Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

For publishing to the the Play Store, it's a one time US$25 fee.

Sure, it's a difference, but not one that is actually meaningful to anyone outside of Apple. An affected customer doesn't care about why the policy exists (nor should they have to). The effects are the same regardless.

It's $8.25/mo if you save up for it each year.

What bothers me about this -- and it bothered me enough to leave the platform -- is not fees, or "hobby computing," or "it's just for my own use," or trying to figure out why this or that would be in Apple's interest. What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of what a computer is.

I am, of course, aware that many (perhaps most) computers in the world are effectively appliances, but at some level, the great glory of this glorious, epochal machine -- the "personal computer" -- is one's ability to program it and make it do something new. It is not just a machine; it's a machine for creating machines.

Take that away, and . . . to what shall I compare it? It's like giving someone a deck of cards and telling them that these cards can only be used to play blackjack. You can't invent a card game, or change the rules, or build a house of cards, or do card magic. Putting such stipulations in place isn't just annoying or inconvenient. It's a kind of basic betrayal of the concepts and affordances that underlie the thing itself.

[edit: grammar]

I am fan of the philosophy free for personal use and money for professional use. Because, when I make money of somebody else work, I should give some of that somebody else (what ever 'some' means).

That said, there is a lot to consider for companies like Apple in this world. Yes, it is not only Apple that does this. Apple is just apparent as with the iPhone it became so ubiquitous.

Apple wants to be known for a clean platform for consumers without worrying about viruses and such things. Ever heard about a ransomware on your shiny iPhone? If you want to maintain this, then you need a strict enforcement of who can run what on the platform. These days such enforcement is done via certificates. At first Apple was somehow lax on that enforcement. That allowed side-loading of apps on your iPhone. For development purposes good. Of course for personal use great. But the first actors appeared and used that to distribute their apps. I remember when Google Ingress where a thing way befor Pokemon Go. Ingress was Android only. No iPhone. Because it was from Google. Then some people came along and build an iOS app, which you could download from Github. Then when some shady actors got banned from the Appstore they distributed their apps via shady websites. I assume at one point the decision grew that they need to do something to prevent this.

Another thing is, the development tools are not free as in free beer. Maintaining development tools costs resources. That's why I need to buy the development tools. If I do embedded I may need to buy a Keil compiler. If I do FPGA I may need to buy Altera or Xilinx. But the Apple tool chain is free of charge. Maintenance costs resources. That's why in the past you needed to buy the Development account to have access to the tool chain at all. Now, these days, the tool chain is free-of-charge. So you could ask "Hey, they are such a money maker, why can't they just cross finance that?" That is valid. On the other, why? Why shouldn't that business unit finance itself?

So there are many different things to consider.