[rollcat]

Unfortunately Apple normalised it, first with the iPhone. There are upsides (theoretically - less trash apps), but the review/curation process doesn't scale, and yep - the small devs are effectively told to bug off.

10 years ago I wanted to build a Love2D game, and release it for the three major OS's. The .love files are effectively ZIP archives, kinda like cartridges, but you need the correct Love2D version (they broke API compat every year or so). Windows and Mac used to be: "cat love.exe game.zip > game.exe".

Linux gave me the most crap, because making a portable, semi-static build was a nightmare; you couldn't rely on distros because each one shipped a different version of love.

Now Linux is actually becoming more viable, not because it's making that much progress, but because the two mainstream platforms are taking steps back.

[pjmlp]

No they didn't, signing was already common across Symbian, J2ME, Windows CE/Pocket PC, Newton, PalmOS, Blackberry, BREW.

And game consoles naturally.

[rollcat]

All of these platforms combined had less global impact over their lifetime than iPhone has had in its first five years.

Apple is never first to do something.

[pjmlp]

Only from an American point of view, catching up to the mobile life in Europe, Asia, and some lucky African countries.

I started coding for J2ME on a Vodafone contest, based on Sharp GX20, which was using DOCOMO APIs in 2003.

Afterwards I joined Nokia, so I kind of had an idea how we, and our competition was doing in the market.

US was the only market that stayed PDA centric, with exception of Blackberry adoption, until the iPhone came to be.

Traditionally it was the only market where Nokia had issues.

[prepend]

At least signing is free for MacOS apps. And back when I used it only $100/year for iPhone apps.

[c-hendricks]

... where is signing free for macOS apps?

You can use an ad-hoc signature to sign, but people who download the app will still have to jump through hoops to run it.