Notes
Opinions, rather than instructions. Why a whole category of small software got squeezed out of existence, what is really paying for the free tools you use, and what the last ten per cent of shipping an app actually costs. If you want the practical how-to material instead, that is in Guides.
Standing disclosure: we make AddToPDF, a paid app. These essays argue for a pricing model we profit from, so read them adversarially. We have tried to earn it: two of them recommend free tools over our own, by name.
The missing middle: software you can just buy
You need to sign a PDF four times a year. Your options are a free tool whose business model you cannot identify, or a subscription costing more than the task is worth. The middle option did not disappear because people rejected it — it disappeared because it cannot fund a company.
Read the note ›What "free" actually costs
Free is a price, not a business model. Six things that might be funding your free software — from loss-leaders to bundled installers to unpaid goodwill — how to work out which one you are using in about a minute, and when free is simply the right answer.
Read the note ›What it takes to ship a small app to the App Store
A sandbox that demands a network entitlement from an app that never uses the network. A build you are not allowed to run before shipping it. Limits enforced only on the server. The specific failures between "it works" and "you can buy it."
Read the note ›Disagree with any of it? Tell us — we would rather be corrected than agreed with.