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I have a hard time taking people seriously who make such a huge deal out of the developer account pricing. A hundred bucks per year just isn't much money, I'm s

I have a hard time taking people seriously who make such a huge deal out of the developer account pricing. A hundred bucks per year just isn't much money, I'm sorry, maybe it's my privilege talking, but if you're getting into iOS development you have, at base, one mac and one iDevice, if for NO other reason than development and testing of the app you want to make. The cheapest Mac available new is $600, and the cheapest iDevice is the iPad, for $349, or the iPhone SE, for $429. At minimum to get started as an iOS dev then requires an investment of just shy of a grand, and like, I don't particularly like that, but to then turn that around and be like "but this $99 per year subscription is ridiculous" is just... what!? I don't consider myself a huge "project guy" either but I do tinker, and I absolutely CRUSH $100 per MONTH in terms of buying shit to fiddle with, from Raspberry Pi's to 3D printer parts, to new PC peripherals I wanna try, etc. etc. I struggle to conceive of someone in this space to whom $99/year for an Apple dev account is just this unbearable outlay.

999900000999 2y ago
All right, I'll give you an example. I made a small game about 4 years ago for iPhones, maybe 30 people downloaded it. It works fine, it's just a small game. To prevent apple from just taking it down I have to pay $100 per year, meaning even if I don't actively develop apps anymore, I'm just wasting money. Now if I wanted to play the Apple dance every 6 months and hope they let me actually publish my games, I got a lot of pushback with my first project, then I guess it would be worth it.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  Okay; in which case, your little game was probably free. How much would you pay for hosting at this point? The cheapest Droplet on DigitalOcean will cost you $60 per year. Maybe you planned to have your game downloaded from Google Drive, but I’m with Apple on this one, a small fee prevents many bad actors. Especially when 95% of iOS developers are comfortably in the top 10% of US salaries, and top 1% worldwide.
  - 999900000999 2y ago
    Itch.io is 100% free. I'd be okay with it, if it was $100 per year while you're actively publishing new content. But just to keep old stuff up there is kind of steep
    - wahnfrieden 2y ago
      They don't want your unmaintained and unprofitable apps
      - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
        This. The $100 fee is inconsequential for Apple. It's there as a filter.
      - InvertedRhodium 2y ago
        That’s the issue. It’s my phone. I want to run X on it, and the developer of X is willing to provide it. Why is Apple the arbiter in the middle of that exchange?
        wahnfrieden 2y ago
        they are protecting their 15/30% of course
      - 999900000999 2y ago
        Who is "they". I'm not forcing anyone to download my game. But Apple refuses to allow any other market place ( in most of the world) , so unless I pay 100$ a year no one gets to play it on an iPhone. It's not just the fee, it's the idea that Apple is the final decider of what anyone with an iPhone is allowed to run on devices they own. I sorta understand this argument with game consoles, since the vast vast majority of console homebrew is just enabling piracy. But that's not the case with a phone. I can't build a small app to learn and share it with my friends or teachers. I have to build something worthy of Apple, pay a 100$ annual fee and pray the Apple review team feels like being nice.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > I'm just wasting money. No, you're not. You're paying to have your game accessed by people. Do you also refuse to pay for web hosting on principle? Or some other WAN-addressable download location? This is such a bizarrely specific entitlement.
  - gumby271 2y ago
    But web hosting fees aren't arbitrary, they're based on the cost of distributing the program they've written. Apple can just declare that you have to rebuild your program for $100 a year plus the cost of all their other hardware to build it on, that's the difference.
ryandrake 2y ago
"But you pay for other things" is not a good excuse. It's not that the price is unbearable--it's that it exists at all. I'd also complain if the price was $10/yr or $1/yr. It's the principle. I'm not going to pay for a row in a database that doesn't cost the company anything, without grumbling about it.
sylens 2y ago
My problem is that its an annual cost. When I dabbled in Android development, I think I paid a one-time fee of $25. That's a cost I can swallow for someone who wants to release apps for free. If I have to pay $100 a year, I need to make that money back from my apps which means I probably need to make them subscription based. Which leads us to the world we live in today.
- gumby271 2y ago
  And that's Apple's goal, isn't it? Make you do enough recurring work and add enough recurring cost to get you to add subscription pricing to your app, that's the most profitable for them. Make you constantly rebuild your app with the latest iOS sdk in their IDE, on their OS, on their hardware, all in the name of security.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  >If I have to pay $100 a year, I need to make that money back from my apps Why do you feel you need to make it back? I can't think of many pastimes that cost that little.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Programming is a job, not a pasttime. If you enjoy doing your job, so be it, but you are trivializing this to an offensive extent.
    - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
      It sounds like it is a pastime for the GP. If it wasn’t then $100 is trivial for a business.
      - talldayo 2y ago
        1) You're still overgeneralizing 2) If $100 was actually trivial for a business then Apple wouldn't demand it.
maheart 2y ago
A huge number of developers started in HTMl/CSS/JS because it was a super-low barrier to entry. I also know a huge number of professional developers that started off as teenagers tinkering with Linux. They started with Linux because the hurdle was so low. No accounts, no fees. Download an ISO and burn it. These platforms are hurting themselves long term by increasing the barrier to entry. I'm not going to spend a second on the Apple/Android platform if I need to fork out money/account to try it out (even if I can afford it).

