Apple removes $99 dev account requirement for first iOS 17 and macOS 14 betas
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Would be a massive benefit to budding developers in developing nations.
Edit: Specifically on the topic of apps relevant to independent developers, the topic I’m replying to. An indie dev isn’t going to create a regional newspaper or utility company or a media empire or a government.
(I'm Canadian; half the apps on my phone only exist in Canada.)
More relevant to paid use-cases: streaming video services that offer content in the country's distinct language that's only spoken there. (Example: the Philippines. There's enough Tagalog content for entire services to be based around offering it; and nobody outside of the country would ever be interested in it.)
> An indie dev isn’t going to create a regional newspaper or utility company or a media empire.
How many people do you think work at regional newspapers in e.g. Tanzania? I'd guess maybe five people. You think they can hire some big software firm to write them a mobile app? They're either hiring the editor's nephew to do it, or they put out a classified ad looking for someone in town who can do it, and they end up getting a call from the guy who runs the cellphone repair store who "thinks he can give it a try." Same with the banks there, the utilities there, and even the government services there. Also same with schools, restaurants, museums, etc.
You'd think that most of these would just target the web rather than making mobile apps. But in many of these countries — and esp. in poorer regions of them — Internet access is still so shit that the lower bandwidth requirements of a native app with offline sync really matter. (Example again from the Philippines, c/o a friend of mine who lives there: people who meet on dating websites move immediately to talking on WhatsApp, because out in the provinces you've got a miniscule data plan with spotty connectivity, which can handle the few KBs of push data per WhatsApp message, but can't handle refreshing some bloated website chat interface to check for new messages.)
Ex: Match owns Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, PlentyOfFish, OurTime, Amoureux.com (Now Redirects To Meetic), Black People Meet, BLK, Chispa, Disons Demain, Hawaya (Formerly Harmonica), Hinge, HyperConnect, Lexa.nl, Love Scout 24, neu.de, Pairs, ParPerfeito, Ship, Stir, The League, Upward… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group
Instead, "the rest of the world" has developed and popularized its own collection of apps and sites, some of which are global (being well-known to everyone except the English-speaking world), while others are quite regional.
Locanto (a Craigslist-alike, containing among other sections a Craigslist Personals-alike) is a good example of a global one. It exists in the west, but has basically no market penetration. But ask anyone in South Africa, or Colombia, or Indonesia, what they think of when you say "dating site", and they'll probably point to Locanto.
Others are regional but backed by "media empires" of their own — there's the whole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupid_Media set of sites, for example, that each cover one country in SEA.
But it’s also common in many industries to have 3rd party software companies offer various levels of customizable software that can look very brand specific while being nearly identical. Sometime it’s obvious like with Android, but no car company wants someone else’s look and feel let alone logo in their infotainment system. So it’s not alway obvious how distinct everything actually is under the hood.
If you're a person who lives in Tanzania and is considering getting into mobile app development — and you've decided, first-and-foremost, that you want to "work locally" to produce apps that benefit your fellow Tanzanians — then by making this decision, you've basically opted out of "selling apps" altogether, instead placing yourself firmly in the "selling app-dev labor for the development of free apps" camp; and you've also opted out of targeting iOS, since it's got at most 7.75%[1] market share in Tanzania.
(And probably a large percentage of that 7.75% is tourists visiting for safaris, who won't ever be downloading your app-for-locals anyway. Tanzania's less-tourist-inclined neighbour, Kenya, has a 3.43% iOS market-share, which sounds closer to realistic for the area.)
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-ma...
(If you want a knock-down argument, though, how about this: India has a billion people and 3.92% of them use iOS (which I didn't realize until pulling the citation above.) There are definitely independent Indian game developers, making games whose characters are historical or mythological figures well-known in India, but not of much interest outside of India. They sell these games, for money. Would it make sense for these people to bother with iOS development, vs. focusing solely on Android development?)
For a lot of people, winning in their country (rather than SF-bay-world-domination-hyperscale) is plenty.
edit: yeah it was the Mac Pro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro
I wouldn't build a fresh hackintosh today though. M1/2 Mac mini has sane pricing/performance ratio IMO.
