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Comment by i_are_smart | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

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.

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