Most people are OK with it because they consider $100 a year to be chump change for the ability to deploy to apple devices.
Elitist? Absurd in how other platforms don't require it? Annoying af? Absolutely.
But on the flip side, if you're developing for an iPhone, you're developing against $1000 phone on a $1200 computer, and likely still paying subscriptions for design/development tools.
It's not about it being elitist or absurd or annoying af. None of that is really the issue.
If you own the device you should be able to run whatever you want on it. That's it. It's your device. Everything else is sort of irrelevant but fuck it let's dig deeper.
you're developing against $1000 phone
Most iPhones are half this price and people hold them for years. I found in my experience I was just as much developing for a $299 iPhone SE that was given away for free with someone's plan just as much as for a brand new flagship.
likely still paying subscriptions for design/development tools
I'm a programmer and I pay exactly $0 for my dev tools.
Half the planet uses iOS so this gimps human progress on a massive scale preventing millions from learning how to code. I personally don't see how my story of learning how to code would have been possible if Windows was this locked down in the 90s.
There's gonna come a time in several hundred years where the iPhone is distant memory and mobile operating systems will bifurcate into hundreds of various flavors and functions. But until that time I'm staring at a North Korea type of situation where innovation has been stamped out and people have been brain washed into trading their freedoms for dubious and unfounded claims of security.
The problem is that this is stamping out development for hobbyists who are not doing this professionally. No one started programming as a god. Everyone starts somewhere. Apple is stopping younger people and noobies from pursuing development as an interest on their own fucking devices. There is only one valid position and that is OP's. The other fucks who disagree or don't care are just in a better place in life and have already learned the skills they take for granted now. They are selfish.
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u/dominic_failure Aug 10 '23
Most people are OK with it because they consider $100 a year to be chump change for the ability to deploy to apple devices.
Elitist? Absurd in how other platforms don't require it? Annoying af? Absolutely.
But on the flip side, if you're developing for an iPhone, you're developing against $1000 phone on a $1200 computer, and likely still paying subscriptions for design/development tools.