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Comment by Ologn | Hacker News Reader

I started writing Android programs in 2011. With Android:

   * I can develop the apps on Windows, Mac or Linux
   * There is a lifetime developer fee of $25
   * The source code is available

To program for the Windows phone, I believe I'd need a Windows setup which I don't have. "A small barrier" some might say, but a barrier nonetheless. I believe the Windows Store fee was $100 a year or something like that. Not much for a seeded company looking to build apps, but it might discourage a student looking to release an app.

For all the hassles of Android's ever-changing API and such, they do try to make it painless for developers to get onboarded.

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This is true, but Apple has the same model - you need an OS/X machine (note: much more expensive than a basic windows machine) to develop for iOS, and I believe the app store fee is also $100. It doesn't seem to have hampered iOS at all. (although the argument to be made is that because they were the first to get big, the barrier to entry didn't matter much).

I would say the $100 fee even helped the iOS app store. It sets the floor so that I as a user knows that this app most likely isn't spam. And you need an OSX machine because it's compiled and signed by XCode. I know a few developers that held out because of the Xcode requirement (cough, VLC) but eventually even they realised Apple had no reason to change and either the foundation was going to release or someone else.

True — but it's also why neither I nor the companies I've worked at have worked on iOS apps (of note, the Android apps we've built have been internal corporate apps, not consumer-facing apps, where iOS's consumer base would be an asset).

I as a developer very much don't want to use Windows or macOS. Why would I want to use either of them when I can use Linux? I know there are others who think otherwise; it's great that we all live in a world where we can direct our destinies.

This makes no sense. In what kind of backwards company are internal apps targeted based on the software devs' platform preferences? The determining factor is what phones the people who need to use the apps have. If many of the people that need to use the app have iPhones, you'd be forced to write them for iPhones. If many had Windows Phones, you'd be forced to write them for Windows Phones. Your development-platform preferences be damned.

The hoops of developing for iOS were why the company didn't develop internal apps for iOS; the hoops of developing for iOS are also why I don't develop for iOS.

I am not a slave; I can choose where I work.

To be fair, for iOS development, you need a Mac and it is closed source as well. One would argue that Microsoft is closer to Apple than it is to Google.

And Android is not a 100% open source stack, parts of it are closed source.

FWIW, for almost two whole years now, the Windows Dev Center fee has been a one-time $20 fee.

http://winsupersite.com/software-development/windows-dev-cen...

iOS has the same issues, though, except you need an Apple machine, which is usually WAY more expensive than a comparable Windows machine (not sure how well needing to pay for VisualStudio closes that gap).

I doubt this was a factor at all for Microsoft's success or failure, frankly.

EDIT: Apparently I type slow. I'll leave this here anyway.

Apple had the same hoops to jump through as MS.

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