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447 points hemant6488 | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.68s | source
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nancyminusone ◴[] No.44312819[source]
>I’m saving approximately $84-120 CAD annually.

I suppose most of this is eaten up by the need to pay apple $99 per year just to run your own app on your own phone for longer than a week.

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behnamoh ◴[] No.44313215[source]
This Apple fee is one of the most absurd things they do. Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app?

When I buy a device I want to know that I own it, but Apple keeps pushing the narrative that "we LET you use this device in ways we see fit". So basically the customer is just borrowing a device from Apple while paying the full price.

I'm a longtime Apple user but can't shake off this love-hate relationship with the company.

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cortesoft ◴[] No.44315377[source]
> Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app?

How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something.

A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. A company only lowers prices if they think doing so will generate higher total profits in the long run.

Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for developers will help its long term bottom line the most.

There are probably many reasons for that, some of them already mentioned in sibling comments - keeping low effort apps out, preventing spammers from constantly buying new accounts to bypass bans, reducing the workload for approvers, generating revenue from the fees, etc.

Prices aren't justified or not, you choose to pay them or not.

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irrational ◴[] No.44315891[source]
There can’t be that many iOS developers that the $99 really affects their bottom line. I always assumed it was a barrier to entry to help discourage low effort apps.
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kccqzy ◴[] No.44317733[source]
But it's asinine for developers to have to pay $99 in order to test their app, such as on TestFlight. When you have an app idea, when you are far from deciding on monetization, you just want to test out the central features of the app among friends, it's wrong to require payment for that.

Remember all apps have once been low effort apps: the first few weeks when you begin working on them. Polish comes later.

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1. iwontberude ◴[] No.44318519[source]
They can test and iterate using simulator without spending $99
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2. kccqzy ◴[] No.44318847[source]
I said test among friends, i.e. potential but real users. The gulf between the simulator and TestFlight is so large that they are better considered completely different stages of testing.

Furthermore, there are so many things that can't realistically tested by the developer on the simulator.

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3. iwontberude ◴[] No.44337281[source]
I am sorry. You are totally right.