Apple Cracking Down on Sites Selling Access to iOS 6 Developer Betas

[Thomas P.]

At micro level, its all right, Apple is justified in taking actions against them. and they should stop such activities. But looking to all this at a Macro level, we find that the 's policy is sort of confusing.

Apple should follow the policy of Microsoft when it comes to such cases where people are doing illegal stuff to them. Microsoft windows is widely used by the illegal users yet Microsoft is not taking any strong actions and they are just keeping their large user base. I think Apple should also try to develop one such policy in which they can avoid these legal actions so frequently for design and illegal usage and such stuff.

 

[Neerazan]

Publishing Apps, estimating Apple's costs...

I have done a bit more digging into the numbers and have found this... http://148apps.biz/app-store-metrics/?mpage

If we take the stats on that site to be broadly correct we can start to estimate Apple's income and expenditure using the most up to date figures as a snapshot...

Latest figures show 171,675 active devs on the app store, assuming people register for dev accounts and pay their subs in order to publish apps (rather than just sell betas of iOS6) that gives Apple an annual income of; -

$99 x 171,675 = $16,995,825

This month so far, the average number of new apps submitted and approved each day is 537 (it is unclear from the stats if this number includes updates to existing apps, so let's assume it includes updates).

Now we have to start estimating Apple's costs for running the approval process...

I will assume that Apple have a pretty well automated system for checking and approving apps and updates, so let's estimate that each app or update takes on average just two hours of assorted staff's time to go from submission to being up on the app store...

Let's also assume that the staff involved have a reasonable cost per hour to Apple, say $30 p/h including all on-costs (pay, healthcare, taxes, office space, lighting, heating, computers, etc..).

So, the annual staffing cost of running the approval process for the app store is estimated at ; -

$30 p/h x 2 hours x 537 apps x 365 days = $11,760,300.

Leaving a little over $5,200,000 to cover hosting free apps, maintaing dev tools and support, running education licences, dealing with apps that fail approval processes, etc...

At best (or worst, depending on your POV) the $99 annual dev fee may contribute $2-$3M to Apple's bottom line each year, which is pretty much a rounding error in the scale of their balance sheet, and one whole order of magnitude less than the $30M that has been suggested elsewhere on this thread.

 

[edddeduck]

So you say that all hardware from Apple costs more then thousand dollars. It is funny because seems like you never heard second hand hardware.

I have heard of second hand hardware and used and bought second hand hardware before.

I bought my MBA for 600$ which is also not my money; my dads gift for birthday. Apple says that i am giving out XCode in App Store for free but i get cash when you want to put an App you created on my Store at beginning and cut a percentage if you sell it with cash. Only be happy if you give out it for free then.

I was using $1000 as an example even if you say $600 the point is still there. If you can buy a $600 laptop and want to sell an application then surely you can afford the $99 a year membership?

Even if your app is free to download paying Apple $99 a year to host your application and all your marketing information and provide a high speed store to every iOS user is a good deal surely?

You think all developers works in big companies and building with unlimited cash. It is not the real world buddy, sorry about it. You can buy a book about Objective C for just 5$ and create small to mid size App's with that. It does not make you clever, just trying new things about programming.

I have never worked for a company for unlimited cash... I work in the real world where you have to keep a firm hold on spending. You don't even need to spend $5 on a book about objective C if you use free internet resources if you really get down to it.

However if you want to sell your product and get access to the developer resources paying $99 is very cheap considering the access and features you can for your money. As I said it's less than 30c a day.

Here is one example you could host a 1GB application on the App Store for free for your users for an entire year and have 1000s of downloads for only $99! In most places $99 a year will not even cover your hosting fees!

My point is if you are complaining about Apple's $99 fee to be a registered developer with access to betas, Apple engineers and being able to sell in the App Store you are likely missing bigger issues. Yes you have to pay but the cost is low so that small companies and even single programmers like you say you are can afford to join.

The free developer accounts allow you access to the current SDK and developer information with no charge, if you want to sell your app or get access to the latest beta you need to pay $99 a year but only for those two reasons.

