I see the developer fee as just a barrier to entry to submit apps to the marketing place - kinda just to stop the riff-raff. I suspect it also is linked to the the legal agreement as some type of consideration.
Mac mini starts at $599. And no need to be hostile--he's making a legitimate point. By charging a relatively modest fee to use the store--the tools themselves are free, unlike things like VS--Apple is making sure people have minute skin in the game.
Of course. Even here people can't resist the Apple hate pronunciations. What do people think they'd be developing if it wasn't for Apple? Would the $X billions of dollars paid to App developers be made some other way? Basic games?
I'll agree -- the $100 cost to developers is also a psychological one. You're more likely to carefully consider the development of your app if you've invested financially in it.
Also, imagine the hordes of crappy apps that would come through if the barrier of entry were just OS X and an internet connection. The App Store review process simply wouldn't be able to keep up. Apple's primary focus has always been on quality and always will be.
I'm not saying I condone locking developers into paying fees for platform-specific development, but as an iPhone user, I don't want to wade through a bloated app store to find something useful.
If Apple could both increase the effectiveness and iterative speed of the App review process, I think they could afford to lower the iOS developer fee a little, and perhaps even make it free.
I see it more as a way to assign value to the concept. If one pays for the access then someone is more likely to do something with it. I once met some guys that would offer free lessons in jiu-jitsu at the local college, but they had more students once they started charging.
The legal agreement is an interesting thought.
As for a barrier to low-quality apps, it doesn't seem to have worked.
If that's the intent, they could just as easily (and more sensibly) charge the fee when you submit your first app into the store.
As is, they seem to want you to pay up even to deploy an app you wrote onto your own phone. That's just obnoxious. (Googling around, I can find workarounds, but most seem to require jailbreaks or other strange mummery; see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/246422/how-can-i-deploy-a... for a procedure that's alleged to work without requiring that, but which does require other undocumented mummery with certificates.)
Also, it keeps a lot of people from learning to tinker in ways that could develop into job skills later. While $100 is probably a nuisance fee to most of the people posting here, there are a lot of people in the US (to say nothing of the rest of the world) for whom it blows their hobby budget for the month, if not for the year.
Also, imagine how many more non-developers would download the iOS betas only to bitch about how things don't work - meanwhile not reporting the bugs to Apple through the proper channels.
Shouldn't better search or discovery algorithms or UI, be a more elegant solution than just brute-forcing a paywall into it?
Think of the children. I mean, seriously, how many of us were young highschool hackers who would have just loved the opportunity to build something awesome for smartphones. But would be halted by Apple's fine?
You can build all you want; the tools are available with a free developer account. The fee only applies if you want to distribute your apps through the app store. But the tools are way better -- and way cheaper, even after the $99 -- than they were when I was a young highschool hacker.
> Shouldn't better search or discovery algorithms or UI, be a more elegant solution than just brute-forcing a paywall into it?
That's always the dream, but recommendation algorithms are hard. And can get much harder when you have a small number of positives, which is presumably what would happen if Apple removed the fee.
They would have less than a gajillion dollars if they let any robo-scambucket inject malicious and worthless products into their many Gardens of Algorithmic Delight.
Access to a quarter billion users with one-click credit cards is either worth $100 to you or it isn't.
Which includes 100% of freeware, and 99% of weekend "hey let's put this on the net and see if people want it" projects.
Both of those things used to be a big part of the Mac software ecosystem, but they're slowly dying away. And if Apple moves forward with its apparent plan to prohibit unsigned code from running by default, while charging $99/year for the privilege of having your code signed, both will be effectively extinct within the next year.
Agreed. I run an open source project and would love to make an iPhone app, but it's an out of pocket expense that I can't justify. It's a shame and I'm sure it's a pain other open source projects feel. I really hope they don't go fully down that path for OSX. Maybe an alternative would be a free software key, or something just to help collaboration and improve the social coding aspect. They could even corral the apps in a different way to lower the QA stakes, so our free spirited hacker lifestyle doesn't have to mess with Apple's mojo.
More than anything, I think the intention behind the developer fee is to act as an additional buffer against low-quality developers. Personally, I have no objection to it. If you're serious about putting time into developing for Apple, $100 bucks isn't really all that big a deal. Furthermore, 30% isn't a bad deal either considering that Apple is providing you with a large platform for distribution as well as potential exposure.
How much cash money Apple has is orthogonal to how the developer program is structured. Maybe the $100 fee has benefits for gatekeeping purposes, but that's a separate evaluation and discussion.
I'm not an iOS dev, and anything I would do on mobile would be Android first, so I don't have any reason to try to defend Apple here.
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[ 6.2 ms ] story [ 52.0 ms ] thread"Palace is made of bricks" we like to say.
Thanks though, if I want to load programs on my iPhone, I'll do so through Cydia.
I cannot afford a MacBook, nor the 100$ fee to develop.
Also, imagine the hordes of crappy apps that would come through if the barrier of entry were just OS X and an internet connection. The App Store review process simply wouldn't be able to keep up. Apple's primary focus has always been on quality and always will be.
I'm not saying I condone locking developers into paying fees for platform-specific development, but as an iPhone user, I don't want to wade through a bloated app store to find something useful.
If Apple could both increase the effectiveness and iterative speed of the App review process, I think they could afford to lower the iOS developer fee a little, and perhaps even make it free.
The legal agreement is an interesting thought.
As for a barrier to low-quality apps, it doesn't seem to have worked.
As is, they seem to want you to pay up even to deploy an app you wrote onto your own phone. That's just obnoxious. (Googling around, I can find workarounds, but most seem to require jailbreaks or other strange mummery; see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/246422/how-can-i-deploy-a... for a procedure that's alleged to work without requiring that, but which does require other undocumented mummery with certificates.)
Also, it keeps a lot of people from learning to tinker in ways that could develop into job skills later. While $100 is probably a nuisance fee to most of the people posting here, there are a lot of people in the US (to say nothing of the rest of the world) for whom it blows their hobby budget for the month, if not for the year.
Think of the children. I mean, seriously, how many of us were young highschool hackers who would have just loved the opportunity to build something awesome for smartphones. But would be halted by Apple's fine?
That's always the dream, but recommendation algorithms are hard. And can get much harder when you have a small number of positives, which is presumably what would happen if Apple removed the fee.
Access to a quarter billion users with one-click credit cards is either worth $100 to you or it isn't.
'Wah wah. Mommy won't let me eat cake! but me like CAKKKEE SO MUCH! Mommy mean! Mommy have so much cake not let me have any. Stupid Mommy.'
Both of those things used to be a big part of the Mac software ecosystem, but they're slowly dying away. And if Apple moves forward with its apparent plan to prohibit unsigned code from running by default, while charging $99/year for the privilege of having your code signed, both will be effectively extinct within the next year.
entice developers further while still keeping out the riff-raff. problem solved.
How much cash money Apple has is orthogonal to how the developer program is structured. Maybe the $100 fee has benefits for gatekeeping purposes, but that's a separate evaluation and discussion.
I'm not an iOS dev, and anything I would do on mobile would be Android first, so I don't have any reason to try to defend Apple here.