Mac Developer license falls to $99/year, Mac App Store coming? | Hacker News Reader

Mac Developer license falls to $99/year, Mac App Store coming?

9to5mac.com

25 pointslid27 comments

Wait, you need a license to make software for Mac now? Can't people just download your software from the internet?

Not required (yet, anyway) simply to distribute software, but Apple's had the Apple Developer Connection for years, and membership in it was required to get some SDKs, early releases of products, some technical support, and listing in the Macintosh Product Guide, among other things.

In short, it provides next to nothing unless you want/need to be on the bleeding edge. If you or your company has a product that needed to be compatible with a new OS rev on the day of the general release then it is worth it so that you had a pre-release version to build and test against, otherwise there is not much there that you need. I don't think there are any SDKs that you can't get via the free ADC membership.

I'm not a member, but don't you get a hardware discount once per year or so that basically makes the membership free, at least once? (and maybe more if you upgrade frequently)

The benefits may not be huge you at least get dev builds of OS X, which is actually useful if you sell certain types of software for OS X.

edit: I see there are no more hardware discounts. Unfortunate.

I can't say I like Apple's use of the term license here. In most contexts, licensing is a process by which a central authority grants permission to certain entities with the express denial of those outside the license. ADC is supposed to be a value-add, not a barrier to entry.

The article is poorly written and misleading. Apple doesn't use the term licence; this is simply a consolidation of their existing paid ADC levels.

It's a horrifically-worded headline. MDP is a subscription program that gives you access to a bunch of developer resources (pre-release builds of Apple's software, technical forums staffed by Apple, etc.), sort of like what MSDN does in the Microsoft world. And apparently the subscription fees have changed. Ho hum.

Except that you are kinda forced to pay for the iPhone developer portal unless you want to jailbreak your iPhone since you need those certificates and provisioning profiles.

But to develop for the Mac you just sign up for free and download XCode (or get it from the install DVD, albeit outdated).

The only advantage is probably getting access to pre-released versions of OSX so you could test your app but I somehow doubt there is such a large number of people that need to do this that badly and couldn't afford the previous $500.

The app store model is largely a success. it seems logical they would use that model elswhere.

I know! It's a wonder that no one thought of building an operating system with a central repository for apps and their updates, that perhaps shipped with a corresponding tool that was apt wrt getting those updates, and also finding new software!

I dont think anyone is claiming Apple invented the model.

Though perhaps they can get it right for once.

Hopefully. Every time I use apt-get, I wish it charged my credit card money and gave Apple 30%! Maybe they will add that feature for me!

I love Linux package managers (most of the time).

However:

- if you need the very latest versions it can be a pig

- no one has yet built a nice, usable and newbie friendly UI yet

If Apple can fix the second of those, all power to them :)

> no one has yet built a nice, usable and newbie friendly UI yet

The Lindows Click'N'Run store (from 2004 or so ?) didn't look too bad, what with "product aisles" and so on. It mixed the free and commercial apps, too, using the Debian 'apt' tools underneath.

It may now be run by Xandros, who bought the company; I haven't looked. (I bought a couple of Xandros releases back in 2003 or so, but didn't like the tight leash they seemed to intend for the customers ;-)

Looks like they still run it

http://www.cnr.com/

Actually that fixes the UI problem quite nicely. I have some engineering gripes too... :P

Thanks, took a look and it seems a bit dusty ... (e.g. latest client for Ubuntu is for 8.04)

Sarcasm is not necessarily wit.

This kind of pedantry about things like invention that hold weight on this site is silly, worse it's bureaucratic.

I hope they never put a price on XCode and the other tools.

Apple is well aware that the make-or-break aspect of software development on the Mac is that the only barrier is programming skill. If they started charging money for the tools, people would just go elsewhere.

The iPhone App Store is so popular and lucrative that Apple can pretty much do whatever they want and we'll put up with it (by and large), but the Mac indie software market is so small and yet so important that they would never do anything to threaten it. If anything, I see this as them opening up their resources via one lower, universal price point, rather than locking them off behind a paywall.

Yet Microsoft sees no problem charging customers outrageous amounts for Visual Studio. I am appalled at just how much Microsoft is charging for the top-level VS2010 (try 20 - 40% of the salary of a good software engineer).

I forsee iPhone app developers needing to get separate approval for their apps to port over to the Mac/iPad platform.

We've already seen the iPad App Store. Its demoed by Steve Jobs in the iPad unveiling. It is basically the iPhone app store, with a UI that's more suited to the iPad.

basically

Maybe separate approval if they write a new UI for the iPad since Apple has to approve the UI.

But I'm guessing they won't need it if they don't change a thing and just have user's choose to upscale it. Apple would probably prefer to be boastful about app numbers.

This is pretty close to nonsensical, and shows a lack of understanding of how things work in the Apple ecosystem.

Apple has already released a beta version of Xcode that allows you to build "universal" apps: one binary that runs on both iPhone and iPad. That certainly doesn't sound like something they'd be doing if they expected to have a separate developer program for iPad.

and how on earth could they ever charge you to port your iPhone app to Mac? The code that you write for any app is your own, Apple has no control over it.

I just took my morning dump, shit store coming?

Your shit will only be approved if it has rounded corners, is polished, and doesn't smell offensive.

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