Simple tools got worse
The grocery list wants an account, the notepad is a subscription now, the flashlight shows ads. None of that made them better. Here's why it happened, and why a lot of these apps could just be free.
For years I’ve watched simple tools get worse. The grocery list that wants you to make an account before it will hold five items. The flashlight app that shows ads. The notepad you now rent by the month. None of them got more useful over time. They just got more monetized.
Why they got worse
There’s a reason, and it isn’t laziness. The old assumption is that an app has to earn its keep, so you charge for it, or you run ads, or you collect data and sell it. Each of those changes what the app is quietly built for. Ads make it want your time more than your task. Selling data makes it want to watch you. A subscription makes it want the renewal more than the result. Whatever is paying for the app is what the app slowly optimizes for, and it usually isn’t the person using it.
A grocery list doesn’t have to be a business
Here is what changed how I think about it: a lot of these apps have no real cost to run. The work happens on your phone. There is no server of mine sitting behind a grocery list, no bill that grows with each new person who installs it. That used to not matter, because making money was assumed to be the point. But there is no rule that a grocery list has to be a business. If it costs me nothing to keep running, it can actually be free, and once it is free it does not need the account, or the ads, or the tracking. It can be built for one thing: being good at the job.
What you can expect now
So I think we can expect more. Not “free trial” free or “free, but” free. Free because the work is done on your device and there is no cost to me to give it away, so there is no quiet bill you pay later in attention or data. No clickstream logging what you tap in the background. An app that does its one job well and then leaves you alone, because it isn’t being pulled in any other direction.
The first one
The grocery list is the first one I would point at. Two phones, one list, kept in sync between the people in a household, with no account to make and nothing to sign in to. It is the same grocery list you already know how to use, with the account screen and the ads and the “upgrade to Pro” taken out. That absence is the whole feature.
No paywall. No ads. No tracking. No accounts. The code is public, so you don’t have to take my word for any of it. If there is a small tool you wish worked this way, tell me. That is where the next one comes from.
