Serious question: why or how does a developer in a developing nation end up selecting macos as a platform? And after that deliberate choice of hardware why do we assume they couldn't afford the $99?
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.
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.
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.