Hacker News Reader

Comment by Despegar | Hacker News Reader

When I say "tools and technologies" I'm not referring to just Xcode but all the SDKs and APIs as well.

Don't Google and MS provide those then?

The Windows SDKs and APIs are free to use and the documentation is freely available. Microsoft has many free tools to help write code for Windows platforms.

That said, the MSDN has never been free. The software used for development and testing are only available with annual subscriptions. This include all Windows operating systems; applications such as Excel, SQL Server, and Exchange; cloud services such as Azure and Windows Store; and the venerable Visual Studio (not VSC). The old MSDN has morphed into Visual Studio subscriptions at several levels. I pay $800 for the Professional level.

If you want access to dev releases, etc you need to pay Apple too. So to me, the comment I responded to doesn't seem like a good argument for the 30% cut when comparing to actual competitors:

> Apple does much more to earn their 30% than say GrubHub given that iOS apps rely heavily on Apple tools and technologies to create and distribute apps.

Google does it, although it is a bit debatable given that most stuff on Android is actually based on stuff developed by others. Java, Kotlin, InteliJ/Clion, Gradle,Linux,..., that Google cleverly packs together into Android.

Microsoft provides the Community edition, which is only free for small business up to 5 developers or specific cap of revenue, beyond that you must buy the professional/enterprise/architect edition, or an MSDN yearly license.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com