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Comment by golf1052 | Hacker News Reader

You're comparing two different things, the Apple and Android fees are to get access to publish apps to the store.

The developer toolkit which is used to build and test the apps (Android Studio or XCode) are free. The Microsoft comparison would be the $20 to publish in the Microsoft Store and Visual Studio Community which is free to build and test apps.

"MSDN" is a bundle of additional developer tools that you would use for a business (licensed Visual Studio, Azure DevOps, training, and support).

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No you are not only paying to get access to publish. You're paying because upkeep of the entire App Store ecosystem is not free. You also get a bunch of tooling, code-level technical support, and more importantly a bunch of SDKs that are tremendously powerful and useful (Metal, ARKit, etc).

Yes Xcode and APIs like ARKit are free to develop (for obvious reasons), but Apple captures some of the costs at publish time (as it should be).

Here's a full list of stuff that the fee go towards supporting and developing: https://developer.apple.com/programs/whats-included/

>the entire App Store ecosystem is not free.

and building a competing ecosystem that is is Not Allowed!

You’re welcome to buy an Android phone.

iOS is the minority OS in every single market it operates in.

Try building a game for Nintendo Switch that doesn’t go through the Nintendo store and see how far that gets you.

>iOS is the minority OS in every single market it operates in.

iOS is the majority in US and Japan, nearly half in many other countries. Not Minority in most Developed market.

You’re right in the US - it’s about 60% but fluctuates.

In Japan it’s below 50% but close enough (45ish) and there’s a historical reason for that. Japanese adoption of iPhone is especially unique.

Everywhere else it’s well below 50%. In the EU it’s about 30% or so.

We are talking about programming own computer. Isn't it a right of user and shouldn't it be respected by any company?

Some users like to be spoonfed and babysat till they're 80, smh.

The upkeep of the Apple store ecosystem is easily found within its margins on taking money from developers plus billions in profits. This page is telling you how they're classifying it for tax reasons. There is no need to charge $100 or even $20 like Microsoft.

This page is an excuse. There is no reason except greed and corporate accounting.

>and corporate accounting.

Yes. That page align with Apple Accounting. Since 2017 Apple has been putting iOS cost and development, SDK as part of their Services Strategy expenses.

In a sense Apple is now think you are buying iPhone just as Hardware ( with huge margins ), and you are paying for all the development of iOS, macOS through their Services Revenue coming from App Store and Google Search.

In Steve Jobs days Apple used to lump all those together as one product. But now you are basically renting the usage of iOS and Apple experience Hence from Apple's POV the user aren't even paying enough for the usage of iOS.

One can make a case that people learn to breath merely to prepare themselves to rent Apple services and not paying enough untill they do in Apple's POV.

But there is another POV. One that includes rights of a person to be a human being rather then income source for some company. One of those rights should be ability to install whatever software you choose on your own computer without any artificial restrictions.

I think you kind of missed the point. It's all fiction and greed.

>... but Apple captures some of the costs at publish time (as it should be).

This forces you to pay 100$ a year when you just wish to use your own hand made app on your own phone if you wish it to work longer then 1 week offline. While using app of someone else doesn't require that.

100$ per year x 4 years = 400$ to use your own app. What makes you think that this is how it should be?

If the whole idea that one should pay for ability to program his own device seems logical to you then perhaps some monthly fee for using your fingers to control the phone would seem logical too? After all finger touches use many features of the phone that "are tremendously powerful and useful" too.

This is wrong. You can build apps on your own phone for free. Nothing you said is true.

Really? What is wrong? Last time I've checked:

    Free developer accounts must re-sign every 7 days
    Paid developer accounts must re-sign every 1 year

How can you build native apps on your own iphone FOR your own iphone?

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