[glhaynes]

Unexpected: "Xcode 7 and Swift now make it easier for everyone to build apps and run them directly on their Apple devices. Simply sign in with your Apple ID, and turn your idea into an app that you can touch on your iPad, iPhone, or Apple Watch. Download Xcode 7 beta and try it yourself today. Program membership is not required."

[asendra]

They have also merged both iOS and OS X developer programs under the same roof. 99$/y gives you access to both now.

[TillE]

Oh, that's excellent. I was just contemplating whether I really want to pay $99/year just to be able to sign a little Mac app, but if I can get all the iOS stuff too, I'll probably do it.

[vvanders]

Does this mean you now need to pay $99/y to develop OSX apps?

[aaronbrethorst]

Only if you want to distribute apps in the Mac App Store. Same as it was yesterday.

[mmastrac]

Or sign apps for others to download without the App Store (also the same).

[donarb]

No, you only need to pay if you want to distribute apps through the App Store.

[lultimouomo]

Is that right?

As of Mavericks, OS X by default refuses to run applications that are not signed with a 99$/year Apple certificate.

[mrsteveman1]

I'll admit that the right-click workaround is a minor speedbump but it does work.

And Developer ID certificates are valid much longer than a year, I believe mine expires in 2019. They aren't revoked if you stop paying for program membership, and the expiration applies to the signing operation, apps you've signed in the past will continue to work after the certificate expires.

[pvieito]

So technically, changing the time settings, you could continue signing code forever?

[ceejayoz]

You can always right-click and select "Open".

[chc]

I can do that, but it's not reasonable to expect my users to do so. As it is, indie developers have to choose between paying rent to Apple and having most users unable to open their apps.

[Jtsummers]

You can still run them you just have to go through system preferences to enable them.

[gbanfalvi]

certificate signing is free. always has been. it's the app store part that costs you.

[s73v3r]

That's complete and utter horse shit.

[mullen]

Personally, that is a total game changer for me. I have an app idea, to build a custom house management app for my wife and I. I really don't care to put it on the app store and I don't want to pay $99 for a two person app. Now I can make an app that only my wife and I will use.

[tdicola]

You can do this today. Just download XCode and go to town. Or use any other programming language supported on OSX like Python, Go, etc. etc.

[druidsbane]

This is the first time you could install apps on your device without paying for a membership. Previously you could design and test through a simulator for free, now he can build and actually use his app without paying extra as he isn't distributing.

[cm2187]

I don't know if it is still the case but last time I checked you had to go through the app store to deploy an iOS app even if it is for personal use.

[donarb]

It never was the case that you had to go through the app store to deploy an app for personal use. The only requirement was to have a paid iOS developer membership.

[gress]

No. Just for access to the Mac App Store, and pre-release tools and OS versions.

[smackfu]

Although the second part of that is pretty important if you are a real software developer, even if you sell outside the app store.

[ascagnel_]

Only if you want to publish in the Mac App Store or use any MAS-specific features (eg iCloud sync).

[xirdstl]

Maybe this explains the recent bug I experienced where, when attempting to renew my iOS developer program for $99, the system added the Mac developer program to my cart for an additional $99 (which I didn't want).

[vbezhenar]

What? It means that anyone can download XCode, any app from github and run it on their devices? That's very nice.

[sohailk]

you could potentially bundle xcode + xctool + github into some sort of adhoc app store, no?

[0x0]

It will probably have a really short code signing certificate expiration date, so you'll have to rebuild and reinstall all the time. They'll probably notice when 100000 users debug-sign the same app ID too...

[vbezhenar]

Re-signing could be done automatically when you plug your iDevice (unless TTL is really short like 1 hour). App ID, hash could be changed easily as well.

[0x0]

If you change the app ID you start over with an empty app data directory, which is a bit of a hassle.

[mynameisvlad]

Well I presume the hash wouldn't change in between installs, just from user to user.

[downandout]

This was the big news IMO. Many would-be developers reside in countries where $99/year is a huge amount of money that cannot be justified until they have a final, working product they are ready to distribute.

[hueving]

I think devs that can dump money on apple products but not on the $99/year are a pretty slim slice of the population.

[rattray]

Where do you live?

[coldtea]

Did you read what he said? It doesn't matter when on the world he lives because his argument is based on a ratio, and that's invariant.

That people that can drop money on Apple hardware but can't afford $100 per year doesn't make sense, for the obvious reason that Apple hardware costs many times that.

[gambiting]

Back when I was at school I developed some iOS apps, and the $100 was huge where I lived. That's literally 1/4 of minimum salary there. I worked the entire summer holiday to afford an old mac mini(which was really crap,but that was the minimum spec which could run Xcode), and then actually had to borrow money to pay the $100 fee. That's why I prefered android from the start - it was just easier to start developing, with much smaller fee and no membership required to actually deploy to Android devices.

[kybernetyk]

Yet those developers somehow can buy a computer for $1000+ and spend an additional $500-$800 on the tablet/phone? :)

[sangnoir]

> Yet those developers somehow can buy a computer for $1000+ and spend an additional $500-$800 on the tablet/phone? :)[1]

In a word - Yes.

I am a developer from a 3rd world country, and I bought a Mac Mini for $500 (not '$1000+') for the purposes of entering the Apple ecosystem. I'm not going to spend another $500 on an iPhone[2], especially since I'm not sure if it will work out financially. The emulator will have to do (my apoligies to anyone who'll potentially run my apps and encounter bugs I miss because of this).

