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Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

The App Store team simply knew what the questions were going to be like and were unwilling to face them.

I haven't been following WWDC very closely, did Apple do something major to piss off developers? Or is Marco referring to general App Store issues?

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I'll never understand why you have to own a mac in order to develop iPhone apps, then shell out another $99 just to use the SDK. This means that after purchasing their already expensive phone, I need to shell out close to $1,000 just for the privilege of writing apps. I'm in the market for a new phone right now, and I was really strongly considering an iPhone until I realized that those were the restrictions for writing apps. I'm currently thinking of getting an Android phone, but in Canada, the HTC-rebranded android phones have been heavily modified by HTC... what could possibly go wrong!!

I'll never understand why you have to own a mac in order to develop iPhone apps

It's not difficult to understand: the iPhone is based on a version of OS X, so when Apple came to write the developer tools, they extended the OS X developer tools. These, unsurprisingly, are OS X native.

You may not agree with it, but it's not incomprehensible.

Android (linux-based): Linux, Mac & Windows free SDK

Palm WebOS (linux-based): Mojo seems to be Linux, Mac & Windows

Blackberry: MDS is an Eclipse plugin, so Linux, Mac & Windows

Apple and Microsoft are the only ones to lock you onto one platform. Despite all the marketing dollars invested in showing how different Apple and Microsoft are, I see them apply the exact same strategies for the same purposes every single time they get the chance.

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