[dingledork69]

I started programming when I was 13. I did not have anywhere close near $99 to spend, so Apple was completely inaccessible to me. Eventually I did make a few thousand from an Android app at 16, which was huge. But at that point I had moved on to other things and never wound up giving Apple their $99. And I also didn't generate several thousand dollars in revenue which they could've taxed 30% of.

[brookst]

And that's unfortunate, and Apple's loss.

But for every person like you, that fee probably keeps out orders of magnitude more abuse, spam, trolls, other nonsense.

Apple isn't dumb (their evilness is debatable). I'm sure they have tested price points and giving free dev accounts and looked at results. If it produced more harm than good, they'd remove it.

[dingledork69]

And yet somehow Android, Windows, Linux and even MacOS itself all manage to be just fine while still allowing sideloading. Of course MacOS is going down the same dark path by hiding the install option in an obscure menu and lying to the user about potential security issues, but still.

iOS is the only platform that supposedly NEEDS to extract this fee. Stop believing Apple's lies, they've been grifting everyone for years.