> How much should you have to pay for unlimited bandwidth, hosting, downloads, user ratings, reviews, feedback, crash logs, showing up in searches, the chance to get featured, and other features like CloudKit etc.?
Those are things Apple provides for its users' sake, not for developers. The amount I should have to pay to allow users to run my app on their machines, is and always has been ZERO.
It's not a about trust. Apple apps ran on mac for 40 years or some without any epidemic issue as it could have been the case with Windows.
It's about money. They want to close down the platform like iOS, as they said a few years ago, in order to bring the business model of the mobile platform to MacOS by forcing them to intall everything through the app Store.
Now there is notarization, but it will not last. They're just boiling the proverbial frog slowly, step by step. In 2 or 3 years, it will also disappear.
It's not only the game but a shitload of little utilities which will get lost with notarization
Once the users get used to not having as much third party software as before from outside the app Store, except big name like mozilla or google, they will stop notarization altogether and impose a 30% fee for every software sold on the platform.
With the system partition permanently set as read-only device, as they currently test on catalina, even if you can still currently mount it in read-write, MacOS bill be lock down like iOS. The only way to install a software outside of Mac App Store will be to jailbreak it thank to a "security flaw".
As i said, it's just about money.
Only technically naive users will stay on the platform and developer whishing to take advantage of them with softwares paid through subscription model.
Those are things Apple provides for its users' sake, not for developers. The amount I should have to pay to allow users to run my app on their machines, is and always has been ZERO.