←back to thread

447 points hemant6488 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
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.

replies(8): >>44313113 #>>44313215 #>>44313586 #>>44313614 #>>44313718 #>>44314240 #>>44314560 #>>44315930 #
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.

replies(10): >>44313272 #>>44313280 #>>44314081 #>>44314098 #>>44314944 #>>44315377 #>>44315748 #>>44317717 #>>44320005 #>>44320589 #
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.

replies(5): >>44315868 #>>44315880 #>>44315891 #>>44316128 #>>44321946 #
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.
replies(4): >>44317543 #>>44317733 #>>44319301 #>>44319731 #
1. rollcat ◴[] No.44319301[source]
Of course there are. Many browser extensions are available for all platforms except Apple's, because you need that $99/y (and a Mac) to wrap (and fix up) a bunch of JS you already wrote and tested everywhere else.

I applaud the authors of the few good extensions who went the extra 20.000 leagues. (But I still reluctantly switched to Ungoogled Chromium.)