I'm writing this from my 2nd Hackintosh. And hackintosh is my daily driver since 2013. Including for iOS development.
You may be thinking about 1337 gamerz gang. When you're going cheap, there're lots and lots of ways to save. E.g. you can get a fancy box or you can re-use a two decades cheap box just fine. Or you can live without it entirely... Cheap old power unit will work fine as long as you don't want beefy GPU. It's easy to get hold of older generation CPU/motherboard too which will work just fine for hackintosh. And then get a tiny SSD for booting (or skip this step entirely) and use an old HDD for storage. Keyboard/mouse cost peanuts too if you ain't going fancy. Old smaller display is cheap too. Hackintosh-wise, CPU/motherboard is pretty much the only crucial part.
Hardest part is to get wifi and bluetooth working. But you can skip that entirely to save money and headache. Personally I skipped it on my first hackintosh. Got it working during pandemics for shit and giggles though because a compatible part popped up in local ads. Now even airdrop and continuity works :)
You may want to check PC prices and how pretty poor countries are doing. It's no longer such a luxury as it was 20 years ago.
Also, it's lame to assume that every manufacturer must make their products compatible with any OS.
Money.
Plain and simple, iOS is where the money is at. People jump through the hoops, and Apple creates them, because they know the customer base is many times more valuable than Android.
No. https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships/
Nor should you be limited to compiling on Apple hardware. These limitations are policy decisions, and just serve to reinforce the notion that Apple doesn't care about developers (hilarious for the company that pretty much invented app stores!). A lot like it was a ToS violation to run MacOS in a virtualization environment - why be so developer hostile?
Nobody can soundly argue these artificial barriers have increased app quality on all the Apple platforms either. These barriers... just exist, just because.
A developer annual fee doesn't prevent spam. It's just there to be hostile to developers...
But for every person like you, that fee probably keeps out orders of magnitude more abuse, spam, trolls, other nonsense.
Apple isn't dumb (their evilness is debatable). I'm sure they have tested price points and giving free dev accounts and looked at results. If it produced more harm than good, they'd remove it.
iOS is the only platform that supposedly NEEDS to extract this fee. Stop believing Apple's lies, they've been grifting everyone for years.
Yeah, go and tell that to hobbyist programmers in any non wealthy country
"You can learn how to develop apps for Apple platforms for free without enrolling. With just an Apple ID, you can access Xcode, software downloads, documentation, sample code, forums, and Feedback Assistant, as well as test your apps on devices. If you don’t already have an Apple ID, you can create one now. To distribute apps, join the Apple Developer Program."
https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships
So the poor hobbyist argument is really a moot point if the point is writing apps for yourself and to learn.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/will-appl...
"Software development should either be money-losing (developer pays Apple and releases a free app), or it should be a business (developer pays Apple and attempts to make a profit)." There is no room for developers who want to release pure hobby apps with no expectation of commerce.
I don't release any of the iOS apps I write. First of all, I would never charge for them, and therefore I cannot justify paying $X/year for the ability to release them. So I do them for my own pleasure and education and that's it.
99% of this in the real world is spam. Not because it’s malicious. But the app is built for the developer, not the user. That’s not Apple’s MO.
iOS isn't the only Apple operating system either.
There is no "anti-spam" argument that can hold water.
Whatever happened to the EU Digital Markets act? That was supposed to force apple's hand.
This industry has forgotten its roots.
The issue is paying $99 to even be allowed to think about making an app - plus the arbitrary requirement it must be built using a Mac.
Not all apps are commercial, and not all apps generate revenue, and not all apps are even on the App Store!
It's just an absurd requirement. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone?
This is also false:
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
I say "also" because you were also wrong about the Apple Developer Program: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36235313
How is it nit picky when you were using the nonexistent $25 listing fee as part of an argument? "$25 per listed app - removing the "anti-spam" argument some are making."
