I agree that the $99/yr stops me from making side apps (that could blow up into the next big thing, who knows) for Apple, I’ll just focus on the web platform instead. Sorry to go on a tangent here to the bird site, but I can’t help but think how hysterical it is that the bird site wants to charge developers 12x the cost of the Apple developer program. $100/mo for twitter api access
Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
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Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
#12Apple is extremely hostile to anything that isn't "get the app from the App Store".
Hell, deploying your app to your phone without a developer license used to require that $99...
Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
#13One of the reasons I never buy apple products. They seem to control everything and cannot support such a company
How do you get around it though? Genuinely asking. I guess you try to source your own parts outside of controlling companies and only work on open source OS's and software run by super transparent groups? It just seems like a ton of work for something that might not even be viable. I don't know how I could possibly operate outside of apple, microsoft, google, etc. all of which have massive ethical issues. To be very…
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Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
#14I wrote an Android app for my little programming news aggregator, and published that on the Play Store because it was basically free (IIRC there might be a one-time signup fee). $99/yr is a ridiculous sum for the "privilege" of publishing in Apple's walled garden, and it's just not something I'm willing to do.
The arguments for paying for review, distribution, advertising, search, etc feel so disingenuous when the company is worth so much money and these apps are contributing to its bottom line.
I really hope that the EU is the one that finally breaks down this annoying wall. I might consider using an iOS device at that point, but absolutely and definitely not before that.
I don't know where Apple went wrong -- third-party software made them as big as they are today, and they decided to turn on developers at some point and make them jump through hoops for nebulous "reasons". And yet the app store is still just filled with so many low-quality apps, scams and the like. They just look semi-pretty on launch and don't crash within the first minute or so.
Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
#15I feel this developer's pain, I remember writing a vituperative blog post about Apple's habit of buying or building their own clone of some independent app and muscling developers out of their market. With time I've mellowed. Running a business means that you have to say "no" to a bunch of things for which there is a perfectly plausible and rational reason to say "yes."
The reasons for saying "no" to good ideas are sometimes incredibly important, such as "Putting more wood behind fewer arrows, i.e. Focus." And sometimes they make no sense that anyone can discern from reading the tea leaves, but they aren't fatal to the business and so there's no incentive to figure out how to say "yes" to them.
I am in no way saying that I like living in the world where Apple treats ISVs and hobbyists as irritations. I remember having to pay outrageous amounts of money for photocopied developer documentation in the late 80s and early 90s... From Apple! I remember flying to Cupertino for OpenDoc training that cost us three grand a developer. Outrageous, were they trying to recruit a developer ecosystem? Or gatekeeping so that the only OpenDoc developers would come from companies that were already behemoths?
But sigh... OpenDoc failed, Copland failed, Pink was spun of as Taligent and failed... Easy to criticize Apple's choices, but nevertheless they survived and here we are decades later dealing with the fact that throughout its history, Apple has always had a love-hate relationship with hobbyists and ISVs.[1]
And throughout that time, we've all complained. We're not wrong, but then again, we're not right, either.
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[1]: Guy Kawasaki, Apple's first developer evangelist, wrote at length about how he was trying to drum up interest from indie developers to write software for the Mac. It was a good fit, as being an indie means you can jump into a new platform and exploit first-mover advantage, without any baggage from your existing success to hold you back.
Corporate always shit on that, they wanted big announcements from Microsoft and Lotus and Wordperfect and Ashton-Tate. And how did things play out? The "killer app" turned out to be PageMaker from Aldus, a company nobody had heard of. Later, people wrote business apps for Mac. Did they build them on top of Ashton-Tate's popular database? Nope, they built them on top of something called "Silver Surfer" from France of all places, which was eventually renamed "4th Dimension."
Apple's disdain for small developers is in their DNA.
Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
#16The annoying part for consumers is that now installing apps on iOS is arguably even more spammy and full of nuisance than the early Android days. It used to be that iOS apps were $1 and high quality, and Android apps were free and crappy or full of malware. Now, EVERY small utility on iOS wants me to sign up for a subscription. I wanted a simple calendar countdown widget the other week and all of the top promoted search results were apps with subscription models. For a countdown (eg. 37 days until X)! This to me to worse than sifting through malware and ad spam on Google Play.
Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
#17> Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with this idea when it comes to apps that I plan to distribute. I’m using their servers, and their infrastructure to handle updates, reviews, payments, etc. Even when you do plan to distribute it it's hard to justify that it's for a good purpose. The review process is so broken and infuriating that I often find myself thinking that _they_ are the ones who should be paying us to…
The review process is completely random. One day they accept your app completely, the other day your "iPad screenshot is a strechted iPhone image" or something. Its just frustrating.
Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
#18I agree that the $99/yr stops me from making side apps (that could blow up into the next big thing, who knows) for Apple, I’ll just focus on the web platform instead. Sorry to go on a tangent here to the bird site, but I can’t help but think how hysterical it is that the bird site wants to charge developers 12x the cost of the Apple developer program. $100/mo for twitter api access
Apparently Twitter plan to allow limited API access for $8/month? Still kind of silly, but more defensible.
Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
#19Yes, Apple likes to sell products and services for money.
Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
#20Full PWA support can't come soon enough!
It's basically here. We've been using it in production for our clients for almost a year now.
The #1 reason we are moving away from iOS native to web app is because of Apple's policies and how convoluted the signing experience is.