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> $99/yr is a ridiculous sum for the "privilege" of publishing in Apple's walled garden It’s a token amount, just enough to prevent spammers from creating thou

by Aaargh20318 4y ago

> $99/yr is a ridiculous sum for the "privilege" of publishing in Apple's walled garden It’s a token amount, just enough to prevent spammers from creating thousands of accounts. It’s $99 for your entire organization for a year. Go check what Microsoft charges for a Visual Studio license per seat, per year. $99 doesn’t even buy you 1 hour of a developer’s time. Even if you develop apps a a hobby, this is not a large amount of money. Few hobbies are a cheap as this.

coliveira 4y ago
> It’s $99 for your entire organization for a year. This seems reasonable when you look from the point of view of a corporation. But hobbyists are single individuals, not corporations. So this basically makes development a privilege for corporations or for people in the first world for whom $99 is nothing.
- dachryn 4y ago
  there are education discount programs for students etc..
aksss 4y ago
Visual Studio Community Edition is free and quite capable for the individual hobby developer, same with VSC. Compared to developing for iPhone, which requires me to still have macOS (and legally Mac hardware) at my disposal somewhere to even get the app built completely, right? That would be the proper comparison between their approach to enabling developers on the tooling side, not the App Store fee. What’s the barrier to entry for the Windows App Store? I think it’s like $25 bucks and $99 for an org, or something very similar. Obviously the glaring difference is that you can side load apps on Windows without using the app store at all. The day that becomes a serious barrier is definitely a line too far in the history of computing. But Apple has always been a very closed off ecosystem - going back to the nineties they were never very friendly to developers or third party hardware. To me this is just Apple doing Apple - their phone, IMO, is still miles ahead of anything else, though. > few hobbies are as cheap as this Quite true.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  > that you can side load apps on Windows without using the app store at all It's unfortunately not that simple anymore on Windows either with the SmartScreen popup getting in the way and the "Run anyway" button hard to find (not as bad as on macOS but still...). Your executable needs a big enough "reputation score" for SmartScreen to remain silent, even when properly code-signed (unless it's signed with an expensive EV-certificiate apparently).
JohnFen 4y ago
For a lot of people, including hobbyist programmers, $99 is actually quite a lot of money.
user_7832 4y ago
> Even if you develop apps a a hobby, this is not a large amount of money. Few hobbies are a cheap as this. Let me guess, you’re from a 1st world country and probably make 6 figures a year (pre tax), likely working in FAANG? As a guy in a 3rd world country, $99 is a hell lot of money. Your comment comes across as quite tone deaf. If you grew up middle-upper class and relatively sheltered that’s not necessarily your fault, but trust me in many parts of the world $99 is worth much more converted.

coliveira 4y ago

> It’s $99 for your entire organization for a year. This seems reasonable when you look from the point of view of a corporation. But hobbyists are single individuals, not corporations. So this basically makes development a privilege for corporations or for people in the first world for whom $99 is nothing.

dachryn 4y ago
there are education discount programs for students etc..

aksss 4y ago

Visual Studio Community Edition is free and quite capable for the individual hobby developer, same with VSC. Compared to developing for iPhone, which requires me to still have macOS (and legally Mac hardware) at my disposal somewhere to even get the app built completely, right? That would be the proper comparison between their approach to enabling developers on the tooling side, not the App Store fee. What’s the barrier to entry for the Windows App Store? I think it’s like $25 bucks and $99 for an org, or something very similar. Obviously the glaring difference is that you can side load apps on Windows without using the app store at all. The day that becomes a serious barrier is definitely a line too far in the history of computing. But Apple has always been a very closed off ecosystem - going back to the nineties they were never very friendly to developers or third party hardware. To me this is just Apple doing Apple - their phone, IMO, is still miles ahead of anything else, though. > few hobbies are as cheap as this Quite true.

flohofwoe 4y ago
> that you can side load apps on Windows without using the app store at all It's unfortunately not that simple anymore on Windows either with the SmartScreen popup getting in the way and the "Run anyway" button hard to find (not as bad as on macOS but still...). Your executable needs a big enough "reputation score" for SmartScreen to remain silent, even when properly code-signed (unless it's signed with an expensive EV-certificiate apparently).

JohnFen 4y ago

For a lot of people, including hobbyist programmers, $99 is actually quite a lot of money.

user_7832 4y ago

> Even if you develop apps a a hobby, this is not a large amount of money. Few hobbies are a cheap as this. Let me guess, you’re from a 1st world country and probably make 6 figures a year (pre tax), likely working in FAANG? As a guy in a 3rd world country, $99 is a hell lot of money. Your comment comes across as quite tone deaf. If you grew up middle-upper class and relatively sheltered that’s not necessarily your fault, but trust me in many parts of the world $99 is worth much more converted.