999900000999 2y ago

All right, I'll give you an example. I made a small game about 4 years ago for iPhones, maybe 30 people downloaded it. It works fine, it's just a small game. To prevent apple from just taking it down I have to pay $100 per year, meaning even if I don't actively develop apps anymore, I'm just wasting money. Now if I wanted to play the Apple dance every 6 months and hope they let me actually publish my games, I got a lot of pushback with my first project, then I guess it would be worth it.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
Okay; in which case, your little game was probably free. How much would you pay for hosting at this point? The cheapest Droplet on DigitalOcean will cost you $60 per year. Maybe you planned to have your game downloaded from Google Drive, but I’m with Apple on this one, a small fee prevents many bad actors. Especially when 95% of iOS developers are comfortably in the top 10% of US salaries, and top 1% worldwide.
- 999900000999 2y ago
  Itch.io is 100% free. I'd be okay with it, if it was $100 per year while you're actively publishing new content. But just to keep old stuff up there is kind of steep
  - wahnfrieden 2y ago
    They don't want your unmaintained and unprofitable apps
    - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
      This. The $100 fee is inconsequential for Apple. It's there as a filter.
    - InvertedRhodium 2y ago
      That’s the issue. It’s my phone. I want to run X on it, and the developer of X is willing to provide it. Why is Apple the arbiter in the middle of that exchange?
      - wahnfrieden 2y ago
        they are protecting their 15/30% of course
    - 999900000999 2y ago
      Who is "they". I'm not forcing anyone to download my game. But Apple refuses to allow any other market place ( in most of the world) , so unless I pay 100$ a year no one gets to play it on an iPhone. It's not just the fee, it's the idea that Apple is the final decider of what anyone with an iPhone is allowed to run on devices they own. I sorta understand this argument with game consoles, since the vast vast majority of console homebrew is just enabling piracy. But that's not the case with a phone. I can't build a small app to learn and share it with my friends or teachers. I have to build something worthy of Apple, pay a 100$ annual fee and pray the Apple review team feels like being nice.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> I'm just wasting money. No, you're not. You're paying to have your game accessed by people. Do you also refuse to pay for web hosting on principle? Or some other WAN-addressable download location? This is such a bizarrely specific entitlement.
- gumby271 2y ago
  But web hosting fees aren't arbitrary, they're based on the cost of distributing the program they've written. Apple can just declare that you have to rebuild your program for $100 a year plus the cost of all their other hardware to build it on, that's the difference.

ryandrake 2y ago

"But you pay for other things" is not a good excuse. It's not that the price is unbearable--it's that it exists at all. I'd also complain if the price was $10/yr or $1/yr. It's the principle. I'm not going to pay for a row in a database that doesn't cost the company anything, without grumbling about it.

sylens 2y ago

My problem is that its an annual cost. When I dabbled in Android development, I think I paid a one-time fee of $25. That's a cost I can swallow for someone who wants to release apps for free. If I have to pay $100 a year, I need to make that money back from my apps which means I probably need to make them subscription based. Which leads us to the world we live in today.

gumby271 2y ago
And that's Apple's goal, isn't it? Make you do enough recurring work and add enough recurring cost to get you to add subscription pricing to your app, that's the most profitable for them. Make you constantly rebuild your app with the latest iOS sdk in their IDE, on their OS, on their hardware, all in the name of security.
tonyedgecombe 2y ago
>If I have to pay $100 a year, I need to make that money back from my apps Why do you feel you need to make it back? I can't think of many pastimes that cost that little.
- talldayo 2y ago
  Programming is a job, not a pasttime. If you enjoy doing your job, so be it, but you are trivializing this to an offensive extent.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    It sounds like it is a pastime for the GP. If it wasn’t then $100 is trivial for a business.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      1) You're still overgeneralizing 2) If $100 was actually trivial for a business then Apple wouldn't demand it.

maheart 2y ago

A huge number of developers started in HTMl/CSS/JS because it was a super-low barrier to entry. I also know a huge number of professional developers that started off as teenagers tinkering with Linux. They started with Linux because the hurdle was so low. No accounts, no fees. Download an ISO and burn it. These platforms are hurting themselves long term by increasing the barrier to entry. I'm not going to spend a second on the Apple/Android platform if I need to fork out money/account to try it out (even if I can afford it).