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Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store

17 points by marbiru 7y ago

I'm a hobbyist developer who made three very small, ad-free apps. Apple charges $99 per year for anyone to make apps (in stark contrast to the $25 one-off fee that Google charges). Since I'm not actively working on my apps right now, I don't want to pay Apple another $99 this year. But my existing free apps will stay in the store for those who want to download them, right? No. Apple's Developer Support claimed on the phone that keeping an existing app in the store if the developer isn't paying the annual $99 tribute would be a safety concern, "like an airport letting an unscanned bag through security". This really, really doesn't make sense: aside from the other disanalogies, if anything it's more like an airline kicking out a bag that they've already scanned and deemed safe because the owner refuses to pay them again in perpetuity. The other justification Apple gave for the $99 per year fee was the storage and delivery costs of delivering my apps. For the record, my largest app is 40mb. I have two suggestions for Apple. The first is a no-brainer: any authorised app should be allowed to stay in the store for as long as the platforms it works on are still supported, without the developer having to pay an annual tribute. The second is a bigger step, but I think a reasonable one: Apple should have a free tier for small app developers. For example, it should not require an annual paid subscription to create and maintain free, ad-free apps. Big tech companies are under a lot more scrutiny these days for abuse of market power, and this strikes me as the kind of reason why: I just don't believe that in a competitive market the equilibrium cost for a basic developer account would be anything close to $99 per year, or that Apple would kick existing apps out of its store unless the developer keeps paying every year.

notlukesky 7y ago
What are the apps by the way? In the pre-Apple days, mobile app makers on J2ME, BREW, Symbian etc had to give up to 70 percent to marketplaces and spend potentially up to 50 thousand dollars or more to code sign each app across multiple device types. $99 for code signing all the individual developers apps across all devices and publishing it was unheard of at the time and truly shocking compared to the old paradigm. Goolge then made it free and only later charged $25.
- marbiru 7y ago
  I didn't want to look like I was hawking something so I didn't include a link but these are my apps: https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/uri-bram/id1222415460 https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/uri-bram/id1222415460 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.
  - wallflower 7y ago
    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.
    - marbiru 7y ago
      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.
  - 7y ago
cynix 7y ago
I think in addition to hosting/distribution costs, a reason they charge an annual fee is to weed out spammers, which I think is a good idea. The fee is low enough (equivalent to about 2 cups of coffee per month) that any serious developer should have no problem paying it.
- marbiru 7y ago
  How does the annual fee weed out spammers exactly? Are there examples on Android of the kind of spam apps you're worried about?
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    It's much harder for them to be anonymous when they had to get their credit card out.
    - marbiru 7y ago
      I'm not trying to be combative but... doesn't Google's one-time fee to make an account do that just as effectively? Or an annual $10 fee, or whatever?
  - cynix 7y ago
    Spammers are less likely to keep their apps in the store if there’s an ongoing cost. Or to submit it at all, if the initial cost is high enough.
- marbiru 7y ago
  Also, I don't want to sound hokey but... $99 might be low enough for your definition of a "serious developer" but it's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a low-income country, for example. I can make, host and distribute a website for $0 because nobody owns that ecosystem, and big companies like Github and Heroku think it's worth their while to offer free hosting and distribution to small developers -- I think Apple would do the same if they were in a competitive market, but they charge monopoly pricing because they're (currently) able to.
altsyset 7y ago
I hope this and many other factors contribute for major PWA adoption.
brador 7y ago
Would be cool if there was a single publisher on the app store who devs could dump their free apps with and would then aggregate/split the costs between all the devs involved. $99 might be steep, but $10? Sure.
- marbiru 7y ago
  Yeah, definitely, $10 a year I would pay without complaint.
- wallflower 7y ago
  I’m not going to read the TOS for the $99 developer subscription, and, assuredly, sharing of accounts like this is probably prohibited.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
soulchild37 7y ago
If you are a non-profit organization, you can apply for a free developer account : https://developer.apple.com/support/membership-fee-waiver/ https://developer.apple.com/support/membership-fee-waiver/ I am an iOS/macOS developer myself and have few apps in (Mac) App Store as well, I think the $99/ year serve as a motivation for me to keep on improving my app (to sell more to cover the cost), the $99/yr would probably weed out spammers as well. Try and compare how many spam apps in Play Store vs App Store.
- marbiru 7y ago
  thanks! I'm not a non-profit unfortunately, but hopefully that can be helpful for others. A couple of people have made this Play Store spam-apps comparison but personally I feel like the more relevant differentiator is that Apple seems much more stringent on which apps it accepts (e.g. rejecting "duplicate apps" if someone else has filled the same niche already, which Play doesn't claim to do), rathe rather the $99 charge. That said, I never actually had an issue with spam apps in the Play store -- I'm sure they're out there but my experience as a user is that if I'm looking for X then the top three results are reasonable solutions to X and I'm going to pick one of them, and never get further down in the store. Has your experience been different?

