That's interesting, about the pre-Apple days, I didn't know that. Do you know how/why Google manages at $0 per year though (with a $25 one-off fee), while Apple charges $99 per year? It's really hard for me to believe that Apple's price would survive in any kind of competitive market, but I'm willing to be convinced.
Apple has always been a premium brand. And it is reflected in the “Apple tax” (Mac and $99/yr annual developer subscription). If you ever have the opportunity to attend an Apple organized developer event (WWDC usually), you will feel that they truly want to provide the technology, SDKs, and support to enable you and your team to build the best app experiences that you can.
For the equivalent experience that users now demand and expect on Android, it is usually much more difficult and nuanced to achieve.
Google has gotten better at treating developers with love, but it is probably not their main priority.
To be honest my experience developing for Apple has been pretty unambiguously bad. For example, for (at least) 6 months there was a bug where users couldn't submit an App Store review unless they had a "sufficiently distinct username", but instead of notifying the user in any way to change their username the review just wouldn't submit. When I reported to Apple Support that multiple users had told me they were unable to submit reviews, Apple shunted me around from department to department and generally wasted a vast amount of my time with each department claiming it was another department's issue. To my knowledge this bug was never publicly disclosed, even though it affected every app on the store (and especially small apps that rely entirely on reviews to be noticed by new customers). And (at least in my interactions with them) Apple didn't seem to care. It sounds like your experience with them has been different, which is great, but I can't say I felt they were enabling me to build the best app I can.
> Do you know how/why Google manages at $0 per year though (with a $25 one-off fee), while Apple charges $99 per year? It's really hard for me to believe that Apple's price would survive in any kind of competitive market, but I'm willing to be convinced. IIRC, Apple has a majority share in the US smartphone market and strong brand loyalty among it's users
In fairness there is tons of scamware, and general garbage in the play store.
>In fairness there is tons of scamware, and general garbage in the play store.
I've heard this from a few people here, but I'm not convinced that the $99 fee is the relevant differentiator -- Apple already has stricter requirements to get into the store (e.g. apps have to be "original" and can't duplicate functionality of an existing app), and it feels to me like for any particular form of scamware Apple can just ban it directly -- I'm not sure how the $99 per year fee helps, because if anything scammers/spammers are more effective at making money off their apps than most of us so should be more willing to swallow the fee. (Also I'm still annoyed that Apple is kicking out apps that have already paid the fee and been approved/authorised -- no matter what the relevant filter is those apps have already passed it)
That's interesting, about the pre-Apple days, I didn't know that. Do you know how/why Google manages at $0 per year though (with a $25 one-off fee), while Apple charges $99 per year? It's really hard for me to believe that Apple's price would survive in any kind of competitive market, but I'm willing to be convinced.