get into examples of that here. They're easy to find.)