Just when I’d thought I’d found an app for editing plain text files on iOS they lock me out after opening 5 files. This is unacceptable! I refuse to pay anyone to be able to edit plain text files on my general purpose computer. I will pay for services that innovate, I will not pay for services that provide such fundamental computing capabilities! This is outrageous!
+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
@rlamacraft write it yourself then? everybody expecting that software and services should be free beer is one reason why big tech is so successful and fucking everyone.
anotger question is, why does your "general purpose computer" not ship with an editor? :)
@bonifartius well yeah, I think it’s on the operating system to provide at least a very basic editor, which Apple just doesn’t do. After that there’s room for discussion about whether I need additional functionality that’s worth paying for, and whether there’s space for developers to innovate in new ways, but I don’t think it’s unfair to feel entitled to not need to pay for functionality comparable to Ed
@rlamacraft then the whole thing is likely apples fault instead that of the editor devs, who have to pay apple store extortion money :)
@rlamacraft but, they build something which you seem to have found useful, so it may be fair to pay them, even if it is not innovative. one pays for a burger too even if it not haute cuisine :)
@bonifartius Software is different though — you make the thing once and it benefits infinite people and there are no material costs. Plus, it just feels like the functionality is too fundamental to necessitate paying for. How long before we have to pay to browse files on disk? Or to assemble machine code? Like, I just want to append UTF-8 encoded characters to a block file on disk…
@rlamacraft but thats again a problem of apples ecosystem. somewhere else you'd just have vi or whatever. i guess the developer of an editor app for ios can be happy if he breaks even :/
@bonifartius oh absolutely — the fact that you have to pay Apple to even distribute free apps is problematic (the main hurdle to me trying to build my own). I don’t know whether donations often cover that annual cost? But in any case I have nothing against paid apps, just when they try to sell something isn’t new or novel or free apps that block basic functionality. I think the right way is to enhance the experience with paid for