The $100 is to keep out the shovel ware and crap-- look at all the junk in the store as it is now. Imagine what it would be like if there wasn't that $100 barrier to entry?
Well, there's the rub. Unfortunately, the vast majority of developers just don't make money on the app stores. I'm not going to beat myself up if it doesn't work out - I'm taking this as a long-term learning opportunity.
If one of my apps takes off on Android (as proof that other people find it good - or I'm confident it is good enough), then I'll pay the $100.
I would never build for Mac or iOS if I had to buy a Mac. Since I was able to do so effectively for free, Mac support in our software (which is pretty popular with about 3+ million downloads a year) got a lot better. I didn't enjoy it, and I won't be using that VM for anything other than testing Mac OS X support, but it's silly to act like everyone ought to be willing to shell out money to support a platform (especially in our case, where the vast majority of our paying users are running Linux).
"look at all the junk in the store as it is now. Imagine what it would be like if there wasn't that $100 barrier to entry?"
Whatever happened to the argument that the Apple approval process was to protect users from poor quality software?
40% of mobile developers do not even reach $100 in a month [1]. Having a "good app" is not a guarantee that someone will get $100 in two days.
[1] https://www.developereconomics.com/reports/developer-economi...