Sigh. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to. You should go write an app for something else. You can’t distribute it yourself for precisely the same reason you

Sigh. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to. You should go write an app for something else. You can’t distribute it yourself for precisely the same reason you can’t distribute a game to PS5 yourself, or for reasons you could never distribute apps to blackberry or some other device. As for the yearly fee covering costs, sure, you have a point. But remember, Apple could arbitrarily increase prices on that fee instead. Apple could charge directly for the tools. They could just tack on the 15% or 30% for the annual developer license for apps that some money-making m, non-free angel to them. We’d end up in the same argument. An app is not just a bunch of bits strung together. An app needs to have a commitment of support behind it. Part of “supporting” an app is using only the languages, compilers, apis, payment processors and distribution systems authorized by the manufacturer. And please don’t bring up PC software. PC app marketplace is a shitshow. Platforms like steam have made it more reliable recently. But they’re still not tightly integrated into the OS as they ought to be. If you really want users to control the entirety of the digital device then Linux & it’s partners are truly a worthwhile competitor. The fact that Apple’s device marketshare is larger just implies that the a significant chunk of human society (not skewed towards engineers or people in tech) agrees with Apple’s policy.