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> Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store". And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app.

I'm 100% against the way the app store works right now, but I don't have a problem with the idea of those two things if they were implemented in a better way.

If you compare $99 to the cost of a code signing certificate it's a good deal. The problem is that BOTH are bad value for developers. The value in signing is identity verification and none of the systems we have are doing a good job of that right now.

IMHO, Apple, Microsoft, and Google are purposely keeping code signing / trust systems awful because it benefits them. Imagine an ecosystem where apps were signed with domain validated certificates, which would be free (or very cheap), instant, and better than what we currently have, and it definitely feels like entrenched interests are working to keep things from improving.

Apple taking a 30% cut would be perfectly fine if there were competing app stores. If they're providing services worth a 30% cut, developers will be willing to pay that.

I thought the app store would fail. My exact sentiment at the time was "there's no way developers are going to be dumb enough to give up control of distribution." Wow, was I ever wrong :-(

Apple markets to non developers, by advertising to the masses, it forces us to join to partake with the masses.

I've been lucky enough to avoid the walled prison but a fortune 500 company cannot.

We can only educate the masses that better products exist or the psychology tricks Apple uses in their marketing.

Yes, artificial monopoly is the major issue here.

With respect to the "$99" annual fee, the issue is that it isn't a good deal at all when a developer wants to offer the software for free - most open source developers don't even collect any donation, and it is doubtful if many of them can even raise $99 every year.

This is where regulation is definitely needed - big tech should not be able to force us to pay and use only their signing infrastructure, and government law should require any CA to stringently implement KYC (know your customer) norms, like banks do, before issuing certificates to any Tom, Dick or Harry.

I would preferably like to see the end of such "App Store" nonsense, but would gladly compromise and accept it if there is no monopoly (with the caveat that side loading / direct installation of apps should not be restricted - nobody should be forced to use an "App Store" if they don't want to).

(App Store is so successful on ios only because side loading / direct installation is restricted on it).

Even they show now popup and permission on mac. It made lots of app and developers living miserable. They are showing popups for permission every where.

Thats why there is no income now for indie developers in appstore

> Imagine an ecosystem where apps were signed with domain validated certificates, which would be free (or very cheap), instant, and better than what we currently have, and it definitely feels like entrenched interests are working to keep things from improving.

The goal is to validate and associate a legal entity with a developer account, not a domain name.

In addition to being required to do such things in many jurisdictions for tax reasons, in event of subsequent abuse the stores want to ban an organization - not a $10 domain name.

    in event of subsequent abuse the stores want to ban an organization

A corporate shouldn't get to be the gatekeeper of anything - regulators / courts in a democratic system should decide such things so that the corporates can't abuse their position against a smaller entity. And CAs should be held accountable by the regulators too - a simple regulation like asking CAs to collect legal ID and certificate of registrations before issuing certificates to any person or entity can take care of this. Thus, if any illegal ill-practice is detected in any software, the regulators or the law can be informed and the developer / entity easily identified and necessary legal action can be taken.

I know this is old, but...

> The goal is to validate and associate a legal entity with a developer account, not a domain name.

I'm saying that goal has failed. Setting up a company has a low, fixed cost for bad actors and there's plenty of malware signed by EV code signing certificates.

> not a $10 domain name

IMO domain names are worth a lot more than $10 once you start building a brand on them. For example, cars.com values their domain at $800 million dollars [1]. Obviously they couldn't sell it for that, but that's what they consider the brand value to be.

I can start a "legal entity" for much, much less than the value I attribute to my domain. For small developers and good actors, I think being able to build identity around a domain based brand would be useful.

Or, if it's _really_ about accountability, all code signing certificates should be issued to individuals who have validated their identity through a notary. And not using the terrible system the current CAs are using where some poor bastard in a developing country is expected to verify identity documents from a bajillion different legal jurisdictions.

I guess I just hate the high pricing and terrible, terrible product that code signing certificates have become.

1. https://domaingang.com/domain-news/cars-com-domain-was-value...

> My exact sentiment at the time was "there's no way developers are going to be dumb enough to give up control of distribution." Wow, was I ever wrong :-(

You were only one word off the truth if s/developers/consumers.

> Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple suddenly asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store", and treated it as something normal. And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app.

I'm not sure where the "suddenly" comes from. It's not as if there was a time before the fee where developers could ship apps for iOS. There's been a developer program as long as there has been an App Store. For that matter, there was a much more expensive developer programs for the Mac before iOS was even a thing. I remember paying somewhere between $1500 and $3000 when we were writing Mac software in the early aughts.

