This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: All 30 Tip Calculators + Meal Splitters, Reviewed. Additional details may be found in the original article.
Though we really like the functionality Meal Splitter ($1) and Meal Splitter v2 ($1) from iHarwood, we really do not like the fact that the developer—rather than giving early customers a free upgrade—has split these two virtually identical applications into two separate paid options.
Like Catamount’s CheckPlease, the original Meal Splitter provides a one-screen interface for entering numbers, splitting the bill, and calculating tips. It even goes further, letting you separately account for drinks and the number of people who drank, a really smart and useful idea for non-drinkers to avoid getting stuck with higher bills.
The major bummer here is that the developer created a “v2” of Meal Splitter that does all of the above, increases the size of the otherwise unattractive keypad numbers, and adds the ability to include tax in the final tally, a significant omission from the original Meal Splitter. While the resulting calculations done by version 2 are amongst the most useful we’ve seen in an app of this sort, we’re not impressed that the developer is keeping two apps in the Store rather than updating the original one and giving away the update to prior buyers—especially given that Meal Splitter’s interface is one of the least attractive we’ve seen.
