4 ms·

$100 a year is nothing for a developer toolkit. In fact, it's a great deal if you really think about all the infrastructure that you get for free. Let's take a

$100 a year is nothing for a developer toolkit. In fact, it's a great deal if you really think about all the infrastructure that you get for free. Let's take a look at what MSDN costs for a pro-level subscription (not even enterprise): "At the Professional subscription level, you pay a not-insignificant sum: $539 per year for an annual cloud subscription or $1,199 for the first year of a perpetual license subscription, with renewals costing $799 per year."

harikb 6y ago
It would be comparable only if Microsoft said that an MSDN Pro-level subscription is required to release apps for Windows. Last time I used MSDN, we used to get free access to tons of Microsoft Apps, that are otherwise paid.
golf1052 6y ago
You're comparing two different things, the Apple and Android fees are to get access to publish apps to the store. The developer toolkit which is used to build and test the apps (Android Studio or XCode) are free. The Microsoft comparison would be the $20 to publish in the Microsoft Store and Visual Studio Community which is free to build and test apps. "MSDN" is a bundle of additional developer tools that you would use for a business (licensed Visual Studio, Azure DevOps, training, and support).
- askafriend 6y ago
  No you are not only paying to get access to publish. You're paying because upkeep of the entire App Store ecosystem is not free. You also get a bunch of tooling, code-level technical support, and more importantly a bunch of SDKs that are tremendously powerful and useful (Metal, ARKit, etc). Yes Xcode and APIs like ARKit are free to develop (for obvious reasons), but Apple captures some of the costs at publish time (as it should be). Here's a full list of stuff that the fee go towards supporting and developing: https://developer.apple.com/programs/whats-included/ https://developer.apple.com/programs/whats-included/
  - pydry 6y ago
    >the entire App Store ecosystem is not free. and building a competing ecosystem that is is Not Allowed!
    - askafriend 6y ago
      You’re welcome to buy an Android phone. iOS is the minority OS in every single market it operates in. Try building a game for Nintendo Switch that doesn’t go through the Nintendo store and see how far that gets you.
      - ksec 6y ago
        >iOS is the minority OS in every single market it operates in. iOS is the majority in US and Japan, nearly half in many other countries. Not Minority in most Developed market.
        askafriend 6y ago
        You’re right in the US - it’s about 60% but fluctuates. In Japan it’s below 50% but close enough (45ish) and there’s a historical reason for that. Japanese adoption of iPhone is especially unique. Everywhere else it’s well below 50%. In the EU it’s about 30% or so.
      - lovelyviking 6y ago
        We are talking about programming own computer. Isn't it a right of user and shouldn't it be respected by any company?
        fakedang 6y ago
        Some users like to be spoonfed and babysat till they're 80, smh.
        askafriend 6y ago
        As a user it’s not even in the top 5 on my list of priorities for a personal mobile device. I’m also a dev and have been doing mobile development for years btw. I’m no stranger to the needs of developers.
jeroenhd 6y ago
Depends on what you want to develop; if you need the Windows driver kit then yes, those subscriptions are expensive (but likely worth it). If you want the equivalent of app development on Windows (meaning little to no access to kernel sources and such, just a native UI), you can use the free version of Visual Studio without the MSDN license [1]. The license allows commercial development even with the free community version. You still need to pay +/- $20 to MS to publish apps to the MS Store, but because Windows isn't a walled garden and barely any Windows users are using the store anyway, you probably don't need to bother. If you do pay, it's not a subscription either; the costs are only made during registration. Just like with Google, this keeps down (but does not prevent) the creation of spam accounts. For most app developers, the infrastructure you get in return isn't worth the $100 / year, because most apps don't get that many downloads at all. Hosting APK or IPA files can be done for one or two dollars per month for the first few hundred or even thousand users, and by extending the store ecosystem, you're also adding value to the platform itself. For iOS you can argue that the manual testing of the application needs to be paid somehow, but the manual testing Apple performs don't benefit you as a developer in any way; they serve benefit the end user that downloads your apps, so those costs should be recouped from the user (as part of the iPhone sales price and the mandatory 15-30% cut Apple and Google will take). If there was a way to build and publish applications without the subscriptions, the fee might be reasonable if Apple can defend the $99 / year. With the walled garden they've set up, there's no competitors, and therefore there will never be an alternative developer toolkit like those you can see for the Android ecosystem. [1]: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/
lovelyviking 6y ago
100$ x 5 years = 500$ To use your own app on your own phone if your app requires offline operaion longer then a week. 500$ is also nothing while you do not sell the app?
Shorel 6y ago
You don't get all that infrastructure for free, you are paying $100 a year! That sounds like marketing speak, straight from 1984.

