Hacker News Reader

Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

Super glad I cut all ties with Apple a few years back. They make great products for my parents, but they are increasingly hostile toward developers and tech savvy users.

I made a free mobile game that's in both the iOS and Play store, and after I realized the $99 fee is not just a one time fee but a recurring fee to keep the app in the store, well of course I let my developer account lapse. I'm not a charity, and it's not worth it for me to pay $100/year just so friends and family can download it. So, for now only Android users can play my game. And same with all of my future free software - it will never intentionally target Apple users, ever, unless Apple changes their ways.

View on HN

The sad part is all the users who think that not providing the folks who own the physical instances of hardware the choice to install software from any location, is great for the end user.

This option is present in Android. And you can use it at any time. Is it often that the option is used? Absolutely not, I've never even used it myself. But I still think it's great that it's available, and, if need be, I can easily install any app I want from any source, even if Google doesn't approve of such app or such source.

> They make great products for my parents, but they are increasingly hostile toward developers and tech savvy users.

This is the opposite of a backhanded complement. The market for your parents is orders of magnitudes greater than the market for developers and technologists.

As a tech-savvy user, I may be asked which device I recommend.

If I write OS-agnostic mobile apps for fun, and my apps can be downloaded for Android easily, but cannot be downloaded for iOS, guess which device I'll be recommending to my "parents", friends and internet strangers?

That way of thinking assumes that the people you are giving recommendations to care most about your app’s availability rather than the persons own preferences and motivations. If your audience is non tech savvy (group defined by not being a specific group, eg much broader), good chance they have a broad set of preferences unrelated to your free app availability.

This point above is more of a “save your breath” suggestion as tech savvy people would much more likely be interested in this trade off when considering a which device type to purchase.

Problem solved? You made a choice that was best for you using your own free will.

Yes, problem solved, though obviously I am wistful for a scenario where everyone wins.

Well, I win with current version of Apple store policies. Different people have different priorities.

Others don’t have the same needs you do.

I’m also unsure how you can possess the skills to build an entire app and not also posses the skills to read the “annual fee” part of the developer program cost.

Not rooting for Apple, but the pretentiousness in the “I’m not a charity” part seemed far removed from the humbleness required to be unintentionally illiterate.

I was under the impression that the fee was only annual if you wanted to continue developing. I didn't know the fee was also tied to whether or not your existing apps would be taken down. Clearly, this is confusing to other people as well: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5271418/will-my-app-stay...

This was not clear to me for years either until I looked it up.

It's not just $100/y.

You also have to buy Apple hardware to build and test their software. That would be at least an iphone and a macbook air. The wallet garden extends to developers as well.

I'm launching an app and I have no desire to buy hardware that treats me like I'm too dumb to be able to install software from whatever source I want.

So Apple will be ignored and that's gonna be a net win on sanity and time to polish the product for Android.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com