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Comment by 52-6F-62 | Hacker News Reader

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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