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Comment by phren0logy | Hacker News Reader

No longer available free for those without the $99 Mac or iOS developer membership.

It is, however, only $5 from the app store.

I'll pony up the $5 but I have to say, Apple sure is ignoring past lessons of the industry. Namely, those with free dev tools have little problem attracting developers.

Even MS gives away its Express Editions for VS. I'm a little surprised to see Apple move to a paid model, though $5 is very cheap, I admit.

I think it is either an accounting thing or they decided they wanted people to pay for the 4.28GB download and decided to charge their "standard low price".

You can still download XCode 3.2 free. Think of it as the equivalent of the Express Edition for VS.

A gobsmackingly weird comment considering that for the majority of the lifetime of the most popular application development platform on the planet, its development tools cost hundreds of dollars.

Then allow me to adjust his statement slightly:

Namely, those with free dev tools have little problem attracting good developers.

What does that even mean? I'm asking seriously. You're saying Windows didn't have a lot of good developers?

That's a very Windows-centric comment. The cases I am referring to are in regard to non-dominant platforms. Compare OS X, NetWare, Linux to the likes of OS/2, MacOS (8/9), Solaris.

During their dominant periods, dev tools on Solaris and OS9 cost money.

Yes, that is precisely my point.

Yeah, back when the original Mac dev kit was released you had to join the developer program for $1500/year. What you got was decent hardware discounts (for hardware that was much high priced than it is today), several loose leaf binders of documentation, and a big stack of floppies. IIRC, the original Mac compilers were designed to run on a Lisa (so toss another $10K in the pot).

As time went on, things got better. Codewarrior by Think appeared, documentation was distributed on CDROM, and the annual dev program dropped to $400.

The $99/yr, or the $4.99, is a pittance. Seriously.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the new accounting procedures (e.g. 99 cents for Face Time, charging for iTouch updates, etc)? Maybe it will be free to Lion users?

You're mistaken. Xcode 3 and 4 are still available with the $99/year dev memberships for iOS or Mac OS X.

I think you misread what he wrote.

Xcode 3 is free for anyone with a free developer account. Today, the newest version of Xcode was released, Xcode 4, and it is not available for free with a developer account, it is $4.99 in the Mac App Store. If you happen to be a member of the Mac Developer Program, or the iOS Developer program, both of which cost $99 per year, then it is included in your subscription and you may download it for free.

Wow! Apple is really doing some weird things lately. I don't like where this is heading. But when you think about the price and what you are getting it's unbeatable.

I would say 'free' beats it, even at $5. Still, it's gonna be worth it for the single window interface alone.

Even though $5 is pretty cheap. There is a lot of power in 'free' (As Dan Ariely would say), and I'm sure there will be some bad consequences for apple here, but not that many and maybe it's worth it for their new strategy for developers. What that strategy is, I have no clue.

Yeah sure free beats it. Most times. I mean sometimes people don't see the value when they are getting it for free. Example: Guy finds a bug in a free software and thinks 'what doesn't cost nothing can't be anything'. But these people are mostly end users not developers.

Long story short: I don't have a clue why Apple is selling XCode 4 BUT when I look at Microsoft you are getting a hell of a software for just 5 bucks. (Visual Studio costs 1500 bucks I think, to be fair there is also a Express (free) edition)

Anyway, I love the new XCode one window interface!

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