It's shameful but eh, it's a living.
In general, I find the opinions on these things to be pretty consistent: the “free market” types tend to support Apple/MS - usually with some form of “its their platform” as an argument - and the FOSS types holding the opposite position.
I’m not sure why the process was so complicated either. A couple of steps involved Apple calling me, and my superior, to verify that we were real. Except they didn’t actually verify that, because it was a simple conversation and I could have just lied with a buddy of mine... Even adding developers from our suppliers was a tedious process, and of course Apple has no way of integrating with our IDM or local security setups.
They sure are lucky to have a monopoly on iOS devices.
That seems reasonable to me -- they're just saying that if you want to be listed as the publisher, you need to be the publisher...
The result is 98 muniplacities having to pay Apple developer fees, but it gets better because the app can’t be called the same thing anymore. So now there are 98 apps instead of one. :p
I mean, I guess our central digitisation agency should really just pick it up, but the bureaucracy doesn’t work like that.
It's not really fair to expect Apple to resolve or work around your own organizational problems.
Apples inability to work with us is the primary reason we replaced thousands of iPads for school children with Chrome books. Eventually Apple caved to our needs, but it was way too late. Google were “what can we do to make this deal work for both of us?” from day one.
What I'm saying is that it's unfair to expect it. As in, if a company is not willing to bend over backwards for you, it's not fair to condemn them for that. It's totally fair to praise their competitors who will, though.