What bothers me about this -- and it bothered me enough to leave the platform -- is not fees, or "hobby computing," or "it's just for my own use," or trying to figure out why this or that would be in Apple's interest. What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of what a computer <i>is.</i><p>I am, of course, aware that many (perhaps most) computers in the world are effectively appliances, but at some level, the great glory of this glorious, epochal machine -- the "personal computer" -- is one's ability to program it and make it do something new. It is not just a machine; it's a machine for creating machines.<p>Take that away, and . . . to what shall I compare it? It's like giving someone a deck of cards and telling them that these cards can <i>only</i> be used to play blackjack. You can't <i>invent</i> a card game, or change the rules, or build a house of cards, or do card magic. Putting such stipulations in place isn't just annoying or inconvenient. It's a kind of basic betrayal of the concepts and affordances that underlie the thing itself.<p>[edit: grammar]
The relationship some developers have with Apple should be a case-study with multiple PhD thesis in psychology.<p>Not even in movies I've seen so many cases of children desperately chasing their emotionally unavailable parent.<p>Apple is a trillion dollar company, it's the "parent" who sells you +$40 dongles for everything. "Hobbies" are only good if they make them money AND doesn't increase their risk or any liability.<p>I've seen this developer-Apple dynamic at least since the late 90s. "Daddy Apple" was more available back then, but it's wasn't like it cater that much to the hobbyist-developer community ( unless we see the past with rose-colored glasses ).<p>The App Store is a multi-billion dollar business, like a moderately high-end mall, there is no place for hobbies in that world.<p>I hope for a time when developers understand this and stop feeding Apple execs for free. Ironically that would be the day Apple would be "nicer" to them.
I doubt this is "Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps", so much as "Apple doesn’t want dev accounts to be an easy backdoor for sideloading apps" and hobby apps are an acceptable casualty.
I’m not defending this, but after 15 years, I don’t see the point in complaining. We complain (rightfully) about the amount of crap in the App Store and Apple's capricious review policies that don’t stop the scammers, but for better or worse, the $99 fee IS a barrier to entry that I would argue has made the iOS ecosystem better than Android.<p>I’ve been paying $99 a year for early access to iOS betas and for my own test apps since the program debuted in 2008. I’ve never published an app in the App Store under my own account. But if I’m honest, I do feel I’ve gotten value out of that $1500 or whatever.<p>If it isn’t worth $100 a year to you, that’s fine. Plenty of people will sell you a slot on their account for less and give you a signing key. Or you can choose not to play. But it seems silly to bitch about something that has literally been the status quo since the inception of the App Store back in March 2008, when the iPhone SDK was released.<p>I should also note that the $99 in 2008 was significantly less than Apple used to charge for student access for Apple Developer Accounts for Mac before that. (Although those gave you nice Apple hardware discounts).
I wrote an Android app for my little programming news aggregator, and published that on the Play Store because it was basically free (IIRC there might be a one-time signup fee). $99/yr is a ridiculous sum for the "privilege" of publishing in Apple's walled garden, and it's just not something I'm willing to do.<p>The arguments for paying for review, distribution, advertising, search, etc feel so disingenuous when the company is worth so much money and these apps are contributing to its bottom line.<p>I really hope that the EU is the one that finally breaks down this annoying wall. I might consider using an iOS device at that point, but absolutely and definitely not before that.<p>I don't know where Apple went wrong -- third-party software made them as big as they are today, and they decided to turn on developers at some point and make them jump through hoops for nebulous "reasons". And yet the app store is <i>still</i> just filled with so many low-quality apps, scams and the like. They just look semi-pretty on launch and don't crash within the first minute or so.
My honest question is: What's the alternative.<p>I'm not an apple fan. Most of my personal devices run Linux, but I feel essentially trapped on an iPhone. It doesn't seem like there's a truly useful open phone out there. I don't like Apple, and I don't trust them or their ostensibly pro-privacy stance much, but I want as little privacy invasion and as little advertising as possible on my phone, and I think as bad as Apple is, they're still better than a fully Googled version of Android. Unfortunately, a lot of people, myself included, need at least some apps that require either an iPhone or a fully Googled version of android.<p>I suppose there's always the option to dual-wield and use a Linux or de-googled android phone for daily use and keep a second device around for the apps that won't run there, but that is both a pain I don't expect many people to buy into. I'm just about at the point of going this route for myself, but it does feel more like admitting defeat than anything else.
> Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with this idea when it comes to apps that I plan to distribute. I’m using their servers, and their infrastructure to handle updates, reviews, payments, etc.<p>Even when you do plan to distribute it it's hard to justify that it's for a good purpose. The review process is so broken and infuriating that I often find myself thinking that _they_ are the ones who should be paying us to go through the stress of trying to publish an update to an app.
It feels like Apple doesn't even want commercial indie developers on their platforms either.<p>The whole process around entitlements and app review is absolutely maddening for small teams that don't have insider connections at Apple.<p>For context, there are things that your device is capable of, but the OS will prevent you from doing without Apple's blessing (an "Entitlement"). Even in test code that you're not shipping to the app store. Most apps you'll use day to day will use a bunch of these entitlements.<p>A pretty common scenario is that you want to be able to remove a notification that is no longer relevant. The process to do that is:
1. Pay the $99 (ugh, okay)
2. Build marketing materials for your app (even if you're the only user)
3. Write a proposal to Apple explaining why you need this entitlement and this is a good user experience.
4. Wait 4-8 weeks for Apple to deny your request without actually reading the proposal. Seriously, they only skim read what you write.
5. Go to 4<p>If you want to publish your app, you'll go through this all again with app review.<p>This process is absolutely maddening and is extremely time consuming. Apple's policies assume you have a large team to manage them, create marketing assets etc.<p>At bigger companies you escalate thus via your Apple internal contacts who chase things up for you. Indie developer? SOL.
2 weeks ago I created a prototype in SwiftUI to present at work this week and I was going to use my phone. An hour before the meeting I decided to open it and do one last run-through to refamiliarize myself with it.<p>I got the same notice.<p>Had to scramble to rebuild/provision and re-install on my device from my Mac that was in another part of town - for which I had to drive.<p>And then I got some strange errors because apparently I had to update either my OS or XCode?<p>Ended up just showing the Android version and that worked fine of course.<p>It's very annoying indeed, but at the end of the day, complaining probably won't get me anywhere, it's been this way since, what, 2007?<p>P.S. Developers complain about a bunch of things on the Andrdoid platform too, particularly Google Play, so it's hard to win.
I agree that the $99/yr stops me from making side apps (that could blow up into the next big thing, who knows) for Apple, I’ll just focus on the web platform instead. Sorry to go on a tangent here to the bird site, but I can’t help but think how hysterical it is that the bird site wants to charge developers 12x the cost of the Apple developer program. $100/mo for twitter api access
I am fan of the philosophy free for personal use and money for professional use. Because, when I make money of somebody else work, I should give some of that somebody else (what ever 'some' means).<p>That said, there is a lot to consider for companies like Apple in this world. Yes, it is not only Apple that does this. Apple is just apparent as with the iPhone it became so ubiquitous.<p>Apple wants to be known for a clean platform for consumers without worrying about viruses and such things. Ever heard about a ransomware on your shiny iPhone? If you want to maintain this, then you need a strict enforcement of who can run what on the platform. These days such enforcement is done via certificates. At first Apple was somehow lax on that enforcement. That allowed side-loading of apps on your iPhone. For development purposes good. Of course for personal use great. But the first actors appeared and used that to distribute their apps. I remember when Google Ingress where a thing way befor Pokemon Go. Ingress was Android only. No iPhone. Because it was from Google. Then some people came along and build an iOS app, which you could download from Github. Then when some shady actors got banned from the Appstore they distributed their apps via shady websites. I assume at one point the decision grew that they need to do something to prevent this.<p>Another thing is, the development tools are not free as in free beer. Maintaining development tools costs resources. That's why I need to buy the development tools. If I do embedded I may need to buy a Keil compiler. If I do FPGA I may need to buy Altera or Xilinx. But the Apple tool chain is free of charge. Maintenance costs resources. That's why in the past you needed to buy the Development account to have access to the tool chain at all. Now, these days, the tool chain is free-of-charge. So you could ask "Hey, they are such a money maker, why can't they just cross finance that?" That is valid. On the other, why? Why shouldn't that business unit finance itself?<p>So there are many different things to consider.
