Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you're on a Hackintosh
Nobody is.
I develop iOS apps on a hackintosh. It's of equivalent spec of a recent Mac Pro, apart from it's an i7 instead of a Xeon.
Xcode now costs US$ 4.99
131–140 of 401 posts
Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99
#132For the convenience of being able to download Xcode through the mac store and get the updates automatically, I'll gladly pay $4.99.
I'm not sure if this applies to Xcode, but at least with Coda, even if you purchase it outside the App Store, it has an 'Installed' label and presumably gets updated through the App Store as well.
The app store can detect I'd apps are installed (through their bundle identifiers) to prevent you from accidentally buying them twice, but it will not update apps that haven't been downloaded through the store.
Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99
#133I love how half the comments here run along the lines of "Apple is evil because they're charging $5 for this piece of software" and the other half are "Apple is evil because they're giving this away for $5 to suck people into the iOS/OSX ecosystem."
Gotta pick, guys.
How about: $5 is essentially free for something that is a major piece of software. It's a venti latte at SBUX. It's not going to represent a real obstacle to anyone actually interested in learning to code for the OS (any more than a $25 O'Reilly book would probably be, or $10 used one) and it's also not going to keep anyone locked in because they spent a bunch on the tool.
(If $5 is not an inconsequential amount of money for someone, then yes, they should go use Linux and gcc / java / whatever. Or maybe they should concentrate one making a few bucks mowing lawns or something, assuming they're in the developed world.)
Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering that you still need a mac, I don't see how much difference it makes. Note that I still think it's a terribly stupid idea.
Right, but who bought them that mac?
If we're arguing about imaginary teenage hackers to fit whatever argument we need...nobody, they're running a hackintosh on a $200 netbook and they're pirating XCode anyways.
Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the more I think about it the less sense it makes. Putting it on the App Store seems perfectly normal, but charging money for something that used to be free, even a token amount, is a really stupid thing to do. $5 is nearly as bad as $50: the difference between charging nothing and something is way higher than the difference between charging something and something higher. Is it to defray hosting costs for a 4 g…
My opinion is that it's just another "hidden fee" for OS X development. (A fee I'm happy to pay, for what it's worth.) For me, I actually had to get a Mac before I could even think about writing my first iPhone app. Then I found out my 10.5 Mac Mini wasn't compatible with XCode, so I had to fork over a bit to pick up Leopard. Then comes the $100 or whatever for a developer license so you can build on phone. After all…
Seems the conditioning they put you through worked well. In fact seen in that light, the new fee makes sense. They just want to dull your resistance against paying through the nose.
Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99
#136Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still free, for registered Apple developers who pay the $99 a year.
If you are really into developing for Apple, $99/year is not that bad. Still, the free-as-in-beer Xcode attracted those curious with the platform. Don't forget those who can't set up a store account (Brazil was on this list until not that long ago) will not be able to even try it.
It's certainly a lot cheaper than ~$3000 /year (MSDN?), or ~$4000 /year (IBM?) or ~$3600 /year (Lispworks?).
In the grand scheme of things, Apple's tools and developer membership schemes are fairly generous. It's still making a big step from free to non-free as others have already said. I'm not going to rush to upgrade.
Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
One difference is that MS also has a free command-line compiler.
gcc/clang are completely open source. In fact, the ones online are far more recent versions than what apple has been shipping. I believe apple still ships gcc42 as of the last free xcode.
That's because GCC has changed licensing to GPLv3, and Apple didn't like that. So they left with last GPLv2 version.
Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question in my mind is what they will do with Xcode for OSX Lion. I don't use Xcode itself, but I always install it to get the tools and libraries I need to compile other software. If Lion requires users to pay $5 to get the necessary dependencies to build other free software tools, this will be a step back from the status quo.
Xcode has normally shipped with OS X install DVDs (though a lot of folks download it anyway, as this gets you the latest version). I'm wondering if they'll ship it with Lion. I'm guessing that they will not.
I've got one of the new Macbook Airs, and they definitely didn't ship any sort of developer tools on the little installer USB that came with it - all I got was an OS X installer. If that's any indication, it sounds like Xcode won't be getting bundled with installation media anymore.
Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can understand how the cost of a Happy Meal might deter someone who wants to try their hand at coding. I mean seriously, you're going to spend at least 10 times that amount on programming books, or thousands of times that amount on college classes.
The entire thing is built on open source. I certainly won't be paying and this shift in culture at apple is turning me off. I probably won't be buying another product from them for a while.
Built on open source... an important part of which they invested in (LLVM). One can as well easily install LLVM/clang via MacPorts, or wait until Lion (under the assumption that XCode will still be included on the download media).
Getting the proprietary parts for five dollars is certainly not a bad deal. But one has to wonder... why? Is it to cover download costs?