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Comment by Grae | Hacker News Reader

>If the difference between $99 and $25 is make-or-break, you're probably trying to publish a hobby/low quality app anyways.

Or maybe you live in a situation where $74 USD is a meaningful barrier to accessing a market.

>The only people who like webapps and their encroachment on good, native apps are webapp developers because it allows them to use their skillset to build something they don't know how to build.

You're excluding people and organizations who want to maintain a single codebase.

>I've never met a developer who complained about needing a Mac to develop for iOS that has put forth an even halfway decent iOS app.

My takeaway from this is that you've not met a lot of developers outside the U.S. or who have ethical concerns about mandatory hardware / software purchases as prerequisite to market access.

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Or maybe you live in a situation where $74 USD is a meaningful barrier to accessing a market.

So they could afford a Mac and internet access, but they couldn't afford the extra $74?

As far as excluding people and organizations that want to use a single codebase - good. If they didn't want to take the time to customize their apps enough to make it work on my platform of choice, it's not an app I wanted anyway.

My takeaway from this is that you've not met a lot of developers outside the U.S. or who have ethical concerns about mandatory hardware / software purchases as prerequisite to market access.

And the market is at work - they chose not to take the time to make an app optimized for my platform of choice, and I'm not stuck with an app that isn't optimized for my platform of choice.

> So they could afford a Mac and internet access, but they couldn't afford the extra $74?

An old mac should be pretty cheap (the latest xcode runs on pre-2010 macs, even more so as they can be upgraded by hand — to a point) and if you're in SEA or eastern europe your internet connection is not $150/mo comcast. For instance in Romania high-speed internet is $15, but the average net income is $650~700 and minimum wage is ~200.

And I'd add that requiring a Mac is another unnecessary barrier to access. Things like Fog Creek's Glitch IDE are making it clear that it's possible to build things from any device with a browser.

And don't forget expo.io build process. I never have to open xcode anymore.

Well that's really cool. How is React Native coming along? I see it's still pre-1.0, but given that they've been going 3 years, I assume there's been a lot of progress.

Just a few billion users. I think they're doing ok.

Consider all *nix tools one uses on a Mac. Consider the hack which git on Windows is.

VS Code is an example of an universal, well-optimized app. Slack on the other hand...

Stuff like this is driven by diluted business decisions. Inferring from it that probably one would not use the app eitherways is borderline Linux-like fanatism fueled by self-delusion.

> You're excluding people and organizations who want to maintain a single codebase.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but some organization's internal engineering goals should not become our UX nightmares.

> You're excluding people and organizations who want to maintain a single codebase.

Isn't one of the long held up tenants of software development that you should "pick the right tool for the job"?

Because if, as a user the choice is between another shitty JS/web-app masquerading as a real app, and an app that's built properly with native API's and native code, I'm 100% going to choose the latter.

I bet you don't even know half the time when you're using a hybrid app.

> You're excluding people and organizations who want to maintain a single codebase.

Not my problem. Don’t shit on my user experience because what YOU want. Remember, I don’t need your product, but you need customers.

As far as ethical concerns about mandatory software purchases as a prerequisite— it’s not mandatory: you don’t have to develop for iOS. Make a website instead.

> Remember, I don’t need your product, but you need customers.

Not all customers are desired. Some are enough of a hassle for support (both in developing for the idiosyncrasies of their platform and potentially dealing with the idiosyncrasies of their personalities) that they represent a cost rather than a profit.

This is why some are perfectly happy that Apple's policies effectively exclude Apple users from some of their output. It effectively means a bunch of self importants, who would complain that the moon is the wrong shade of grey if given it on a stick, are conveniently diverted away from bothering them. Unfortunately while Apple platforms seem to have more than their fair share, such self importants exist everywhere...

Similar arguments can be made for not supporting IE, particularly legacy IE: unless you are targeting certain industries (investment banks: I'm looking at you!) supporting users stuck on old browsers can be more time+hassle cost then they are worth.

Is the person's app going to automatically end up on your device or did I miss something here?

If Apple's review board feels the app is trash, it will be rejected as such. And the original poster wanted to just do a website instead, but they also wanted audio to be playable in the background (which makes sense when you're making a for all intents and purposes radio app).

> If Apple's review board feels the app is trash, it will be rejected as such

Apple is not as strict here as you're supposing. While Apple's review guidelines do say that they reserve the right to reject apps during the review process if they're ugly or don't work well, in reality this is almost never the case.

> Remember, I don’t need your product, but you need customers.

This becomes much less compelling with apps built to be used within a large enterprise. At this point cost of development and maintenance become much more important, because you can always train your workforce to fudge their way around the suckass user-experience.

(Although, in principle, I agree with you and am generally not a fan of systems and products that sacrifice UX for developer expediency.)

Or maybe you live in a situation where $74 USD is a meaningful barrier to accessing a market.

Like what situation? To build an app at all he requires at least one computer, which is guaranteed to cost more than $99. He didn't blink at paying $25 to access MacInCloud.

The $99 fee is hardly a big deal. It's quite clearly there to encourage people to report charges on stolen credit cards, i.e. to make credit cards usable as a form of ID verification.

You're excluding people and organizations who want to maintain a single codebase.

There are ways to do that which don't require the web.

> Like what situation? To build an app at all he requires at least one computer, which is guaranteed to cost more than $99. He didn't blink at paying $25 to access MacInCloud.

You're from eastern europe, south america or SEA, and $99 is a serious chunk of money.

The latest Xcode requires sierra which runs on a late 2009 macbook (or even older using sierra patcher), and you can use that for other things than just publishing your application.

Latest Xcode needs High Sierra, not Sierra.

There are ways to make Xcode 9.3 run on macOS Sierra, but I wouldn't recommend using them if you can avoid it.

Like anybody was forced to write iOS apps... I'm an undergrad from Turkey and buying Apple hardware is impossible for me (and not really desirable ATM, but that's not the topic). But I don't feel I'm barred entry to the app-making business, I can start with a desktop app, a web business, or a even a Flutter app on Android and later port to iOS when it's financially feasible. iOS crowd is a bunch that wants quality software and is willing to pay for it, and that the entry to the market is not free is completely understandable. Otherwise it's like wanting to run a caf but not wanting to pay rent or resources. They don't owe you nothing.

> To build an app at all he requires at least one computer, which is guaranteed to cost more than $99.

Well, the question is who does it cost? The original purchaser, or the person that was gifted it or got it for free because it didn't work and put the time in to fix it?

Plenty of people get computing hardware for free or close to it.

> To build an app at all he requires at least one computer

It does not just require a computer, they require an Apple computer, big difference.

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