17 points by marbiru 7y ago

notlukesky 7y ago

What are the apps by the way? In the pre-Apple days, mobile app makers on J2ME, BREW, Symbian etc had to give up to 70 percent to marketplaces and spend potentially up to 50 thousand dollars or more to code sign each app across multiple device types. $99 for code signing all the individual developers apps across all devices and publishing it was unheard of at the time and truly shocking compared to the old paradigm. Goolge then made it free and only later charged $25.

marbiru 7y ago
I didn't want to look like I was hawking something so I didn't include a link but these are my apps: https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/uri-bram/id1222415460 https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/uri-bram/id1222415460 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.
- wallflower 7y ago
  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.
  - marbiru 7y ago
    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.
- 7y ago

cynix 7y ago

I think in addition to hosting/distribution costs, a reason they charge an annual fee is to weed out spammers, which I think is a good idea. The fee is low enough (equivalent to about 2 cups of coffee per month) that any serious developer should have no problem paying it.

marbiru 7y ago
How does the annual fee weed out spammers exactly? Are there examples on Android of the kind of spam apps you're worried about?
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  It's much harder for them to be anonymous when they had to get their credit card out.
  - marbiru 7y ago
    I'm not trying to be combative but... doesn't Google's one-time fee to make an account do that just as effectively? Or an annual $10 fee, or whatever?
- cynix 7y ago
  Spammers are less likely to keep their apps in the store if there’s an ongoing cost. Or to submit it at all, if the initial cost is high enough.
marbiru 7y ago
Also, I don't want to sound hokey but... $99 might be low enough for your definition of a "serious developer" but it's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a low-income country, for example. I can make, host and distribute a website for $0 because nobody owns that ecosystem, and big companies like Github and Heroku think it's worth their while to offer free hosting and distribution to small developers -- I think Apple would do the same if they were in a competitive market, but they charge monopoly pricing because they're (currently) able to.

altsyset 7y ago

I hope this and many other factors contribute for major PWA adoption.

brador 7y ago

Would be cool if there was a single publisher on the app store who devs could dump their free apps with and would then aggregate/split the costs between all the devs involved. $99 might be steep, but $10? Sure.

marbiru 7y ago
Yeah, definitely, $10 a year I would pay without complaint.
wallflower 7y ago
I’m not going to read the TOS for the $99 developer subscription, and, assuredly, sharing of accounts like this is probably prohibited.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

soulchild37 7y ago

If you are a non-profit organization, you can apply for a free developer account : https://developer.apple.com/support/membership-fee-waiver/ https://developer.apple.com/support/membership-fee-waiver/ I am an iOS/macOS developer myself and have few apps in (Mac) App Store as well, I think the $99/ year serve as a motivation for me to keep on improving my app (to sell more to cover the cost), the $99/yr would probably weed out spammers as well. Try and compare how many spam apps in Play Store vs App Store.

marbiru 7y ago
thanks! I'm not a non-profit unfortunately, but hopefully that can be helpful for others. A couple of people have made this Play Store spam-apps comparison but personally I feel like the more relevant differentiator is that Apple seems much more stringent on which apps it accepts (e.g. rejecting "duplicate apps" if someone else has filled the same niche already, which Play doesn't claim to do), rathe rather the $99 charge. That said, I never actually had an issue with spam apps in the Play store -- I'm sure they're out there but my experience as a user is that if I'm looking for X then the top three results are reasonable solutions to X and I'm going to pick one of them, and never get further down in the store. Has your experience been different?