Yesterday, we reported on a macOS app called Calendar 2 that seemingly added cryptocurrency mining as an alternative to paying for premium features. At the time, the app’s developers, Qbix, had made the decision to remove the feature from the app.
The company now tells us, however, that Apple ended up pulling the app from the Mac App Store for violating its guidelines…
Qbix CEO Greg Magarshak explained in a statement to 9to5Mac that shortly after the story broke yesterday, Apple removed Calendar 2 from the App Store for violating guideline 2.4.2, which says apps should be designed to be power efficient.
Design your app to use power efficiently. Apps should not rapidly drain battery, generate excessive heat, or put unnecessary strain on device resources.
Following the app’s removal from the App Store, Magarshak says that Apple worked with him to put the app back on the store with all mining features removed. Furthermore, Qbix is offering all users of the app, new and old, a free year of premium features.
An hour after we said we were going to remove the miner from the app, Apple had removed the app from the Mac App Store. We contacted them and they were very nice and worked with us to expedite this fix.
As a way to make it up to users who were affected by the previous release, we will be unlocking all the Premium Features for a whole year, for everyone who has been a Calendar user, up to and including the version that’s currently out on the store. We had to scramble to get this version out, but in the next version we will unlock Calendar for anyone who’s downloaded it before then.
Furthermore, Magarshak says that Qbix was able to earn about $2,000 worth of the cryptocurrency Monero during the three-day period that mining was live in the application. For comparison’s sake, Qbix has made around $700,000 from its apps over the last 7 years:
“However we did generate about $2K (current prices) from the mining that occurred in the 3 day period it was live and we plan to use those proceeds towards improving features for our users going forward,” Magarshak said to 9to5Mac.
As for the future, Magarshak says he is concerned about the “growing global energy use of Proof of Work based crypto.” Thus, he and several others have founded a spinoff company, Intercoin Inc, that they hope will solve some of the issues with cryptocurrency.
“I am concerned about the growing global energy use of Proof of Work based crypto. People believe it is a good store of value and it’s been proven quite resilient, so anytime there is trouble in a country, people put their money in there. Consequently it becomes more and more lucrative to mine.”
“I believe in the future of crypto currency, just not Proof of Work. So we started a spinoff company, Intercoin Inc. to make a global currency and payment network that doesn’t rely on Proof of Work, Proof of Stake and can handle an unlimited number of transactions at the same time.”
With Apple now having made its stance against apps mining cryptocurrency in the background firm, what do you think? Would you be willing to let an app mine cryptocurrency in the background in exchange for additional features? Let us know down in the comments!
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