Monero Mining Calendar App Disappears from Apple App Store

A famous calendar app for the Mac has disappeared from the Apple’s App Store for the mining cryptocurrency without the permission of users.

Calendar 2, Apple’s free Mac application Calendar has vanished from the App store after addition of an option that enables users to mine cryptocurrency, to crack premium features. A story by Ars Technia, developer Qbix stated that it would eliminate the mining feature from “future versions of the app,” initially keeping Calendar 2 in the App Store.

Therefore, the app has since defunct vaguely whether the mining feature violated the App Store’s guidelines.

Qbix’s app and Monero Mining
Utilizing untapped computing resources for cryptocurrency mining has been contentious, as the advantage of compensating software developers without using cash has been unsettled by the recital hits mining spaces on devices.

Qbix’s app comprised the xmr-stack Monero miner, developed by The Pirate Boy to turn website visitors into miners. Hence, Calendar 2 did not challenge to conceal the mining functionality. It is showed by the Qbix in a Preference menu and stated that it would start mining process only if the user permitted the feature.

Qbix replied to the complaints of the user that the miner was turning itself on and utilizing the enormous amount of computing resources than the developer predicted. Subsequently, the miner was fictional to offer only 10–20 percent of machine’s power for the process of mining. Rather than utilizing more than 40 percent.

Apple has pulled the App. ARS Technica quoted my tweet in their article: https://t.co/FT7XeCi1aa I insist I did not give permission for the miner, but it launched anyway. More analysis is here: https://t.co/oPAJTWrF3X A very ominous trend. Love @SecurityNow btw!
— Fred Laxton (@fredonline) March 12, 2018
Qbix CEO Greg Magarshak explained that
“Design your app to use power efficiently. Apps should not rapidly drain battery, generate excessive heat, or put unnecessary strain on device resources. “
Further, after the disappearing of the App from the App Store, Margarshak says that Apple functioned with him to put the app back to App Store with all the mining features uninvolved.

Moreover, Qbix is offering a free year of premium features for all the new and old users. In an email, Magarshak wrote to Ars Technica

We have decided to REMOVE the miner in the app. The next version will remove the option to get free features via mining. This is for three reasons:

1. The company which provided us the miner library did not disclose its source code. And it would take too long for them to fix the root cause of the CPU issue.
2. The rollout had a perfect storm of bugs. This made it seem like our company wanted to mine crypto-currency without people’s permission. Furthermore, that goes against our whole ethos and vision for Qbix.
3. My own personal feeling that Proof of Work has a dangerous set of incentives. It can lead to electricity waste on a global scale we’ve never seen before. We don’t want to get sucked into this set of incentives. Hopefully our decision to ultimately remove the miner will set some sort of precedent for other apps as well.
   Ultimately, even though we technically could have remedied the situation. Ad continued on benefiting from the pretty large income such a miner generates. We took the above as a sign that we should get out of the “mining business” before we get sucked into the Proof of Work morass of incentives.
   Originally published at coinpedia.org