I took an app development course in college. Everything was android and I tested on my own device, except one project had to be on apple. I managed to snag an ancient iPhone off a friend to test, but no, turns out you need a dev account to even be able to load your own code on your phone. Fuck apple forever.
You mean when you want to make it available to download in the only way Apple makes possible? It’s not like you can just send the apk to someone to run on their iPhone, if you want to share the app with others on an iPhone, you have to use the Apple App Store, you have to pay them $100 + the cost of an Apple computer. Just to share your FOSS app with your friends.
You’re not even good at whataboutism, lol. Changing one setting is not even comparable to Apple’s perfection. The message that you need to allow it first even takes you straight to the setting.
Did this change? It was about a decade ago. I could develop and test on an emulated device, but testing on hardware was 100% locked behind a $100 paywall.
It mentions the apple developer program which is what I assume the 100 dollar subscription is. I keep seeing people say dev accounts are free but any tools beyond the dev environment are paywalled.
I wasn’t even talking about app stores; I never published anything to Google play, just loaded through usb from android studio. The apple program didn’t allow even that.
Before TestFlight was a thing, you could self-sign your own apps (.ipa) and install them to local devices through iTunes over a USB cable connected to the device. The developer signing certificate for this was/is free, included when you sign up for the free version of Apple Developer account.
Nowadays it looks like you can still do this directly from Xcode. See section: “Connect real devices to your Mac”
*The mention of Apple Developer Program in the bullet points of this section is an “if” and is optional. It’s not required for testing apps on local devices.
How is the $100 a obstacle to any legitimate developer? The only one it hurts is those who would otherwise flood the app store with crap submitted from throw away developer accounts.
Who said anything about legitimacy? I said small, synonyms hobby, FOSS. It is an obstacle to be forced to pay money to Apple for the ‘privelidge’ of being able to install it on their devices. And they are Apple’s devices, you do not own anything you buy from Apple.
I said small, synonyms hobby, FOSS. It is an obstacle to be forced to pay money to Apple for the ‘privelidge’ of being able to install it on their devices.
Good for you you have so much disposable income. Many hobby devs such as myself aren’t so lucky
Go talk to some random people and ask them how much they spend on their hobbies, I bet you won’t find many people who have a hobby that costs less than $100/year. It’s a damn cheap hobby.
which is one reason why I don’t make Apple apps.
That’s probably a good thing. I don’t think we need more apps made by amateurs in the app store.
What the hell is this condescending, elitist, gatekeeping nonsense? $100 is a lot of money for some people. Hell, in some countries, that’s a sizeable chunk of someone’s monthly salary. We should be encouraging and supporting developers from all backgrounds, not just ones that are middle/upper class from developed countries.
Do people really write apps and maintain them as a hobby?
Maintenance is the hassle, especially when your app needs to adapt to 3rd party changes.
I’ve found a way to make a thousand people’s life’s a tiny bit easier, and it only costs me a couple of days per year, so I keep the apps running out of a sense of civic duty.
Having to pay one off the most profitable companies in the world before I can provide that service seems weird.
Like charging charity workers for the privilege of helping.
I’ve just checked the apple app store. They is an lack of apps in my niche, the nearest available is significantly more basic, costs $3 and has only one review.
And having said all that, Android’s Play Store has been getting increasingly annoying with policy changes in recent years, and if it wasn’t for the positive reviews I’d have abandoned the apps.
Say you you’re maintaining a FOSS app on your own time. How interested would you be to pay Apple $100 annually for the privilege of giving their users free stuff?
Everything disproportionately effects the little guy. Just look at laws that have fines instead of jail time. Or just getting a lawyer. Or eating out or buying groceries.
Every other store charges 30% including Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, Google Play, etc. Epic doesn’t and they aren’t profitable, so I don’t know why people pile on Apple.
Edit: the downvotes are funny. Why? You don’t like someone pointing out the truth?
Does it? Steam does not monopolize a platform, or demand exclusivity. With Steam you are 100% free to sell through other channels, and even be able to still use Steam. Also there are actual services on Steam, and there are possibilities for lower rates.
AFAIK that’s only if the games purchased on that platform have Steam keys. Otherwise you are free to have sales or cheaper prices on other platforms.
