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Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

itunes.apple.com

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Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#371

Post by jarin »

merijnv wrote: post #212
iloveponies wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X without Xcode installed doesn't have a compiler - if you can't compile, you can't use macports or homebrew. It would be "neat" as in clean. No drama on Apple's behalf. Just put a price tag on the only real compiler, and it's over. Unless someone solves that issue.

Uh...OSX just uses gcc as a C compiler and all the Apple specific changes are open source as well (GPL license and all that), so what's stopping me from just distributing a binary (Apple patched) gcc?

Nothing. You should do it.

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#372

Post by recoiledsnake »

sstrudeau wrote: post #225
ptomato wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possible theory: Cost of bandwidth for downloading 4.2GB is > .99? Honestly, I have no idea, though.

Amazon S3 transfer costs are (worst case) $0.14/GB, or < $0.60 for 4.2GB. Apple certainly pays a lot less than that per bit.

Is Apple a cash strapped startup or what? They easily get a lot of value via hardware sales from apps being made for their platforms to start worrying about bandwidth costs.

Imagine if all OS X and iOS apps disappeared today? How many would still buy Apple hardware?

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#373

Post by jedsmith »

akashs wrote: post #355
A1kmm wrote: post #231

I'm an academic who develops Free / Open Source software and distributes libraries and binaries for the Windows, x86 and x86_64 Linux and Mac platforms along with the source. One important library generates C code based on a domain specific language, links a shared object and uses that; on Windows and Linux, we ship a cut back gcc and libtools to do that; libtools doesn't work on the Mac (at least last time I looked…

I could be wrong, but it sounds like the developer program is free for universities, and xcode is supposed to come free with that. http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/university/

Before anyone says "but this doesn't give you the OS X SDKs!", it's fairly easy for me to get them from the company's iOS developer account. If that's different for this program, I'd be absolutely stunned.

There's multiple ways around this, everybody just feels like bitching about $5.

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#374

Post by dpezely »

electrum wrote: post #344
jckarter wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every Mac still ships with Xcode on the OS install disc, as do the OS X upgrade discs. Let's wait until Lion comes out before assuming that won't be the case anymore.

The MacBook Air doesn't ship with Xcode.

I have a current model 11.6" Air purchased in January, and Xcode was pre-installed into /Developer.

This was a stock machine: walked into Apple Store to buy it. (No special factory config)

Compiling SBCL and a few items from MacPorts worked fine, so everything seems consistent with what I've seen on other Macs since 2005.

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#375

Post by [deleted] »

eapen wrote: post #368
statictype wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the accounting rule? I'm curious.

US accounting rules sometimes require companies to charge for updates if they provide a significant feature left out of original products. An alternative solution can be to restate past earnings, something Apple would likely prefer to avoid. Apple has sometimes been infamous for charging for updates typically expected for free. The most frequent example has been major iPod touch firmware upgrades, which cost a small…

[deleted]

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#376

Post by statictype »

eapen wrote: post #368
statictype wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the accounting rule? I'm curious.

US accounting rules sometimes require companies to charge for updates if they provide a significant feature left out of original products. An alternative solution can be to restate past earnings, something Apple would likely prefer to avoid. Apple has sometimes been infamous for charging for updates typically expected for free. The most frequent example has been major iPod touch firmware upgrades, which cost a small…

Thanks. Follow up question: Why doesn't this apply to iTunes updates?

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#377

Post by statictype »

fingerprinter wrote: post #329

I haven't seen this in the comments yet (might have missed it), but I had always assumed that I was ALREADY paying for Xcode w/ my $99 developer connection fee. $5 is a small amount, for sure, but just seems like yet another way that are trying to squeeze me.

If you have the $99 developer account, Xcode 4 is free. Just log in to your account and download it.

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#378

Post by statictype »

georgemcbay wrote: post #6
[deleted] wrote: post #4

[deleted]

"Xcode is still free, as long as you pay the $99 a year to be a registered Apple developer". Sort of like the way Visual Studio is free, as long as you pay $800+ to be an MSDN subscriber? That's an odd way to judge something as still being "free". From where I'm standing Xcode is not free now, it costs 5 bucks or a hundred bucks, though the version that costs a hundred bucks includes some other stuff too.

That's an unfair comparison.

That $99 fee isn't for Xcode. It's for access to publish in the App Store and for setting up profiles for ad-hoc development (among other things). So yes, Xcode is now free with that registration.

It was always free before. Now its only free for developers who have registered as iOS/Mac App Store developers.

it costs 5 bucks or a hundred bucks, though the version that costs a hundred bucks includes some other stuff too.

When you buy a vehicle for 20k and the dealer throws in free sunfilm, you aren't buying sunfilm for 20k with some other 'stuff' included.

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#379

Post by randylahey »

jarin wrote: post #369
cooldeal wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason that people are pissed is that it's one more annoying hoop to jump through, especially for people without iTunes accounts.What about people kids without credit cards or Paypal? All this for what? A paltry $10 million or so for Apple which is already rolling in tens of bilions of cash(partly thanks to developers, you always see Jobs touting the app count). Is it even worth it for Apple? The company is smack…

No, the reason that people are pissed is because they want to be pissed. There's no real reason to rage about this, other than a self-created illusion that the only thing stopping some hypothetical FOSS developer somewhere in Romania from creating the next Apache is the inability to pay Apple 5 dollars.

Right, because no one should be worried when Apple makes overtures towards monetizing what has been traditionally the only working compiler tool chain for OSX. Thanks, I guess I was just over-reacting. :P

It's amusing how any time Apple does something like this the apologists come out of the woodwork falling over each other to defend them.

Re: Xcode now costs US$ 4.99

#380

Post by jarin »

randylahey wrote: post #379
jarin wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the reason that people are pissed is because they want to be pissed. There's no real reason to rage about this, other than a self-created illusion that the only thing stopping some hypothetical FOSS developer somewhere in Romania from creating the next Apache is the inability to pay Apple 5 dollars.

Right, because no one should be worried when Apple makes overtures towards monetizing what has been traditionally the only working compiler tool chain for OSX. Thanks, I guess I was just over-reacting. :P It's amusing how any time Apple does something like this the apologists come out of the woodwork falling over each other to defend them.

Believe me, Apple has given me plenty of reason to be angry at them before (I've been a victim of their arbitrary App Store rejections). I'm just saying we should all keep a little perspective on this particular issue.
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