1. I'm not sure if the smiley is an indicator of sarcasm or not

2. If push comes to shove,I can afford it, but I've already bought the phone I'll use for the next 2-3 years (OnePlus), and I'd rather spend the money on other things - like family.

[MCRed]

If you're serious about making an App, then yes, you should spend the $100. You will get it back in the first couple of days if you make a good app.

The $100 is to keep out the shovel ware and crap-- look at all the junk in the store as it is now. Imagine what it would be like if there wasn't that $100 barrier to entry?

[sangnoir]

> You will get it back in the first couple of days if you make a good app.

Well, there's the rub. Unfortunately, the vast majority of developers just don't make money on the app stores. I'm not going to beat myself up if it doesn't work out - I'm taking this as a long-term learning opportunity.

If one of my apps takes off on Android (as proof that other people find it good - or I'm confident it is good enough), then I'll pay the $100.

[SwellJoe]

When I recently worked on making our installer work on Mac OS X again (it broke a few years ago, and we don't have a lot of demand for Mac OS X, since we build server software), I did so in a VM on my Linux system. It was slow, it was ornery to get it working, but it was free (if we assume a pirated Mac OS X, though I have a purchased box of a slightly older version than the one I was able to install from a prior Hackintosh experiment that I gave up on, since I found I hate Mac OS X through and through).

I would never build for Mac or iOS if I had to buy a Mac. Since I was able to do so effectively for free, Mac support in our software (which is pretty popular with about 3+ million downloads a year) got a lot better. I didn't enjoy it, and I won't be using that VM for anything other than testing Mac OS X support, but it's silly to act like everyone ought to be willing to shell out money to support a platform (especially in our case, where the vast majority of our paying users are running Linux).

"look at all the junk in the store as it is now. Imagine what it would be like if there wasn't that $100 barrier to entry?"

Whatever happened to the argument that the Apple approval process was to protect users from poor quality software?

[hrabago]

> you should spend the $100. You will get it back in the first couple of days if you make a good app.

40% of mobile developers do not even reach $100 in a month [1]. Having a "good app" is not a guarantee that someone will get $100 in two days.

[1] https://www.developereconomics.com/reports/developer-economi...

[coldtea]

40% of mobile developers don't have good apps. Heck, more like 90% of them don't (Sturgeon's law).

[rattray]

Not everyone making iOS apps has Apple hardware. I was just at a React Native meetup in Bangalore where half the audience was on Dells running Ubuntu, trying to install hackintosh VM's so they could use XCode and the emulator.

The passion for building things doesn't only strike those with four figures of disposable income, you know :)

[mamcx]

In cash? Ok

With credit card? not!

And in my case, is necessary to fax(!) apple and do banking stuff that is a problem if you have credit problems

[downandout]

No, they can't. You can run mac operating systems on any cheap intel hardware (and in vmware), and you can easily buy used phones/macs on eBay. Google the term Hackintosh or "vmware mac".

[Tloewald]

I'm not sure Apple would go far out of its way to help such users.

[Osmium]

> Program membership is not required.

Though note that there's a current bug listed that looks like accounts with expired developer memberships currently can't use free provisioning.

(For me, this is mildly irritating, because I let my membership lapse a few days ago on a hunch that they'd combine the developer programmes. And then they did, but I can't use the free provisioning, and the re-enrolment form doesn't seem to be working right now either.)

Really nice to see this though.

[vbezhenar]

You can try to create a new Apple ID while they fixing the bug.

[Osmium]

Thanks, but I managed to re-enroll via iTunes Connect instead. Though why a $99 developer program costs £79 in the UK I have no idea, I guess it's VAT. Hopefully I'll finally get an app out to justify it this year!

[Alphasite_]

VAT pretty much covers it completely, sans vat its £66.

[mcintyre1994]

Is this a path to non jailbreak sideloading at least for users with OSX and Xcode7? Not exactly likely to make a splash but interesting move if you can share these projects without too much fuss.

More generally, this is an awesome move. Kudos to Apple :)

[fierycatnet]

This is awesome. I might get back into iOS app development. I didn't feel like paying money for prototyping just so I could run it on my own device. Emulator wasn't doing it for me. Time to pickup Swift.

[WalterGR]

Not being a developer for Apple products, what has changed?

[chc]

You used to have to get a $99 developer membership to put apps on your iPhone.

[giarc]

I love this. I'm thrifty and haven't paid for a dev account but am deep into an app build. When I show clients, there's a bit of an awkward conversation when I explain that I have to show them on my macbook. If I could demo directly on my phone/tablet that would be amazing. Can't wait to use this feature!

[laydownlarry]

you misspelled cheap

[giarc]

Sure, cheap/thrifty whatever. However, I'd rather pay for the dev account when I actually need it. I don't see a huge benefit to paying $100/year while in development. I can accomplish everything I want without it. Once I'm ready to publish the app in the app store, I'll gladly pay $100/year.

[s73v3r]

And you don't consider showing clients to be "needing it"? If I were a client, I'd be questioning how serious you were.

[giarc]

Ya I could see that, however I should note the app is only a part of a bigger picture of products. I've also been developing it for the past 4-5 months but only started showing it to people lately. So perhaps now would be a good time to buy a dev account but I still haven't felt the big need. To each their own.

[shurcooL]

Color me interested. With this, and https://github.com/rakyll/go2xcode, I might actually try making some apps to run on my iOS device now.

[carlosrg]

FINALLY. I don't understand why they didn't do it earlier.

[tiernano]

wonder will the same work for Mono Develop? Build on Windows or Mac with VS or Mono Develop and deploy to an iPhone with a Mac...

[serve_yay]

I'm sure HN will find a talking point to replace that one :)