Earlier you could sell cheaper on other platforms and still have Steam keys, for instance Humble Indie Bundle had that.
If you go to GOG, you can see they often have games that are also available on Steam, but at lower prices.
Well not really, AFAIK they sell only about 20-50% of games sold for PC, depending on source. Not at all comparable to Apple that has maintained 100% for iPhone.
Also Steam is an independent alternative to Microsoft store on Windows now. So again quite the opposite of the Apple monopoly control of their platform.
I just checked up on it, because it’s a number I remember reading earlier.
What I have noticed is that when the 75% market share is mentioned, it’s downloads, that’s a pretty meaningless number. The only number I could find was 18% SALES from 2013. No doubt that has increased in 11 years.
I corrected the number to 20-50% since there is no way it can be 75% with several of the biggest game developers like Microsoft, EA, Epyc and others almost completely avoiding Steam. Together with independent sales, and Epic and Microsoft store, and smaller outlets like GOG and Humble Bundle.
Yeah, percent downloads is particularly difficult to extrapolate for steam: they host a number of extremely popular “free” games, and are notorious for their sale pricing. In addition, they have (IMO) very generous policy for providing devs keys for use on their platform.
Sucks to be an iOS developer. Apple will never give up it’s 30% of your money. EVER.
And the flat $100 fee, which disproportionately iffects small devs
I took an app development course in college. Everything was android and I tested on my own device, except one project had to be on apple. I managed to snag an ancient iPhone off a friend to test, but no, turns out you need a dev account to even be able to load your own code on your phone. Fuck apple forever.
Dev accounts are free. It’s only when you want to post stuff to the store that you start paying.
You mean when you want to make it available to download in the only way Apple makes possible? It’s not like you can just send the apk to someone to run on their iPhone, if you want to share the app with others on an iPhone, you have to use the Apple App Store, you have to pay them $100 + the cost of an Apple computer. Just to share your FOSS app with your friends.
on iOS its called ipa
If dev accounts are free your friends can get their own accounts and load the app.
It just works™️
Sideloading on android is also more complex than the play store
You’re not even good at whataboutism, lol. Changing one setting is not even comparable to Apple’s perfection. The message that you need to allow it first even takes you straight to the setting.
Did this change? It was about a decade ago. I could develop and test on an emulated device, but testing on hardware was 100% locked behind a $100 paywall.
I could be reading this wrong, but it looks like TestFlight allows you to distribute internally without going through the App Store.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/distributing-your-app-for-beta-testing-and-releases
It mentions the apple developer program which is what I assume the 100 dollar subscription is. I keep seeing people say dev accounts are free but any tools beyond the dev environment are paywalled.
I wasn’t even talking about app stores; I never published anything to Google play, just loaded through usb from android studio. The apple program didn’t allow even that.
Before TestFlight was a thing, you could self-sign your own apps (.ipa) and install them to local devices through iTunes over a USB cable connected to the device. The developer signing certificate for this was/is free, included when you sign up for the free version of Apple Developer account.
Nowadays it looks like you can still do this directly from Xcode. See section: “Connect real devices to your Mac”
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/running-your-app-in-simulator-or-on-a-device
*The mention of Apple Developer Program in the bullet points of this section is an “if” and is optional. It’s not required for testing apps on local devices.
How is the $100 a obstacle to any legitimate developer? The only one it hurts is those who would otherwise flood the app store with crap submitted from throw away developer accounts.
Who said anything about legitimacy? I said small, synonyms hobby, FOSS. It is an obstacle to be forced to pay money to Apple for the ‘privelidge’ of being able to install it on their devices. And they are Apple’s devices, you do not own anything you buy from Apple.
It’s $100, basically a symbolic amount.
Ah fantastic, can you give me $100? It’s basically nothing, a symbolic amount.
Signed, a disabled and unable to work guy who enjoys IT and programing
Good for you you have so much disposable income. Many hobby devs such as myself aren’t so lucky, which is one reason why I don’t make Apple apps.
Go talk to some random people and ask them how much they spend on their hobbies, I bet you won’t find many people who have a hobby that costs less than $100/year. It’s a damn cheap hobby.
That’s probably a good thing. I don’t think we need more apps made by amateurs in the app store.
