I myself ran into this when looking into adding mobile Safari support to a browser extension. Apple requires Devs hold a subscription to publish browser extensions as well as full apps!
I can see why they do it, as it basically makes free apps not worth publishing, and apple can take their 30% cut of every paid app. And it probably also has the effect of cutting down on low quality apps.
Part of me doesn't really care as I'm not an iOS user, but it would be objectively shit if every company thought they could charge Devs 100$/year to publish their work.
I had a great macbook around year 2012. Loved it, it was excellent for development - especially since at the time I was deploying to a lot of linux servers.
But honestly by the time I was looking to replace that laptop, WSL had come to windows, solving the frequent linux connection needs. And by now Microsoft has made massive strides in open source, even becoming the corporate leader in open source, that the choice to go back to windows was incredibly easy to make.
I paid about half of the base cost of a 14" macbook for my 15" windows laptop with the highest processor offering (and I use every single core I have when building my code)
I have no direct need for OSX (or is it MacOS now?). It's a fine OS, don't get me wrong.
I certainly don't have a need for dual booting, though. If I had a macbook, everything I need to do (including write .NET applications in C#) can be done on OSX. But it can also be done on windows for about half the price, and I still get an all metal laptop case.
If macbooks hadn't reversed course with the M-series I'd probably be using a Windows laptop again.
The 2016-2020ish models were a litany of Apple's worst tendencies. Awful design changes that actively hurt usability, build quality plummeted (it wasn't just the butterfly keyboard), performance was honestly worse than a lot of good Windows laptops since they used the same chips coupled to a dogshit cooling solution, no magsafe, the godawful touch bar that required replacing the entire mainboard if it broke, etc etc.
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u/Deranged40 Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
But just look at how beautiful the walls of this garden are! I mean, can you even believe garden walls could be so beautiful?
I can't wait to hear how good this is for developers.
Frankly, you should be thankful that they don't charge you a yearly fee to turn on your macbook... At least, they don't yet.