harikb 6y ago

It would be comparable only if Microsoft said that an MSDN Pro-level subscription is required to release apps for Windows. Last time I used MSDN, we used to get free access to tons of Microsoft Apps, that are otherwise paid.

golf1052 6y ago

You're comparing two different things, the Apple and Android fees are to get access to publish apps to the store. The developer toolkit which is used to build and test the apps (Android Studio or XCode) are free. The Microsoft comparison would be the $20 to publish in the Microsoft Store and Visual Studio Community which is free to build and test apps. "MSDN" is a bundle of additional developer tools that you would use for a business (licensed Visual Studio, Azure DevOps, training, and support).

askafriend 6y ago
No you are not only paying to get access to publish. You're paying because upkeep of the entire App Store ecosystem is not free. You also get a bunch of tooling, code-level technical support, and more importantly a bunch of SDKs that are tremendously powerful and useful (Metal, ARKit, etc). Yes Xcode and APIs like ARKit are free to develop (for obvious reasons), but Apple captures some of the costs at publish time (as it should be). Here's a full list of stuff that the fee go towards supporting and developing: https://developer.apple.com/programs/whats-included/ https://developer.apple.com/programs/whats-included/
- pydry 6y ago
  >the entire App Store ecosystem is not free. and building a competing ecosystem that is is Not Allowed!
  - askafriend 6y ago
    You’re welcome to buy an Android phone. iOS is the minority OS in every single market it operates in. Try building a game for Nintendo Switch that doesn’t go through the Nintendo store and see how far that gets you.
    - ksec 6y ago
      >iOS is the minority OS in every single market it operates in. iOS is the majority in US and Japan, nearly half in many other countries. Not Minority in most Developed market.
      - askafriend 6y ago
        You’re right in the US - it’s about 60% but fluctuates. In Japan it’s below 50% but close enough (45ish) and there’s a historical reason for that. Japanese adoption of iPhone is especially unique. Everywhere else it’s well below 50%. In the EU it’s about 30% or so.
    - lovelyviking 6y ago
      We are talking about programming own computer. Isn't it a right of user and shouldn't it be respected by any company?
      - fakedang 6y ago
        Some users like to be spoonfed and babysat till they're 80, smh.
      - askafriend 6y ago
        As a user it’s not even in the top 5 on my list of priorities for a personal mobile device. I’m also a dev and have been doing mobile development for years btw. I’m no stranger to the needs of developers.

jeroenhd 6y ago

Depends on what you want to develop; if you need the Windows driver kit then yes, those subscriptions are expensive (but likely worth it). If you want the equivalent of app development on Windows (meaning little to no access to kernel sources and such, just a native UI), you can use the free version of Visual Studio without the MSDN license [1]. The license allows commercial development even with the free community version. You still need to pay +/- $20 to MS to publish apps to the MS Store, but because Windows isn't a walled garden and barely any Windows users are using the store anyway, you probably don't need to bother. If you do pay, it's not a subscription either; the costs are only made during registration. Just like with Google, this keeps down (but does not prevent) the creation of spam accounts. For most app developers, the infrastructure you get in return isn't worth the $100 / year, because most apps don't get that many downloads at all. Hosting APK or IPA files can be done for one or two dollars per month for the first few hundred or even thousand users, and by extending the store ecosystem, you're also adding value to the platform itself. For iOS you can argue that the manual testing of the application needs to be paid somehow, but the manual testing Apple performs don't benefit you as a developer in any way; they serve benefit the end user that downloads your apps, so those costs should be recouped from the user (as part of the iPhone sales price and the mandatory 15-30% cut Apple and Google will take). If there was a way to build and publish applications without the subscriptions, the fee might be reasonable if Apple can defend the $99 / year. With the walled garden they've set up, there's no competitors, and therefore there will never be an alternative developer toolkit like those you can see for the Android ecosystem. [1]: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/

lovelyviking 6y ago

100$ x 5 years = 500$ To use your own app on your own phone if your app requires offline operaion longer then a week. 500$ is also nothing while you do not sell the app?

Shorel 6y ago

You don't get all that infrastructure for free, you are paying $100 a year! That sounds like marketing speak, straight from 1984.