Are there people who seriously think this way? That's just sad. The only thing that would possibly change is that Steve will just have a few less $1,000 bills lodged in his butt crack as he rolls around naked in a pile of money each night. Nothing more.
Do I believe that apple will stop offering said incentives to developers if their rate of people who take advantage of the deal is high compared to growth in actual contributing ADC members? Yes...
Do I believe that apple has a system in place to check up on these incentives to see how effectively they're drawing in quality developers to the platform? also yes, like with most forms of marketing.
Do I believe that if apple decides this form of marketing to developers is ineffective for the cost they'll cancel it? Yep.
Do I think the loss of attracting and helping developers, especially student developers who are rarely backed by any major cooperation hurts the platform? certainly...
Whats the flaw in this line of reasoning again? I could generally care less about the loss to apple (though apple is alot more then steve jobs), their profit margins are already high enough. But if apple decides to cut the program, which they will most certainly do if it is abused heavily, I think this will certainly hurt the platform.
--edit-- all this talk of real developers makes me think of
this, Fact is good programmers aren't hatched in schools or anything like that. Schools don't provide enough to actually survive in the industry, just a base line. Good programmers make themselves, mostly on their own time. There are many many notable programmers with little to no college background and there are many who will drop out of CS programs because they can't get a good enough grasp on it at school.
Snow Leopard