And in the case of Android you might not get the app in the search results because Google decided your phone is not compatible, in which case the Play Store will pretend the app doesn't exist. To this day I don't understand this stupid design, it confuses the hell out of users who don't know this obscure detail, sometimes even misleads them by installing another app that showed up instead of the correct one.
You pay for the benefits of being listed in a curated app store - such as Play Store, Microsoft Store, Steam store, etc. The benefits include discovery, audience, services (billing, distribution), etc.
But you don't pay anything for the privilege of making an app. That's just absurd.
One quick look at App Store vs. Play store will tell you differently.
This is false. The Developer ID program began in 2012. Before then, Mac software didn't need to be signed with an Apple certificate.
It may not have been called Developer ID back then, but you absolutely were required to pay $99 per year for as long as I can remember - well before 2012.
The perks included receiving a free copy of OSX - which was funny considering you still needed a Mac to work on.
You have no idea what you're talking about. I've been a professional Mac developer for 17 years, so I do know what I'm talking about.
The Apple Developer Program has existed for decades, and in fact it used to be way more expensive, i.e., $500 or $3500 depending on level: https://web.archive.org/web/20080513215048/http://developer....
However, membership in the Apple Developer Program wasn't required to distribute Mac software, because Xcode was included with Mac OS X, and Mac OS X did not require apps to be code signed. The code signing requirement started in 2012. You can see the membership benefits in the above Wayback Machine link.
> The perks included receiving a free copy of OSX - which was funny considering you still needed a Mac to work on.
You are right about that, but remember that Mac OS X used to be distributed on disc, and you had to go to the store and pay for it, so having a copy of the latest update mailed to you would have been very convenient.
You have always had to pay a fee for the privilege of thinking about writing code capable of running on an Apple device - in addition to always being required to compile code on a grossly overpriced Apple device.
So the entry fee to thinking about making an Apple "app" is at a minimum $1k+.
It's hilarious seeing Apple developer's not understand how absurd this all is. Nobody else does it this way, and Apple's users are worse off because of it.
No?
> You have always had to pay a fee for the privilege of thinking about writing code capable of running on an Apple device
Again, for the nth time, no.
The $99 Mac developer program began in 2010. https://developer.apple.com/news/index.php?id=03192010a Before then, it was $500/$3500, as my previous link shows. [EDIT:] Here's another article from 2010: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/03/apple-reconfigures-m...
On the Mac, Gatekeeper and Developer ID were introduced in 2012. Before then, Mac apps didn't need to be code signed. You could distribute Mac apps before 2012 without paying anything to Apple (other than the price of the Mac, of course, though technically you could compile on a non-Mac).
February 27, 2012 "Developer ID is a new way to help prevent users from installing malware on their Mac. Along with Gatekeeper, a new feature in OS X Mountain Lion, signing applications with your Developer ID certificate provides users with the confidence that your application is not known malware and has not been tampered with." https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=02272012a
I very much doubt making it really difficult to target the iPhone on anything other than a Mac has anything to do with the amount of shovelware on the Play Store.
Incidentally I've made back my Apple Developer fee in app revenue, so that's cool. Ha ha ha! :)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491
While the process is fairly simple, it basically excludes all normal people from using your application if you don't sign them. So any application that wants to distribute outside macOS experts needs to get their application signed and notarized.
Apparently Adobe Acrobat isn't a commonly downloaded application. Somehow I fail to believe that...
You can of course open it the app anyway by disregarding this protection for the specific app in settings.
Okay, how about this? They're trying their hardest to give everyone the impression that it's dangerous without explicitly saying so.
Making Apple $99 richer doesn't make your app any less dangerous.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36086537 is an analogous case. When the primary provider of free domains names went away, there was a HUGE reduction in phishing websites. Those types would spin up thouands of sites on xyz, vip and similar TLDs faster than the white hats could whackamole them.
A domain going from $0 to $10 vastly curtailed that activity. You don't have to make something impossible, you just have to make it not cost effective to shot gun it.
Only because Apple has made it so.
What would be the drawback if I, a macOS developer not paying Apple $99 per year, had access to the macOS application notarization service for free?
