Deep Green is a chess app. It’s not a telemetry-loaded, ad-serving, account-requiring app. It’s a chess app.
And it’s not just any chess app. It’s a chess app that dates back to the Apple Newton in 1998. I never had an Apple Newton. This is a regret of mine. This is a non-sequitur that has no place in this article, but this is my site, so no one can stop me.
When developer Joachim Bondo released Deep Green, it was after Steve Jobs had already canceled the Newton. When the App Store launched in 2008, Bondo released Deep Green there. The iPhone, as it turns out, outlasted the Newton.
Bondo describes the app as being “made for people who want to sit down [and] play a thoughtful game of chess.” Bloated chess apps with subscriptions and tournaments and streaks treat players as pawns, if you will. Deep Green aims to treat you like a queen.
(Too many chess puns is a rookie mistake.)
Deep Green offers a variety of customizations, so even picky players can configure things in ways that suit their needs.
The app’s business model is nonexistent: It’s free. It’s a passion project now, where once it had a fee associated with it. It works great on an iPhone or iPad. And it’s compatible with the main open source chess board formats, PGN and FEN.
Bondo lives in Denmark, and is the CEO of a mobile development company headquartered in Nyhavn, Copenhagen, where yours truly logged *many *steps this summer, though I was never confident I knew how to pronounce “Nyhavn.”
Updated 11:48am ET on September 5 to correct that Bondo lives in Denmark, not Norway.