This means the only reason to pay is if you want to get access to the beta or if you want to sell an application. Once you sell $130 worth of sales you have covered your developer costs for the year. If your app is free and popular then usually you can get someone to donate towards your membership fee if money is really that tight. Or you can group together with some like minded friends and form a developer team and lower the costs even more.

Edwin

 

[efecanbasoz]

I have heard of second hand hardware and used and bought second hand hardware before.



I was using $1000 as an example even if you say $600 the point is still there. If you can buy a $600 laptop and want to sell an application then surely you can afford the $99 a year membership?

Even if your app is free to download paying Apple $99 a year to host your application and all your marketing information and provide a high speed store to every iOS user is a good deal surely?



I have never worked for a company for unlimited cash... I work in the real world where you have to keep a firm hold on spending. You don't even need to spend $5 on a book about objective C if you use free internet resources if you really get down to it.

However if you want to sell your product and get access to the developer resources paying $99 is very cheap considering the access and features you can for your money. As I said it's less than 30c a day.

Here is one example you could host a 1GB application on the App Store for free for your users for an entire year and have 1000s of downloads for only $99! In most places $99 a year will not even cover your hosting fees!

My point is if you are complaining about Apple's $99 fee to be a registered developer with access to betas, Apple engineers and being able to sell in the App Store you are likely missing bigger issues. Yes you have to pay but the cost is low so that small companies and even single programmers like you say you are can afford to join.

The free developer accounts allow you access to the current SDK and developer information with no charge, if you want to sell your app or get access to the latest beta you need to pay $99 a year but only for those two reasons.

This means the only reason to pay is if you want to get access to the beta or if you want to sell an application. Once you sell $130 worth of sales you have covered your developer costs for the year. If your app is free and popular then usually you can get someone to donate towards your membership fee if money is really that tight. Or you can group together with some like minded friends and form a developer team and lower the costs even more.

Edwin

The most important thing is; i did not say to make is free anywhere. I just pointed a point that not all people can cover that money. It's not about myself but i know my friends that can not find cash for it. They work on university iMac's and create their programs there. And they can not sell them cause they don't have enough money for that.

So as i said in my first message making 20$ for year for 1-2 accounts let these people into the job. Just create and run your App at computer is pointless. It is about choosing to give opportunity to anyone to put their App or just giving that opportunity that got some cash to pay.

 

[WordMasterRice]

Remember you can join as a free user develop your product and only pay the $99 when you want to get access to the beta releases or if you want to sell on the app store.

Yes, if you are content using your app in the simulator. They should have the $99 for the AppStore, but not everybody wants to put things on the AppStore. I just want to make an app for a few friends and distribute it AdHoc.

 

[edddeduck]

The most important thing is; i did not say to make is free anywhere. I just pointed a point that not all people can cover that money. It's not about myself but i know my friends that can not find cash for it. They work on university iMac's and create their programs there. And they can not sell them cause they don't have enough money for that.

So as i said in my first message making 20$ for year for 1-2 accounts let these people into the job. Just create and run your App at computer is pointless. It is about choosing to give opportunity to anyone to put their App or just giving that opportunity that got some cash to pay.

If your product cannot make enough sales to cover the $99 membership then you have to ask is the app good enough? Another example is contact a publisher. There are many publishers who will put your app on the app store for part of the sales. Or perhaps your university could have a university account that students could place their products into the app store.

I still stand by my view that if you cannot sell enough copies to cover the $99 charge then perhaps the app is not good enough.

If you only want to give the app to some friends and family as the other poster said you can use Ad Hoc distribution.

Edwin

 

[KnightWRX]

And of all of those non-professional developers, what percentage of them actually are able to make something that is truly worth downloading? Based on what I have seen in the App Store, probably less than 1%.

On the whole, the App Store would be much better off if only serious and/or professional developers were allowed to submit apps, and not every schmuck who has ever managed to cobble together a pointless one view app from an online tutorial and thought they could get rich. The $99 fee is the least Apple can do to keep the store from becoming a complete pile of trash.

So Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja should never have been made then ? Neither should Twitter or Facebook exist. Macrumors should have written their first website from scratch instead of using Slashcode also I guess... By that token, OS X should not even exist since BSD should never have been allowed to exist, because its developers were not serious and professional.

What a condescending post from someone who probably never wrote a single line of code in his life.

 

[edddeduck]

So Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja should never have been made then ? Neither should Twitter or Facebook exist. Macrumors should have written their first website from scratch instead of using Slashcode also I guess... By that token, OS X should not even exist since BSD should never have been allowed to exist, because its developers were not serious and professional.

What a condescending post from someone who probably never wrote a single line of code in his life.

Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja had a pretty large budget you would be surprised. By the time they got into the App Store they spend over $100,000 so for them $99 would be a small drop in the ocean. They were a fairly large company with overheads so not the best example.

You don't need lots of cash but equally you will need to spend some you can't usually get away with spending nothing. Twitter needed expensive hosting soon after launch for example that costs money which they no doubt got funding for.

My point is sure you don't need money to write software but it helps.

Edwin

 

[Chupa Chupa]

The 30% commission and fees are reasonable, but I don't see why you should have to pay extra to get iOS 6 before it is actually released. Plenty of other companies give out free beta products.

Plenty of other companies do, but there is only one Apple. Having used Apple's beta products previously, and currently, I think Apple's policy is correct. $99 is a cheap price to be in the developer program and keeps out users that shouldn't be using betas b/c they don't understand they are not a complete product and shouldn't be used on a work machine.

If memory serves me I think 10.0 was the last public beta Apple had, and boy oh boy, was it every not ready for prime time. The public release version wasn't even fully baked. It's just not something for the general public and if someone is THAT interested then $99 is a small price to pay, esp since it includes the public release version too.

 

[edddeduck]

Plenty of other companies do, but there is only one Apple. Having used Apple's beta products previously, and currently, I think Apple's policy is correct. $99 is a cheap price to be in the developer program and keeps out users that shouldn't be using betas b/c they don't understand they are not a complete product and shouldn't be used on a work machine.

If memory serves me I think 10.0 was the last public beta Apple had, and boy oh boy, was it every not ready for prime time. The public release version wasn't even fully baked. It's just not something for the general public and if someone is THAT interested then $99 is a small price to pay, esp since it includes the public release version too.

As you said plenty do but plenty don't, early access to Windows, XBox, Playstation, Wii, 3DS, Playstation Vita were all via paid for developer services often at the cost of thousands and thousands of dollars a year. Sure some like Windows had a public beta later on but the initial release was only for developers. It's how it is, before you release you give your primary developers early access to give feedback and start work.

Apple do have public beta's where applicable, Messages and FaceTime are two examples I can think of.

Edwin

 

[kdarling]

Apple do have public beta's where applicable, Messages and FaceTime are two examples I can think of.

And Siri.

 

[admanimal]

So Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja should never have been made then ? Neither should Twitter or Facebook exist. Macrumors should have written their first website from scratch instead of using Slashcode also I guess... By that token, OS X should not even exist since BSD should never have been allowed to exist, because its developers were not serious and professional.

What a condescending post from someone who probably never wrote a single line of code in his life.

Way to stretch my words completely out of context. I was talking specifically about the App Store, and how most apps made by non-pro developers are terrible and just clutter up the store. When I say "pro" developer, what I really mean are people who are serious about it and understand what it takes to really make a good piece of software, regardless of whether they have ever done it before. Both Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja were created by professional, albeit unknown at the time, development teams. I have no problem with open source software or anything made by innovative small-time developers. It just seems that a lot of amateur "developers" read one book on iOS programming and somehow think that means they are entitled to get rich from whatever simple app they can cobble together.

 

[subsonix]

By that token, OS X should not even exist since BSD should never have been allowed to exist, because its developers were not serious and professional.

The developers at the computer research group at berkeley would qualify as both serious and professional.