I'm the author of several macOS-specific open source projects, and of several cross-platform open source projects, as well. This has been the case for several years.<p>Apple effectively decides what can run on macOS, and if you don't pay their yearly toll and jump through their hoops, your apps won't run on users' macOS installations. If you don't pay them, Apple will make it seem like your app is either broken or malicious to unsuspecting users.<p>It's a racket and it's not worth the trouble to deal with it.<p>Users don't understand why they can't run the un-Notarized apps they want to run. Those are the people who suffer.
> All of this just smells of greed.<p>Apple is a for profit company.<p>I could turn this around and say that it's greedy to expect a company to offer these tools for free. There's an investment on their end as well.
It really does suck. I made a stupid little companion app for a video game just to help track my own progress and it was so depressing to learn that I could only use it for a week at a time. So backwards.
I feel this developer's pain, I remember writing a vituperative blog post about Apple's habit of buying or building their own clone of some independent app and muscling developers out of their market. With time I've mellowed. Running a business means that you have to say "no" to a bunch of things for which there is a perfectly plausible and rational reason to say "yes."<p>The reasons for saying "no" to good ideas are sometimes incredibly important, such as "Putting more wood behind fewer arrows, i.e. Focus." And sometimes they make no sense that anyone can discern from reading the tea leaves, but they aren't fatal to the business and so there's no incentive to figure out how to say "yes" to them.<p>I am in no way saying that I like living in the world where Apple treats ISVs and hobbyists as irritations. I remember having to pay outrageous amounts of money for photocopied developer documentation in the late 80s and early 90s... From Apple! I remember flying to Cupertino for OpenDoc training that cost us three grand a developer. Outrageous, were they trying to recruit a developer ecosystem? Or gatekeeping so that the only OpenDoc developers would come from companies that were already behemoths?<p>But sigh... OpenDoc failed, Copland failed, Pink was spun of as Taligent and failed... Easy to criticize Apple's choices, but nevertheless they survived and here we are decades later dealing with the fact that throughout its history, Apple has always had a love-hate relationship with hobbyists and ISVs.[1]<p>And throughout that time, we've all complained. We're not wrong, but then again, we're not right, either.<p>———<p>[1]: Guy Kawasaki, Apple's first developer evangelist, wrote at length about how he was trying to drum up interest from indie developers to write software for the Mac. It was a good fit, as being an indie means you can jump into a new platform and exploit first-mover advantage, without any baggage from your existing success to hold you back.<p>Corporate always shit on that, they wanted big announcements from Microsoft and Lotus and Wordperfect and Ashton-Tate. And how did things play out? The "killer app" turned out to be PageMaker from Aldus, a company nobody had heard of. Later, people wrote business apps for Mac. Did they build them on top of Ashton-Tate's popular database? Nope, they built them on top of something called "Silver Surfer" from France of all places, which was eventually renamed "4th Dimension."<p>Apple's disdain for small developers is in their DNA.
Between Apple's "monetize the developers" versus Google's "monetize the users" I think I prefer the monetization of the developers. I hope a successful alternative to either method comes along however.
While you can develop personal apps on MacOS, in contrast to iOS, without the nuisance of expiring provisioning certificates, there are other maintenance issues endemic to both platforms. I have been masochistically maintaining two applications that I originally coded on NexTstep (1992) and OpenStep (1997) for MacOS. While they still run, over the years I have noticed a large amount of unnecessary API churn. Of course there are benefits to API improvements which build new functionality, but in addition, Apple is unique in its penchant for random deprecation of mid-level APIs that serve only to induce bit-rot into applications intentionally. I imagine the cost of this practice is very high to organizations that support Apple applications. I once worked as a professional Apple ecosystem developer (and this practice is one of many reasons I no longer do so) and we typically set aside large amounts of project scope for annual Apple API maintenance.
