[cosmicray]

Yeah, back when the original Mac dev kit was released you had to join the developer program for $1500/year. What you got was decent hardware discounts (for hardware that was much high priced than it is today), several loose leaf binders of documentation, and a big stack of floppies. IIRC, the original Mac compilers were designed to run on a Lisa (so toss another $10K in the pot).

As time went on, things got better. Codewarrior by Think appeared, documentation was distributed on CDROM, and the annual dev program dropped to $400.

The $99/yr, or the $4.99, is a pittance. Seriously.