> It means you can't sustainably release free apps unless you're willing to just ignore that you're burning $100 a year forever.
The fact that this $100 yearly fee has never been adjusted for inflation, in a time when developers are easily shelling out $200 a month to use LLMs, makes this gripe all the more petty. Especially when software developers are still among some of the highest paid jobs on the market.
Back in the days of newgrounds, a bunch of kids learned to program by picking up flash, making games, and sharing them with their friends. That would not have happened if you had to pay even $1/year to publish a .swf file.
Now, their friends all have iphones, and if a kid could hack out an app for their friend group and share it around, it would give them great motivation to learn and hack in that ecosystem.
It's kids, idealistic OSS hackers, and people in the global south who see the $100/year and give up.
It's also just plain dumb rent-seeking that no other OS does. I can make an APK for a friend for free, I can make an exe for a friend, an elf for a friend, etc.
Yet, even if I live in the EU and thus can distribute apps to my friends to sideload directly, even then I'm required to pay $100/year or my app stops working.
> Now, their friends all have iphones, and if a kid could hack out an app for their friend group and share it around, it would give them great motivation to learn and hack in that ecosystem.
edit: To be clear, I'm not defending Apple here, I'm still 200% in favor of "let people run the code they want on the device they own", what I'm trying to say is just if you're a kid who wants to do this, you already can!
> a bunch of kids learned to program by picking up flash
flash does not have a free version (and i recall a trial version is locked after some days of usage). Guess where they got their flash development/program from?
It's not one or the other, it's one on top of the other. I sometimes get the urge to develop a little app for my phone, and I can do that and install it easily for free. I can also distribute it to others for free , even through alternative app stores. And if I want it to be more official, a simple 25€ fee for life and I have it on that google app store.
Maybe in the US, spending 100$ per year for a small hobby is nothing to think about, but In most countries in the world, including the EU, it's something that will compete against other spendings, even if only for other hobbies
The $100 isn't just required for the things published to the AppStore.
It's required for a sideload app in the EU. It's required to make a testflight app that isn't discoverable on the app store, but people can opt-in to running (though apple still heavily restricts what apps you can publish via testflight, it's not a substitute for sideloading).
> There is no reason for it to be polluted with everyone’s throwaway side projects.
Too late for that, the app store already has a huge amount of trash on it.
If apple insists that the appstore is the only way to get software on a computer in my pocket which I paid for and own, then yes, they are obligated to let me put trash on it.
If apple won't let people put anything on it (as they don't), then they should be obligated to let me install devices in another way.
It's already incredibly silly that if I want to just have my own simple app (like idk, a native app that lets me upload a photo to my personal archive over a custom protocol I use), I have to jump through hoops as if I want the whole world to use it, even if I never intend for anyone outside literally just me to touch it.
It’s a phone, not a computer. It’s not sold as a platform for developers to tinker around doing whatever they want. It’s primarily a lifestyle device and businesses can produce apps for it. That’s it. You don’t get to put your own software on everything that has a computer in it: cars, consoles, appliances, etc.
Even more of an argument for free sideloading then. Ping your friends a URL, they click it and can install your app. All without the need for an App Store.
The fact that this $100 yearly fee has never been adjusted for inflation, in a time when developers are easily shelling out $200 a month to use LLMs, makes this gripe all the more petty. Especially when software developers are still among some of the highest paid jobs on the market.