No complaints over paying more than >$100 a month in subscriptions with coding agents but $99 a year is some how too much?
Yet another reason why “developers” are just consumers that are selective complainers that want their tools to cost $0.00.
Clearly as already stated in the article, hosting and distribution is not free.
If I write an app for myself there is no need for hosting or distribution - it costs Apple absolutely nothing, and they don't need to be in the loop.
I've been able to run my own software on my computers forever, and still can on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's just the mobile OSs that are different, and they shouldn't be. That's what sucks.
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Related, I've been wondering if this issue will hit more and more consumers as vibe-coding personal apps becomes available to more and more people. Apple may have to change this aspect of its model, in time.
Plenty. The problem isn't so much the price as it is the loss of sovereignty.
It's not your model running on your computer, it's $CORPORATION's model running on their own data centers. They're just generously allowing you to use it, and only on their terms.
That's the point. We don't want hosting or distribution.
Aside from Apple, running homemade software on a phone was free of cost, even back in the days of Motorola flip phones running Java…
Just discovered webxdc in another comment here! https://delta.chat/en/2025-01-23-webxdc-no-billionaires