I really feel the author's pain. Apple is so developer-hostile that it's a wonder they have anyone developing for them at all. Maybe my bones are just too linux, but the AUDACITY of requiring that you pay money just to even get a foot in the door, but you also have to use their accursed operating system on your real computer? Disgusting. I can tolerate running iOS on my phone, which for pragmatic purposes I've already temporarily conceded is a necessary privacy and freedom nightmare. But it'll be a cold day in Hell before I do my actual development in their garden.<p>So to this end I've been trying to connive a way to develop an app for iOS without actually having to use a mac for anything I consider actual development. I'm ideologically opposed to buying a mac just to be able to sign, but not practically or monetarily.<p>Right now, it's looking something like this:<p>1. Develop my app in Godot (my app is technically a game but I think you could develop pretty much any non-game app in godot afaict)<p>2. Buy a mac mini. Shove it in my rack with a dummy monitor hooked up. Use VNC to remote control GUI for when I need to poke UI things. Configure SSH.<p>3. Develop my app in godot like normal, using their built-in runner for normal dev-test loop.<p>4. Set up a script to pull my app on the mac mini, build it, sign it, and deploy it to either prod or my test device.<p>As the author mentions, test apps expire periodically. I wonder if I can automate re-installing it every week/year.<p>I haven't tested any of this out yet, I'm mainly still making sure I like Godot enough to use it for my game. Then I'll expand out, testing out the mac stuff.<p>And all of this is hedged that if I for some reason switch away from iOS, I just export my game to android and continue with my day. (or at least something close to that, instead of having to rewrite from scratch).
Apple is greedy, as all corporations are. But to me, more so than being defined by greed, I'd just say that the App store has been a badly managed product in many ways that hurts Apple's ability to make money.<p>Think about how many Mac Developers have been criticizing many of the policies and features surrounding the App store for their business for years. There's been kerfuffles about lack of update pricing, forced API updates for perfectly working software, bad search functionality, horrendous App approval stories, and many more complaints about features and policies on the App store that causes Apple to make far less money than they should.<p>IMO, the reason for this is that running a marketplace isn't Apple's core competency.
> Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with this idea when it comes to apps that I plan to distribute. I’m using their servers, and their infrastructure to handle updates, reviews, payments, etc.<p>I do. Isn't that what their extortionate cut is supposed to cover?
If you're talking about developing a hobby app, I'd recommend using something like react native. The DX on react (not react native necessarily) is unmatched, and easier to pick up than iOS development from the ground up. After that, you can publish the app through Expo, which is an app on the App Store. No $99 fee that way, great DX, deploying is easy and quick, a great middle ground for hobbies.<p>Alternatively, make a website like you normally would and in Safari you can "Add to Home Screen". You don't even need a domain name, just save the IP to your Home Screen. Native APIs for websites come a long way.
In 2008 I applied for the program just to learn and write hobby apps. What put me off was after paying I had to prove to Apple who I was by sending a scan of my (uk) passport. As a non US citizen my data has very little protection, so i requested a refund. It took a long time, but got a refund and made a small profit thanks to the exchange rate.
I've developed a little app (mostly for myself). After one week, I encountered the same and was a bit annoyed.<p>I'm waiting now for the new EU regulation that should open the apps store. I hope this also includes side-loading self-compiled apps.<p>One remark in favor of Apple: They provide a pretty good dev. environment. So a fee for distributing something could be acceptable.
The one and only reason I've had an Apple Developer account is to accept Apple Pay payments through Stripe for my small business' web site that has existed since 2008, and I can't get them to accept my perfectly good credit card for the $100 annual fee for that privilege. This time around I just threw in the towel.
><i>All of this just smells of greed</i><p>I don't think so. All of this is a statisticall error to their profits.<p>This just smells of a use case (hobby devs wanting the iOS dev kit but not to distribute apps) they don't care about, and wont do anything to cater for.
Over the years I figured out that developing an app targeting a particular device is not a good use of your time. You're probably just working for a particular company (Google, Apple, MS) for almost free. The best approach is to use a language that is as free as possible from companies (C++, Common Lisp, for example) and develop your code independent of the device. Then, if you really need, pay somebody else to create a UI for a particular platform. This may be more difficult in the short term, but your code will at least survive for more than a couple of years and you'll not go crazy.
This, combined with the locked-down nature of iDevices, are the main reasons why I don't own iPhones. This isn't a slam against iPhones at all -- it's just that I'm clearly not their target market.
The annoying part for consumers is that now installing apps on iOS is arguably even more spammy and full of nuisance than the early Android days. It used to be that iOS apps were $1 and high quality, and Android apps were free and crappy or full of malware. Now, EVERY small utility on iOS wants me to sign up for a subscription. I wanted a simple calendar countdown widget the other week and all of the top promoted search results were apps with subscription models. For a countdown (eg. 37 days until X)! This to me to worse than sifting through malware and ad spam on Google Play.