Software sales are contrived fiat exchange to give your code access to my hardware and userspace. Who the f are you?
And Apple is?
Apple suddenly vanishing would actually have a much more dramatic effect on millions than 1,000 random open source freelancers vanishing.
- AppStore apps are reviewed by Apple.
- Apple can ban malicious app in AppStore.
- Apple checks binaries when you run them even they aren't from AppStore due to notarization.
Right click --> open --> open. 3 clicks is not "a bunch of hoops".
Anything the user learns to do by rote without first understanding the security implications provides zero security. Like the Windows Vista elevation prompt — users just learned to hit "Yes" and got infected anyway.
To warn a user.
Do you expect people to react by not running the program? Why? If you find out that they are in fact still running the program just as much with the warning in place, because they aren't reading the warning... then have you actually "warned the user"?
Anyway, it's only hard to run if you have no idea what you're doing... pretty much the same people who should not be running executables randomly downloaded from the internet are the ones blocked by hurdles like this.
If the user has permission to disable the warning, they can, otherwise the app needs to be updated.
Open source and not-for-profit software has been put at a disadvantage here, which I think is very bad for several reasons.
However, there is a space of potential solutions to this problem, many of which don't involve giving Apple money.
Somehow Apple chose a solution which would involve developers giving Apple what is for many people and open source projects a significant sum of money.
Then, Apple decided to not directly tell Apple users that the thing standing between them and the software they downloaded is that Apple believes the developer needs to give Apple money.
What a fascinating turn of events.
Perhaps if the open source community had provided a solution that actually served the needs of end users in this regard, Apple could have adopted it.
> Then, Apple decided to not directly tell Apple users that the thing standing between them and the software they downloaded is that Apple believes the developer needs to give Apple money.
You’ve admitted that they are solving a real problem, therefore this is not an honest representation of what is going on.
traditionally you would need to pay the 99 bucks to install a binary on your ipad or iphone or iwatch. those need to have the certificate signed by apple to run on the phone for general security reasons so some website couldn't sideload an app. now you can do all of that without paying the 99 bucks... but if you wanted to sell it on the app store or distribute it for external testing you still need to pay.
Cash cow reasons*. The system is designed to be secure even against signed apps.
The "Anywhere" option no longer exists in System Preferences/Settings: https://support.apple.com/HT202491
It was removed in macOS Sierra.
EDIT: I wonder how many people are invested enough into iOS/Mac development that they need to use early beta releases of the operating system, but aren't already paying $99/year to release apps?
It's not. Prior to this year, you had to have a paid account to install beta versions of the new operating systems announced at WWDC. Developers using free developer accounts had to wait until July until Apple released the public betas.
No more sitting at the kids table.
> I wonder how many people are invested enough into iOS/Mac development that they need to use early beta releases of the operating system, but aren't already paying $99/year to release apps?
If you have an idea, you don't need to pay $99 to access the latest betas operating systems and tools to try something out.
It's also not only about development; new operating systems have features for system administrators and others involved in deployment of Apple devices and services.
Someone who's administers 100 Macs or iPads at a school can get a head start of new feature and options in the new versions. There has always been an IT track at WWDC, though it doesn't get much attention.
For starters: "What's new in managing Apple devices" [1]
Why they should be developers in the first place? Just curious users.
I used to be that kid. I would would hours in line to get pre-release Windows betas when I was a freshman because it was fun to run Windows NT4.0 beta.
I'd see Apple ID switching as a use case. You may want to use a different ID for a project (potentially share that ID if you don't want to manage an org for a hobby project), but not pay 99 on every single IDs you use.
Of course Apple would be vehemently against that use case and typically wants you to tatoo your Apple ID to your soul and never log out from it.
They also have a public beta in July.
There's of course also this from the latest quarterly report (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY23_Q2_Consolidated_Fin...):
Net sales for the Mac category:
Q1 '23: $7,618M
Q1 '22: $10,435M
A struggling business that isn't well capitalized can't do the same thing, and that is way more typical
It's absolutely ridiculous that you have to pay to add value to a platform.