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Comment by yeldarb | Hacker News Reader

Came here to ask if they're announcing that they're waiving the $99 fee. This makes it sound like they must be... but I haven't seen any other mention of it.

Maybe they jumped the gun a little bit and will announce it on Monday at WWDC?

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While the $99 fee is a barrier, I'd argue that the Apple computer you're required to use is the real barrier to entry.

I'd love to get into iOS again, but I have no interest in owning an Apple computer right now. Android Studio, Visual Studio Code, Eclipse, and countless other IDE's run just fine on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

And we know damn well Apple could produce a version of XCode (or a derivative) that could run cross platform. They choose not to, so devs are forced to buy Macs.

Is that $99 fee actually a significant barrier to entry? Is $8.25 per month more expensive than self hosting a CDN to deliver downloads to potentially thousands of people per month? $99 is a bargain if you look at what you actually get. Presumably you are shipping apps to make money. $8.25 per month to handle all of your distribution seems very cheap.

I can distribute software for free online: there are many services on the internet that will help me do so.

Who pays for those free services?

No idea. In the case of GitHub, this would be Microsoft, presumably?

It stopped me from playing around with developing iOS apps entirely. I’m sure others must have felt the same way too. Not everyone will make $99 back in the year end - or wants to!

This.. might actually be legit. I bet $20 they announce this next week.

I am an iOS developer myself and would argue that the 135 (Canadian) they charge is good to prevent every random joe from uploading and submitting their apps. It keeps only the most serious ones from submitting. You can still develop and test apps on your own device without the fee, they just expire after 7 days and need to be rebuilt to work.

That would be really big! One can hope...

Having software developed is expensive, very expensive. Complaining about the $99 developer program fee is like complaining about the price of gas when buying a new Bugatti Veyron. If you can't afford the $99 you certainly can't afford to develop an app.

At least the $99 fee keeps hordes of amateurs from uploading their 'hello world' app and clogging up the review process even more.

Heh, I saw it differently. Waiving the $99 lowers the entry barrier for someone working on a side project they want to sell or offer gratis.

But yes I see your point about overloading the review process.

FTA: "84% of apps are free, and developers pay nothing to Apple."

Developers aren't "paying nothing" to develop on IOS. Apple has factored in that the average free app costs them $99 per year in hosting costs.

I am certain 98% of that $99 goes to compensate for the top 10 free paid app's costs to Apple.

Isn't the cost $99 per year per developer account, not $99 per year per app?

It also keeps me from developing some niche app to scratch an itch and share that with the world for free. Sure, I can always just release the code on Github and let people compile it themselves, but unless the app is for developers who own Apple computers, very few are probably going to take advantage of that. I'm certainly not going to pay $99/yr to publish that app, but I might if there were no fee. That said, maybe that app would fall into your "hello world" category and shouldn't be published anyway.

Related: Quite some time ago [Edit: OMG it was 10 years ago!] I had a game on the App Store that I stopped updating and pulled because the $99 fee wasn't covered by the low number of downloads. Many people were still playing the game at the time, but I just couldn't justify the cost.

I pay more than $99 a year for my own personal Resharper license. I can’t think of a single hobby I have or have thought about having that wouldn’t cost more per year.

WHY should one pay any amount to Apple, to develop software? Apple artificially props up obstacles to development, and then "sells" tools to overcome them!

And WHY should Apple even review and approve apps that run on hardware YOU own!! When you buy a fridge, does the manufacturer review and approve your groceries?

> When you buy a fridge, does the manufacturer review and approve your groceries?

No, the FDA does that. Apple needs to approve apps because there is no FDA equivalent for apps.

Non sequitur! The FDA is a government entity with a mandate to protect citizens, bound by non-fluid law.

Apple is a self-serving private company, not beholden to user's interests (but shareholders), with an extremely fluid, arbitrary set of "laws" (if you can even call them that).

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