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Comment by neilparikh | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard you can't install apps you made on your own iPhone without a $99 a year developer account, even if you're not going to publish anything on the appstore. That seems unnecessary. Anyone know why that's the case?

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That is correct, only people with developer accounts can install apps on an iPhone. I couldn't say why this is the case.

If all you needed to install custom apps on iPhone was a toolchain, people would embed it in apps sold outside of the app store. Next thing you know theres a massive end run around the apple revenue model.

That was my thought but I couldn't articulate it as well as you did.

Off-topic: By all means, charge the $99 for distributing on the App Store, but I am not really sure why Apple doesn't allow for Apple ID level verification for personal apps. Something similar to the mobile provision they use right now, e.g. having Xcode generate a binary that is associated with the same Apple ID as on the iPhone.

I don't think that would work because setting up a shared Apple ID using a throwaway webmail account would be trivial. Each one would be good for multiple devices, and running a build script to generate multiple binaries for multiple accounts wouldn't be all that hard.

They used to ask for a credit card, but I believe that's no longer required (if it were, you could just use a prepaid gift card).

Surely there's other ways to prevent that? Like making the fee one time if you don't plan to publish to the app store.

Ah well, I guess I'll have to fork over that $99 when I want to install my own apps.

Also, if I install an app with a developer account, but don't renew it the next year, will my app still be usable, and will I be able to update it?

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