What's worse: there are a lot of developers (like me) who develop Mac apps and don't even publish them in the App Store, so the 99€ are ONLY to get the app notarized. IT'S SUPER FRUSTRATING.
"I should be thankful they don’t make me pay a yearly developer fee for making python apps on my Macbook."<p>Just wait a few years... I predict that they'll charge to develop anything.
I’m running two hobby apps and I don’t have a paid developer account. You can sign a limited number of apps without one.<p>There’s a hell of a lot of misinformation in here and the original post.
Apple is extremely hostile to anything that isn't "get the app from the App Store".<p>Hell, deploying your app to your phone without a developer license used to require that $99...
Something smells here.<p>Does he or does he not want to publish to the App Store?<p>And it is kind of weird. Apple only wants signed applications on their devices. They grant a one-week exception for developers because they expect that application to be in constant flux. You should never <i>need</i> more than a week.<p>But you need to sign your code to run it on a more permanent basis. I look at it more like buying an SSL certificate.<p>Whether that's right or not for a smartphone/tablet, that's another discussion.
An app[1] that I'm making with my little brother will earn 100 USD in about 6 months of being in the app store. That and the 30% fee, that apple's making more than us. However, I can see how it prevents that crappy apps seen in the Play Store.<p>[1] <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gif-memes-maker/id1644501716" rel="nofollow">https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gif-memes-maker/id1644501716</a>
If there were a flourishing market of indie apps on Android/Windows (since they don't have these restrictions), you would have a valid point and then Apple would need to compete.<p>What you have is 'I don't want to pay because Apple is rich'. That's not a valid argument. By your logic, all big profitable companies should either lower their prices (to what, I wonder, breakeven?) or be called greedy and bad.
> All of this just smells of greed. But then again, I guess this is why Apple is a trillion dollar company.<p>Apple is a 2+ Trillion dollar company. So yes, they are greedy.
I remember having to save up in high school to buy the Windows 2.11 SDK. I think it was $500, which took me a month to earn. Later on, I got into doing apps on Palm, and had to buy Code Warrior. Then, commercial Unix where they charged extra for the "developer workbench".<p>The $100 is a decent value compared to an inflation adjusted $500. But I do agree with this being an affront to all that is good and decent.
Android is not much better since you can quickly go down the Kafka route and end up not having your app on Google Play for various ridiculous reasons. I believe one of my hobby apps is still not available because there is always one more thing to fix. The app was on GP for years and somewhat popular before all the shenanigans started. I rather pay and it works than being left out hanging.
The way apple is dominating computing hardware with closed, user hostile software may lead to a generation of kids that are worse at programming than the previous generation for the first time. They will be growing up tapping not typing, on devices that are hostile to any kind of creative work. Sad state of affairs when Apple could have made just as much money without doing this.
It's probably to prevent sideloading/pirating etc.<p>Assume you could freely push a build onto your device: there would be many secondary stores and pirate platforms providing almost single click ways to download, build, and push apps to your phone.<p>Apple wouldn't want that. I don't think their intention is to break hobbyists but more like a side effect of their App Store policy.
What if their motivation is creating a higher than normal barrier to entry? This alone probably reduces the number of scammers and malware cross section because those types will shift their focus elsewhere, knowing there is rigor involved with distributing their app.<p>It doesn’t eliminate it, it just makes is more difficult to even enter the property.
> So basically, I pay a yearly fee to get access to their SDK? Most manufactures provide that to you for free because they really want you to build apps for their platform.<p>That actually used to be the case with Windows. Windows SDK, MSDN, and Visual Studio we’re all paid options with prices greater than $100.
I poured a year of my life into an app written in Swift for iOS before I ran into a brick wall trying to figure out how to use Apple's stuff to encode frames into an mp4 video. It's a pretty slick thing that uses low-level APIs like Metal, Core Audio, CFRunLoop, etc. <a href="https://github.com/realtaraharris/arezzo">https://github.com/realtaraharris/arezzo</a><p>I accidentally spilled a latte into my M1 MacBook Pro, which cost me $2000 to buy. At that point I decided to just forget about Apple and their entire ecosystem because it is designed to abuse everyone. $99/year, no source code for any of the stuff I'm struggling with, no access to any of the people that can answer questions about the black boxes? No thanks.<p>What am I doing now? I am rocking a ThinkPad T440p from 2012, which only cost me $285. I spend all my time writing apps in C++ for Haiku OS and I have never been happier. Instead of pouring more of your life and energy into a corporation that has labored tirelessly to destroy your freedom, please consider contributing to the commons instead.
