[stemuk]

Personally I feel like the most ridiculous part about the App Store is Apples so called "developer program". Charging 99€ a Year for a nearly nonexistent service is absurd, especially since they are already taking the 30% cut.

I am a flutter developer myself, so technically I could publish all my apps on iOS and Android with minimal changes. But since Apples developer program would eat up a significant portion of my potential yearly earnings I simply publish only on the Play Store that only charges a modest 25€ one time registration fee.

[max76]

I like the $99/yr bar of entry. That, combined with the more rigid review process, keeps the App Store's average app quality higher than the Play Store's.

[pas]

It makes a lot of apps simply impossible to exist. (Indie dev made an app for themselves catering to a niche, also wanting to put up their app for free.)

This trade off is typically okay for iFolk though.

[max76]

If the market isn’t sigficanlty large so that 144 people will pay 99 cents a year for the app (the minimum requirement to cover the developer’s cost) than the application is probably not tested and developed to a high enough standard that I want to run it on my cell. I consider my cellphone production hardware, and treat it as such.

[pas]

It might be, but we'll never know. There might not be enough people willing to test a new 1USD app from a hobbyist.

[mhh__]

What difference does it make? Average app quality is surely a pointless metric given that people tend to spend their own money carefully (Or at least I do, I've spent £10 total on apps in my life)

Some people were up in arms about crap being pushed onto Steam, and it had no long term effect (Before or after anything was done about it)

[ilrwbwrkhv]

gatekeeping can only last that long

[max76]

The AppStore is a decade old, and the gate is holding strong. It’s likely that gate will exist for the rest of the iPhone’s product life, which hopefully ends within 20 years as smartphones are replaced by new technology.

[samatman]

What do you think is the split here though?

I’d say 90% better review and 10% the annual fee, personally. Not convinced it’s worth it.

[fiddlerwoaroof]

The better review is only possible because the submission rate is lower.

[scarface74]

And Apple has thus done the world a favor. The last thing we need is more cross platform not quite native apps...

But as far as $99, between my $300 a year Linux Academy subscription, $144 a year JetBrains Resharper subscription and the money I spend on Udemy, $99 a year is nothing.

[m45t3r]

It also keep very interesting apps from being in platform, from hobbysts/opensource developers, for example.

Last time I used iOS had terrible apps for Keepass (I tested them all, trust me [1]), while Android has at least two very good implementations (both opensource, one based on the official C# implementation with a native interface in Mono and another one less featured however fully written in Java).

> But as far as $99, between my $300 a year Linux Academy subscription, $144 a year JetBrains Resharper subscription and the money I spend on Udemy, $99 a year is nothing.

Congratulations, so for you this is nothing. If I wanted to develop for iOS as a hobbyst I would need to pay ~R$400,00 (this is equivalent almost half of a minimum wage in Brazil) [1]. I am not even including the expenses of buying a iOS device and a Mac just to have the "privilege" to develop to an Apple device.

[1]: Or don't, because Apple Store search is terrible. [2]: Just to make clear, I could afford this too if I wanted. However just because you and I can afford it doesn't mean this tax is abusive.

[wolco]

You are my target customer. Willing to throw away hundreds (thousands?) of dollars on licenses and willing brag about it.

[max76]

If you consider spending money on software licenses a waste of money than you should consider getting out of the business of writing liscenced software. In general I find it’s unhealthy to work on products you don’t believe in.

[scarface74]

It’s not bragging. It’s career development.

[wolco]

I have thousands of different licenses you could purchase to put on your resume.

[scarface74]

“licensing” is not resume building.

Paying for courses and continuous learning is.

[wolco]

How is paying for licenses career building?