Because a good developer will test his product with all of the hardware platform variants of iPad and iPhone, not just one.
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Apple Cracking Down on Sites Selling Access to iOS 6 Developer Betas
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Apple can tell who doesn't have apps, or who hasn't submitted apps. Combine that with the rate of which UDID's are being added and it can be pretty easy and effective way to flag accounts.
I'm all for this, and think Apple should have started doing it sooner. They added the warning a while back but just haven't seemingly be active in it.
Since it is rather easy to restore back to iOS 5.1.1 part of me hopes that devices get bricked, or they have issue upgrading to beta 3 when it comes out, so that devices get bricked with the beta 2 expires.
If it was not within their rights under law to do the other things you don't agree with then they wouldn't be able to do them. Thats why there are laws.
Hosting, bandwidth, credit card processing, 300 million customers and in some cases advertising the 30% is by far the least egregious requirement/restriction of the app store. $99 is probably too cheap to be honest, there are far too many people trolling the developer forums with lazy questions (like why can't doesn't passbook work on my iPad?) as for your assertion the beta doesn't make you money - I just pitched a project to a client based largely around iOS 6 features and demoed on a device running iOS 6 that resulted in an initial $75,000 contract.
This has nothing to do with any law.
It's not $99. It's $99 a year. Otherwise your apps stop being available. Over five years, that's some serious change for many young developers and/or hobbyists who just wanted to make some family apps.
Android charges nothing to be a developer, with a one-time small fee to be in the Market. RIM only charges a one-time $25 signing fee. Not sure about Windows Phone these days. Anyone?
The first time such slots were made available, thousands of ordinary people joined up to get the beta.
Apple apparently decided to look the other way since they could brag about all "the new developers signing up"... and they've done the same for years.
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This discussion is a great out of context of example of what's wrong this country, and why it maintains almost none of its original values.
Just look at how many people chimed in with "lower the number of device slots" to "solve" this problem.
Not only would it not solve anything, it's just giving something up for nothing.
Translate that to how you pathetic people give up your rights for absolutely nothing in return. it just sickens me to see how many people have the kind of brain that would jump to that decision. Horrific.
Just look at how many people chimed in with "lower the number of device slots" to "solve" this problem.
Not only would it not solve anything, it's just giving something up for nothing.
Translate that to how you pathetic people give up your rights for absolutely nothing in return. it just sickens me to see how many people have the kind of brain that would jump to that decision. Horrific.
I don't know if "solve" is the right word- but the point is Apple does not want people using this software yet unless they are using it to develop/update apps. The other point is the average dev truly does not need 100 slots. It simply does not take 100 slots to develop a universal app that runs on each iOS platform. The fact that people are giving away/selling UDID slots demonstrates that 100 is more than enough. No one is giving anything up. They can still develop an app, for the same price, with no impact on testing. Unusual analogy about America aside, I still am not getting why the majority of developers would need 100 slots.
Apple has become a big bully. 
They are of course not above downright theft of the ideas of the jb community (see click volume for camera) and of course these little guys can't sue the hell out of them cause they don't have the money. It's when the little guy tries to get by that they bully up against them.
Instead of hunting people down who are anyway beta testing their software for free they might as well focus or restructuring the fees of the app store.
I can't see how a small time developer should pay $500 over five years and sell their app at $1.99 to 500 or so users. That's $500 to apple plus another $300, $800 and it's $700 to the person that actually did all the work with the development.
The app store and the devs fee are not there to sponsor apple's ios and xcode development. God knows they have enough money to pay for their own dev costs. They are supposed to be paying for developing their tools not offload it to the dev community. It's that community that's helping them ship on ios device after the other.
Yeah I know this is kind of ot, but not really if you think about it. Some people that are small time in the app store or even hobbyists cannot be expected to pay $500 over 5 years just to try a few things out, that's like buying a new ipad.
They even had the nerve to claim "job creation" for something like 210,000 developers. That's 20 million to apple's pockets per year without even counting the 30% per app cut. They are the first job creator that get's paid by the employee.
Apple need to face real competition, really soon, if they don't the way their greed and obscene riches have gone to their heads the consumers and the developers will suffer as they do now.
They are of course not above downright theft of the ideas of the jb community (see click volume for camera) and of course these little guys can't sue the hell out of them cause they don't have the money. It's when the little guy tries to get by that they bully up against them.
Instead of hunting people down who are anyway beta testing their software for free they might as well focus or restructuring the fees of the app store.
I can't see how a small time developer should pay $500 over five years and sell their app at $1.99 to 500 or so users. That's $500 to apple plus another $300, $800 and it's $700 to the person that actually did all the work with the development.
The app store and the devs fee are not there to sponsor apple's ios and xcode development. God knows they have enough money to pay for their own dev costs. They are supposed to be paying for developing their tools not offload it to the dev community. It's that community that's helping them ship on ios device after the other.
Yeah I know this is kind of ot, but not really if you think about it. Some people that are small time in the app store or even hobbyists cannot be expected to pay $500 over 5 years just to try a few things out, that's like buying a new ipad.
They even had the nerve to claim "job creation" for something like 210,000 developers. That's 20 million to apple's pockets per year without even counting the 30% per app cut. They are the first job creator that get's paid by the employee.
