[reedlaw]

That kind of consideration is synonymous with "give us more money" in my book. For developers who are willing to develop for iOS but don't use Macs, why not give them a bone and let them develop on a VM? Apple still makes money if the app sells.

[zkhalique]

Apple has considered that question, and the answer is "because they won't truly buy into our larger ecosystem."

[MCRed]

And this isn't just greed. If you look at the quality of Apps on the App Store it's very often quite obvious who is building for the platform and who doesn't understand the platform and is just trying to cash in on it.

Apple wants high quality apps, not apps from people who just want to cash in. (And the people who aren't willing to spend $600 for a mac mini because they're being cheap are not likely to invest the much more expensive development time to make a good app.)

[cptskippy]

As an enterprise developer who only has to touch Apple products as a function of my job, I can say that they're very enterprise developer unfriendly. Everything in their ecosystem is centered around the individual experience and the journey sucks if you're a cog in the wheel of a big corporation.

I have $10000 in Apple products at the finger tips and I have no desire to touch any of them.