The "suddenly" is in the context of this new practice of charging all developers (big or small) annual fees and demanding a recurring cut of their profit. Before this unnatural practice became prevalent, any computer user and / or Linux / Windows / Mac / Android developer could create and distribute software on the respective platforms for free without any such financial consideration.

My point is let's not normalise this practice in any manner - in the past too we used to pay huge fees for developer tools, but today the computing environment is totally different and that's why even the tech giants are adopting and pushing for free open source developer tools or providing their developer tools for free. Let's not regress to something worse.

I don’t think you answered the ops question. Was there ever a time that you could develop software for Mac or particularly iOS and distribute it without paying the developer license fee?

To be fair - the Unix market is different than iOS apps. And on Windows, anyone could run whatever program… which caused a lot of problems and financial loss. And just because Windows or Unix used those models, why are they the one and only acceptable model?

    Was there ever a time that you could develop software for Mac or particularly iOS and distribute it without paying the developer license fee?

As I have said in my original post, that's the point it started going downhill for us developers on the macOS and ios platform; and as Apple continues to further abuse its position, it's time to say a clear no to their regressive and exploitive practices. And as I have said elsewhere too, just because a particular practice has gained ground because the exploitive business model earns somebody more profit, doesn't mean that the exploited have to continue accepting it.

    And just because Windows or Unix used those models, why are they the one and only acceptable model?

They are more acceptable simply because they don't abuse and exploit the developers who provide a huge value to the platform. If you are fine with a corporate abusing their control over their platform to exploit money from you, both as a developer and a consumer, then we don't really have anything else to discuss because of our differing economic / political belief on this subject.

> it started going downhill for us developers on the macOS and ios platform;

You didn’t answer the question. Was there a time you could develop and distribute on iOS without paying the license fee?

> If you are fine with a corporate abusing their control over their platform to exploit money from you, both as a developer and a consumer, then we don't really have anything else to discuss because of our differing economic / political belief on this subject.

This is a logical fallacy — begging the question — when you state a position as an absolute truth.

No one is “fine” with a corporation “abusing their control”. But your argument is based on the premise that charging for an SDK or charging a license fee to build and distribute on iOS or Mac is itself an abusive practice.

The counter argument is that it isn’t. Because anyone could develop and distribute software for Windows or Unix doesn’t mean that that is the only model and anything else is abuse, which you’re claiming as an absolute truth.

> that's the point it started going downhill for us developers on the macOS and iOS platform

The only developers on the iPhoneOS platform at that point worked for Apple, or jailbroke and used reverse engineered APIs, or built web applications.

You seem to be implying that there was some happy era of open native iPhone application development before Apple ruined it all with the App Store, but that’s simply not true.

You are just just talking in circles to confuse the issue -

The major point is that just because Apple is now able to abuse their control over the ios platform (and now mac too), developers (and consumers) should not be willing to submit to such exploitation.

A smart phone is a general purpose computer, with built-in telephony. We use it like any other computer to do multiple tasks. Developers and consumers have always been free to develop or install on computers in the last few decades before Apple, after its popularity with the ios platform, decided to abuse its control and removed this option after finding a business model to further exploit developers and its consumers.

To be clear - just because some exploitive business practice has gained ground, doesn't mean we developers and consumers have to continue to accept it as some kind of new normal practice. If you don't think the current practice is abusive and exploitive to developers and consumers, then please present your argument for the same as that is what we are discussing here.

I’m not talking in circles, I’m directly contradicting one very simple thing you are saying. Throughout this thread you are talking as if gatekeeping access to a platform is something novel that Apple brought into the world with the App Store, before which all development – including iOS and Android development – were open. That is simply wrong.

iPhone development was never open; Apple did not “remove this option”. No Android phone was available to the public before the App Store launched. Apple were by no means the first to act as gatekeepers for a platform; this is something that has been commonplace for decades. This is not a business practice that has “gained ground”; it is something that has been with us for a very long time before the App Store existed. The App Store is a continuation of a theme that has existed and thrived for decades.

If you want to argue that it’s no good – that’s fine, make that argument. But don’t rest it on a foundation of “everything was open and good before Apple created the App Store” because it’s simply factually untrue.

> Before this unnatural practice became prevalent

We’re talking about computer hardware and software. Complaining that it is “unnatural” makes no sense.

> any computer user and / or Linux / Windows / Mac / Android developer could create and distribute software on the respective platforms for free without any such financial consideration.

This isn’t true. The first Android device was launched to the public after the App Store was open for business. And you are ignoring all the platforms where this was a common practice beforehand, like consoles. Apple weren’t the first to charge for access to a platform, this was already a common practice. Nintendo have been doing it since the mid 80s, for instance.

The consoles are niche entertainment devices. They also have many alternatives: multiple stores on PCs, and several newer cloud-based products. For this reason I'm OK with the stores in xbox/playstation/nintendo.

