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Comment by parkovski | Hacker News Reader

I hope Epic wins this. I would buy from Apple again if they would open their platforms. I think it's ridiculous that when I was working on an app, the app would expire after a week unless I paid them more money for the privilege of keeping an app I wrote on a phone I paid for. Nevermind software other people made that I should be free to choose to run.

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You can distribute an app for free if you are part of their developer program - which is something like $99 for all the needed software and tooling (perhaps one of the lowest SDK prices historically?). They will actually subsidize all your bandwidth / storage / distribution costs in that case.

Not even close to the lowest price.

And that isn't a solution, either.

You can distribute an app for free if you pay Apple $99?

> free

> something like $99

Pick one.

I should tell you that Android SDK takes $0.

And $25 for distribution on the store.

So what, if those $100 prevent shitty copy-cats, the more the better.

It does not in fact prevent anything. There are hundreds of shitty apps in both iOS and Android.

Which proves the point that $100 is quite affordable.

For first world professionals, it’s nothing.

For others it’s steep. And maybe that was the point.

Others tend to have an Android dominated market, so....

$100 might cheap for westerners. Not for us.

True, that is why Android and feature phones rule in such countries, not iOS, thus making a moot point when customers aren't using Apple devices anyway.

> You can distribute an app for free if you are part of their developer program

I think you mean: "you can submit an app to them and they will decide whether or not to distribute it".

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