I ain’t publishing any utility apps for free if I have to pay. I have made plenty of utility websites I use as Home Screen apps though, all without ads.

I had a free password generator app on the Mac App Store. It wasn't super popular but had like 50-70 daily downloads. I didn't make any money from it. Just made the app because I needed it myself and wanted to learn a bit of macOS dev.

After a couple of years I decided to stop paying $99 a year for hosting a little 5MB app.

And that was your choice on the Mac. You could put the app on your own website and let users download it.

Indeed. So?

My point was not about distributing the app but about paying $99 every year to distribute a free app using the official app store.

If you don’t want to spend $99 to use the “official Mac App Store”. You have other options on the Mac. What’s there to complain about?

Me: "X has this problem"

You: "but you can use Y"

Me: "I know, just saying X has this problem"

You: "But you can use Y. Don't complain about X."

If my head hurts when I repeatedly hit myself over the head with a hammer, guess what I do?

Does the app disappear from the store when you stop paying the yearly Apple tax or you just can't update it?

Gone. I used to make utilities on iOS but got sick of paying $99 a year for a platform where an update takes a week+ to go through and sometimes will get rejected for... basically no reason at all. All those utilities are gone now.

It's removed from the AppStore.

Do you not have any hobbies that you pay for?

When I was deep in the C# ecosystem, I personally paid for my own JetBrain license.

Do you also not pay someone to host your web apps?

Paying for the privilege of getting to fill gaps and solve problems on my device operating system that the recipient of those payments who also happens to control said device and operating system refuses to resolve or has even purposefully introduced. Yeah, no thanks.. I'll pass.

So are you saying that Apple should produce any app that anyone ever might need?

Do you feel the same way about console makers?

That's not at all what I'm saying, you are putting words in my mouth.

"I'm not paying for the privilege of..."

Edit: A continuation of the above but paraphrased from my previous comment: ...being allowed to step over this ridiculous barrier to implement these fixes myself on my own device.

It is not only $99.

It is $500+ (used) computer also.

Cannot use your old PC do develop iOS apps.

$99 may be nothing for most HN users, but for 3rd world developer...

I’m a third world developer. In the third world, at least in Ghana, iPhones are over represented in the middle class and by association many people have MacBooks.

This means there is a glut of older models in second hand market or passed down to kids, cousins, and family friends.

The problem with the 99 dollars is that it’s payable yearly. Yes someone might sponsor you once and give you enough for a single year but they won’t do it ever year. You have to make enough yourself and that’s a tall order of business if you are a student.

Thus no one learns iOS development first.

I get that PCs are more common but you can't classify that as a recurring cost. I mean, if your computer is a Mac than there's no cost. It's only if you're using a PC that you have to get a Mac to develop for iOS etc.

But I totally get you, Apple is but one company and they've completely bungled reasonable prices in many countries, for example India.

I use Cloudflare free tier and am trialing Fly.up free tier for always-on servers as needed (websockets, etc.)

There are good apps out there written by casual people, they just can't spend the time and money on making their app easy to find.