With smartphones it's different. Phones are not niche devices, they are ubiquitous and have killed whole industries like consumer photo/video equipment and portable audio.

From consumer point of view, no reasonable alternatives have left. It's for this reason I'm not OK with Apple and Google abusing their monopoly.

> The consoles are niche entertainment devices.

They sell by the tens of millions. They are in no way “niche”.

> Phones are not niche devices, they are ubiquitous and have killed whole industries like consumer photo/video equipment and portable audio.

It wasn’t common for things like cameras to have open development platforms either.

> They sell by the tens of millions

There’re billions of active Android devices. That’s 2 orders of magnitude difference. Compared to these volumes, consoles are niche devices.

And don’t forget about alternatives. If you wanna play videogames you don’t have to buy a console, you can get a PC and buy Windows games from gog, steam, epic or origin. And in some cases like take-two directly from developer. And recently there were multiple attempts to make cloud gaming work, pretty sure some day someone will do that successfully.

Because customers have so many alternatives, xbox and playstation are not a monopoly despite MS/Sony are selling devices locked to their respective stores.

For smartphones, customers only have 2 alternatives. It’s for this reason apple and google are a monopoly, and we should treat them this way i.e. regulate the hell out of them.

> It wasn’t common for things like cameras to have open development platforms either.

I don’t think many people care about open platforms. They care about choice. Back in the days, if you didn’t like e.g. Sony pushing their overprices memory sticks, you could buy a camera that’s not Sony, there were many other good vendors on the market. Nowadays, the cameras are either prosumer and professional (i.e. expensive), or non-existent because smartphones killed them. And while there’re many companies making smartphones, all these smartphones are controlled by just two.

> Compared to these volumes, consoles are niche devices.

“Niche” doesn’t mean “this other thing sold more”.

> A traditional game console is in 51 percent of U.S. households.

— https://venturebeat.com/2015/04/14/155-million-americans-pla...

Consoles are in no way “niche devices”. You’re only saying that they are because it’s convenient for the point you are making. If we can’t agree on a basic fact like this, there’s no discussion to be had here.

> Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple suddenly asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store", and treated it as something normal.

Somebody has absolutely no idea how high developer fees on proprietary platforms used to be.

>Double Fine's Tim Schaefer pegged the cost of submitting an Xbox 360 patch at $40,000 in an interview with Hookshot Inc. earlier this year

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/microsoft-comes-under...

True. I don't have an idea of how high developer fees have been on proprietary, and restricted use platforms before. I have generally avoided them and grew up on mostly open platforms (Unix / Linux / Windows) before becoming a web application developer and moving on to mobile apps. My main point is that the computing environment is very different today and we should a fight such regressive practices - just because they have been doing something in the past, and can do it now at a larger scale too, doesn't mean we have to accept it and normalise it. Right?

> Somebody has absolutely no idea how high developer fees on proprietary platforms used to be.

Right. Even in the mass-market area, I remember when Microsoft used to charge seven or eight hundred bucks for Visual Studio.

Weren't XBox development kits up around ten thousand dollars back in the days before the App Store changed the rules?

Sure, in the past the computing era was different and tech corporates could get away with charging a lot for their development tools. But even then, you did not have to depend solely on them and there was a healthy competition in this vertical - Borland easily comes to mind. During the Java boom, their JBuilder used to be a top selling product till Eclipse came out. Open source and internet changed the game. Today Visual Studio also has a free version and even Apple is forced to offer their development tools for free because otherwise developers will prefer the free opensource options, than pay the exorbitant price they used to demand.

Yeah, people seem to forget that when Apple announced the mobile app store with a $99 fee and 30% cut, developers were applauding. It was a radical change from the existing mobile development model and stores, and made it possible for many more developers.

The problem is that Apple never updated with the times. If they had simply done what one of the emails from the trial said (scale the fee back once the store was making 1B), then much of this could have been avoided.

The best solution here is to have a competing App Store on iOS with their own rules. The new store will have a more realistic fixed fee for hosting apps, and devs will be able to cut prices. That should incentivize consumers to install the new app store.

Lots of people raised voices but you need to understand they are small and no one wants to fight app while making leaving

Who do you think could organize a guild of the app developers?

  - To begin with existing open source foundations and activists. The Free Software Foundation easily comes to mind.

  - In a democracy, political parties - they already are behind most unions and merchant / business associations and even major non-profits.

(Approaching a political party may be controversial for some, but remember that political parties are also an institution in a democracy. And we will need political will and legislative backing to assert some of our rights. And it doesn't matter if there are more than one such organisations - there is no one size fits all solution for everyone).