Android has its big share of problems, but at least they allow you to build APKs that you can just run on your phone, and even use 3rd-party stores.<p>I've never understood the reasons that would push a developer to use an Apple device, given how unreasonably constrained they are.
the future of interaction with computers is not programming languages but App stores. Want to print "hello world" in your terminal? gotta buy the app, or be 'subscribed' to your operating system.<p>Gotta get ready to have to pay a 'microtransaction fee' to edit one image one time in my own computer. While also paying a subscription for: the hardware, the electricity, the internet, the operating system/app store, and finally (coming soon) each click (or however the most profit is made) on the actual app/program for image editing.<p>not looking forward to getting triple (then quadruple, and so on until we revolt?) charged (hardware, electricity, internet) for doing things with "my own" computer. then again, it's just like taxes.
While I'm not defending Apples practises against Hobby/personal apps (I wish these restrictions were not in place), you can use altserver to auto refresh side loaded apps which removes the major headache of having to refresh the apps once a week.
I don't know.<p>Yes the restrictions on being able to install your own apps on your own devices suck.<p>On the other hand, the headline is over dramatic. Apple was including Xcode with their OSes without additional cost when MSDN was charging several k/year for the same.
The idea of focusing my energy into that locked ecosystem seems completely absurd to me in 2023. I struggle to remember the last time I saw true innovation or true disruption and success from an App Store app in the last 5 years.
HN: "I can't do whatever I want with this Apple product. It's too locked down. It's terrible!"<p>Also HN: "I can do whatever I want with this Apple product. It's insecure. It's terrible!"
There is no cloud provider that is large that wants you building hobby apps. Google, AWS, Azure, Heroku, etc. all want you to build large apps, small apps are not their market and they actively don't want you.
Isn't there a case going through the EU courts that will allow sideloading a separate app store on iphones? I switched to android specifically because I could install any .apk I damn please on my device.
Apple stuff is dumb and overpriced and I don't see why anybody bothers to buy it.<p>I've never owned an Apple product in my life, and this is yet another reason to stay far away from the Apple ecosystem.
> Most manufactures provide that to you for free because they really want you to build apps for their platform.<p>I just looked it up, the Windows Developer Program seems to still charge fees to join.
I just log in with my developer account which I don't pay money for, download Xcode and install any app I want to create on my devices. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The logic here if flawed. Here's the key point:<p>> So basically, I pay a yearly fee to get access to their SDK? Most manufactures provide that to you for free because they really want you to build apps for their platform.<p>This is a classic case of hyper-focusing on the bottom-line cost of something, and ignoring all of the other costs. Windows 11 comes with ads in the search box. Do you see how that's related to XCode costing $99/year? No? It should be obvious.
This is similar to why i stopped publishing music on iTunes store as well. I didn't want to pay TuneCore etc a yearly fee to be listed when i was making more off ad revenue hosting my own music, now I just don't care and post it for free wherever i can.<p>The walled gardens have seriously screwed up the open internet and i'm kinda salty about it.
Actually Apple made it possible to develop hobby apps for free few years ago. So I don't really agree to this article. I don't know if they cared about hobbyists or just new developers but you can write software and run it on your iPhone for $0. Yes, it'll work for a week but few years ago you couldn't do it at all.
> frees up a programmer's mental resources and enables her<p>Am I the only one that found it weird to assign a gender to "a programmer". 'Him' & 'her' are both weird sounding. It should be 'them'.<p>I appreciate they're trying to be woke, but it falls flat.
When the mac came out in 1984 people had very much the same complaints as it was the first microcomputer to be released without software development tools.
Why are you running Apple if what you want is FOSS?<p>If I want to develop freely on my phone I'll use a OS made for that.<p>With that said after experiencing "hobby" quality android apps (and worse) I am fine with the higher bar of entry to iPhone. iPhone just works, android can be tinkered with.<p>Accept them for what they are designed to do and use the one that suits you.
$99 per year is pennies if you are truly spending time with the platform. Apple could charge 10 times this and still make away like bandits, I think $99 is a good price point because it weeds out folks looking for an easy system to hack at. This is good.