Apple need to face real competition, really soon, if they don't the way their greed and obscene riches have gone to their heads the consumers and the developers will suffer as they do now.
They just stopped posting downloads to the betas. They're still taking registrations for UDIDs.
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$99/year is bugger all, particularly for the services that you get included. Some people like find any excuse to bash Apple.
Yeah it's probably too cheap, they should price it a $299, so in three years for an app that faces competition from about oh 100 other similar apps worldwide and sells for $1.99 they should be making close to $900 per developer. Nice little earner really that $90,000 per niche of app for three years WITHOUT even starting to add the 30% cut...
So it's Apple's fault if a dev can't make an app that sells well? How is this small-time developer supposed to live on $1.99 x500 or so sales? Perhaps they should consider a different career.
Get with the program and do what?
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Really?
Apple should just open the betas to free developer accounts.
I mean seriously, they announce all the new stuff in the keynote, post the session videos online (telling you all about the new APIs), but don't let you get at the bits?
Sure, it's a beta and not production quality. I'm pretty sure everyone who is installing this knows that and accepts it. They could still require an additional NDA agreement for access.
I mean seriously, they announce all the new stuff in the keynote, post the session videos online (telling you all about the new APIs), but don't let you get at the bits?
Sure, it's a beta and not production quality. I'm pretty sure everyone who is installing this knows that and accepts it. They could still require an additional NDA agreement for access.
Apple has become a big bully.
They are of course not above downright theft of the ideas of the jb community (see click volume for camera) and of course these little guys can't sue the hell out of them cause they don't have the money. It's when the little guy tries to get by that they bully up against them.
blah blah...
They aren't "hunting down" people who are "beta testing". They are shutting down people who are using developer accounts outside the bounds of the agreement. When you sign up for a developer account you have to agree not to do that kind of thing.
This example is nonsensical and doesn't really work out in your favor even. In your scenario McDeveloper made enough money to cover their fees plus some profit. It's not Apple's fault if your strawman lacks the talent or skill to create more than one app or sell it to more than 500 people in 5 goddamn years.
The fee means a minimum barrier of entry so the wanna-be developer has some incentive to actually complete and ship some kind of app. It also provides some form of paper trail for a developer who might think about creating something nasty.
Cry us a fricken' river. If you want to be a McDeveloper then Android is waiting with open arms.
They even had the nerve to claim "job creation" for something like 210,000 developers. That's 20 million to apple's pockets per year without even counting the 30% per app cut. They are the first job creator that get's paid by the employee.
It is job creation, it's not Apple's fault if Strawman McDeveloper chooses to do jack with their membership or is unable to release a compelling product.
Sure, whatever. Apple always "needs" to face competition. Don't know why you people always root for this as their competitors always end up being incompetent or sleazy in ways that make Apple look like the paragon of perfection.
If you're serious enough to start working with beta SDK's then you're serious enough to hand over the minuscule $99 to be a big boy developer.
Apple has become a big bully.
They are of course not above downright theft of the ideas of the jb community (see click volume for camera) and of course these little guys can't sue the hell out of them cause they don't have the money. It's when the little guy tries to get by that they bully up against them.
Instead of hunting people down who are anyway beta testing their software for free they might as well focus or restructuring the fees of the app store.
I can't see how a small time developer should pay $500 over five years and sell their app at $1.99 to 500 or so users. That's $500 to apple plus another $300, $800 and it's $700 to the person that actually did all the work with the development.
The app store and the devs fee are not there to sponsor apple's ios and xcode development. God knows they have enough money to pay for their own dev costs. They are supposed to be paying for developing their tools not offload it to the dev community. It's that community that's helping them ship on ios device after the other.
Yeah I know this is kind of ot, but not really if you think about it. Some people that are small time in the app store or even hobbyists cannot be expected to pay $500 over 5 years just to try a few things out, that's like buying a new ipad.
They even had the nerve to claim "job creation" for something like 210,000 developers. That's 20 million to apple's pockets per year without even counting the 30% per app cut. They are the first job creator that get's paid by the employee.
Apple need to face real competition, really soon, if they don't the way their greed and obscene riches have gone to their heads the consumers and the developers will suffer as they do now.
Actually, your math is wrong. Because the guy making the app had to pay $500 for the rights to simply develop software, and a 30% commission on $1000, he's paying $800 on the $1000 he made - thus, he only made $200, while Apple made $800. Apple makes 4x as much as the developer does.
Seriously, this and the fact that Apple keeps iOS closed-source is exactly why Android is the better development arena. Even if one sells 3x as many apps on the Apple store you still end up making less just due to all the fees. One should not have to pay $100 a year for the right to make Apple money, both on their 30% commission, as well as a more diverse App Store by virtue of which they can sell their products.
Now, I know I'm going to get flamed about how Android is years behind iOS, and how Apple should keep charging $100 because it's free money - the App store seems pretty good, right? That's not my argument. My argument is that Apple shouldn't be making it harder for their developers to develop, and by doing so they are both taking money out of their developers' wallets for no good reason, as well as limiting the potential apps that go into their store.
XCode is free and includes an emulator for iOS devices, budding programmers can certainly learn to write and test their code at no cost. They just can't deploy it to actual hardware.
I wonder how many folks complain about Microsoft visual studio ultimate $11,899
I wonder how many folks complain about Microsoft visual studio ultimate $11,899