What is the issue of charging $100 for the developer accounts?
It also means hobby programmers are much less likely to get started with developing for iPhones because for most of them it'll be a (at least) $100/year loss.
Everything will be a loss; it’s a hobby. If you are doing it to profit then it’s a side gig or an actual job.
What kind of hobby can you pick up for less than $100? You can’t even take up hiking or walking without spending that much on shoes and socks.
So, android development, for one. Also Windows development. And Linux development. Web development, too. Pretty much any platform other than Apple.
And I suppose we should just ignore those who live in poorer countries, right?
But to frame this, again, as some steep expense that prices out young talent is very weird.
Developing for android or Linux is not free. You need to have a lot of resources already to get started here, too. In fact there is an argument here that if you want to test on any variety of supported android or Linux hardware you can easily spend a ton of money here too, far more than the limited number of apple configurations
I started coding on the Commodore 64 and that was a massive expense for my family. I suspect at 13 years old you had a lot of resources at your disposal also.
Again, it’s fine to say that a developer account is not worth $100 for you personally. But let be real about it. Nothing is free.
> Developing for android or Linux is not free. You need to have a lot of resources already to get started here, too
It absolutely is, if you already have the device, which can be a hand-me-down from a parent or sibling like it was in my case.
> But let be real about it. Nothing is free
It's an objective fact that other platforms do not have this barrier in place. It is a fact that Apple is the special one here, demanding a repeated payment that is significantly higher than the one-off payment of their direct competitor ($100/year vs $20 one time, and that $20 is only necessary if you want to use their store).
You can stick your head in the sand all you want, but that doesn't change the facts.
By the way, that app of mine? Wound up making me $5k which was huge for a young child, and Google made $800. Easy money for them. Apple, of course, got nothing because of their barriers. And I never would've gotten the chance at all if Google had had similar policies in place.
You can publish an extension to the Chrome Web Store for a one time fee of 5$ (and you don't need XCode or a Mac to do it). You can build a website behind a login wall using social sign in via oAuth for free without building a homegrown authentication system (rather than paying 100$ a year for Sign in with Apple which doesn't even adhere to the oAuth spec properly).
It’s low-effort for Apple and has some hassle reducing benefits for them.
They have recently been forced by the EU to offer some, supposedly, more amicable programs. I haven't looked into the details of those, because fuck em.