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by riscy
718 days ago
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You don’t have to pay Apple a penny to run a website. I’m talking plain HTML5 / JavaScript and a URL. Perhaps you’re assuming I mean a PWA, Apple sign-in, or Apple Pay? I believe those are non-standard integrations with the OS provided by Apple, for the convenience of developers. It would be great if everything was standardized from the start, but standardization can also hinder technological progress and creativity. It’s a trade-off. Perhaps I’m in the minority here, but I don’t bemoan paying for development tools. I pay about $60/year for a JetBrains IDE because it makes my life easier and that’s how I make money. Devs pay for APIs and SaaS to make their lives easier too. |
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Apple locks decade-old web features (say, e.g., web notifications) behind a contract wall and handles that contract wall exceptionally poorly, taking your money in exchange for goods and services only to later add additional terms and requirements and not refund your money without two court orders.
It leaves an especially sour taste in your mouth when you note that users paid a premium for devices which, at a minimum, ought to be able to do decade-old web things. Developers are paying for the privilege of maintaining that facade.
Separately, yu're not paying for development tools; you're signing a highly imbalanced contract (with a well-funded entity with a history of enforcing those imbalanced terms) and paying to give iPhone owners the sort of software they were implicitly promised when buying a top-of-the-line phone. "Apple Pay" is even worse since that same contract forbids you from using other options; it's not for your convenience, it's just obfuscated pricing with some legalese in the mix.
For the record, paying for development tools is fine. JetBrains offers actual benefits instead of abusing the courts for rent-seeking. Plus, their contracts are (comparatively) very reasonable (and also rarely enforced, so terms you don't like are less important). You could probably put together a financial argument against Apple's behavior here, but that's not their worst offense by a long shot.