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Comment by originalgeek | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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.

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