What the hell is this condescending, elitist, gatekeeping nonsense? $100 is a lot of money for some people. Hell, in some countries, that’s a sizeable chunk of someone’s monthly salary. We should be encouraging and supporting developers from all backgrounds, not just ones that are middle/upper class from developed countries.
Do people really write apps and maintain them as a hobby?
Maintenance is the hassle, especially when your app needs to adapt to 3rd party changes.
I’ve found a way to make a thousand people’s life’s a tiny bit easier, and it only costs me a couple of days per year, so I keep the apps running out of a sense of civic duty.
Having to pay one off the most profitable companies in the world before I can provide that service seems weird.
Like charging charity workers for the privilege of helping.
I’ve just checked the apple app store. They is an lack of apps in my niche, the nearest available is significantly more basic, costs $3 and has only one review.
And having said all that, Android’s Play Store has been getting increasingly annoying with policy changes in recent years, and if it wasn’t for the positive reviews I’d have abandoned the apps.
So your argument is that because Apple is very profitable they should give you free shit?
You realize that charity workers have to pay for all kinds of things, right?
Say you you’re maintaining a FOSS app on your own time. How interested would you be to pay Apple $100 annually for the privilege of giving their users free stuff?
Thanks for the block request
Everything disproportionately effects the little guy. Just look at laws that have fines instead of jail time. Or just getting a lawyer. Or eating out or buying groceries.
Are you claiming those are good?
Every other store charges 30% including Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, Google Play, etc. Epic doesn’t and they aren’t profitable, so I don’t know why people pile on Apple.
Edit: the downvotes are funny. Why? You don’t like someone pointing out the truth?
At least with Google Play and Steam you are not locked into it due to your device of choice.
This is just a list of shit service providers leeching profits from developers and making the gaming industry worse.
Oh yeah Steam is totally making the gaming industry worse!
🤡
It is. But gamers are dumb as shit so it doesn’t matter.
You seem like a fun and positive individual.
Sucks to be a Steam dev then
Does it? Steam does not monopolize a platform, or demand exclusivity. With Steam you are 100% free to sell through other channels, and even be able to still use Steam. Also there are actual services on Steam, and there are possibilities for lower rates.
IIRC there are still rules regarding pricing in other platforms if you want to be on steam.
AFAIK that’s only if the games purchased on that platform have Steam keys. Otherwise you are free to have sales or cheaper prices on other platforms.
Earlier you could sell cheaper on other platforms and still have Steam keys, for instance Humble Indie Bundle had that.
If you go to GOG, you can see they often have games that are also available on Steam, but at lower prices.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/tomb_raider_underworld
Sold here (Denmark) for DKK 8,70 = $1.30 USD.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/8140/Tomb_Raider_Underworld/
Sold here for €8.99 = $9.80 USD
This example is 7.8 times more expensive on Steam at this moment.
Well, they’ve become ubiquitous, but I get your point.
Well not really, AFAIK they sell only about 20-50% of games sold for PC, depending on source. Not at all comparable to Apple that has maintained 100% for iPhone.
Also Steam is an independent alternative to Microsoft store on Windows now. So again quite the opposite of the Apple monopoly control of their platform.
I don’t know where you got that 20% statistic, but everything I’ve read and can find on short notice has it up around 70%.
I just checked up on it, because it’s a number I remember reading earlier. What I have noticed is that when the 75% market share is mentioned, it’s downloads, that’s a pretty meaningless number. The only number I could find was 18% SALES from 2013. No doubt that has increased in 11 years. I corrected the number to 20-50% since there is no way it can be 75% with several of the biggest game developers like Microsoft, EA, Epyc and others almost completely avoiding Steam. Together with independent sales, and Epic and Microsoft store, and smaller outlets like GOG and Humble Bundle.
Yeah, percent downloads is particularly difficult to extrapolate for steam: they host a number of extremely popular “free” games, and are notorious for their sale pricing. In addition, they have (IMO) very generous policy for providing devs keys for use on their platform.
Steam and AppStore are not equivalent in many important ways, though
I don’t need steam to install your app on my pc, unless you choose it to be that way.
Replace steam with console and your statement has a fighting chance
Maybe, but on the other hand, fuck console WiFi subscriptions, so I think the fighting chance is 100% and thus that conclusion is assumed.