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.
DutchTab ($2) by
Polkapps is one of our least-favorite options in this collection—a title that works backwards and unnecessarily complicates what could otherwise be a very straightforward process.
Rather than working off of simple numbers, DutchTab forces you to create individual bill entries, participants, and line item entries for everything that was purchased at a meal, as well as entering in the amount that’s already been paid in by each participant. It proceeds from the bizarre assumption that someone wants to sit down and start typing at the end of a meal, and create debt reports that can be e-mailed to individual participants; similarly, it assumes that people will be making partial contributions out of their wallets and will be getting back to you later with the rest.
Admittedly, there is a situation in which DutchTab can be useful: if there’s an accountant-slash-manager type who pays all of a group’s bills, keeps a very detailed running tab of individual contributions, and then wants to collect up from those people at the end of a series of meals.
However, DutchTab isn’t marketed that way; its App Store entry portrays it as useful “whether sharing a lunch order with coworkers or dining out with friends,” letting people with cash “take care of the bill without fear of ending up paying for those who don’t.” The sheer amount of typing involved here, combined with this application’s lack of tip or tax calculation features, make it really impractical except for anti-social users; the app’s requirement that you keep re-entering participants for each bill rather than being able to choose from a list of past participants is also a little annoying. If this is really the way you enjoy meals, you’d be better off snapping a photo of the check with the iPhone’s camera and e-mailing it to your comrades to handle their parts; though potentially useful to some people, most will find that DutchTab grossly overcomplicates what should be fun dining experiences.
