Would you rather pay an exorbitant developer program fee upfront before you know your apps will make any money?

The nominal developer program fee is not designed to be Apple's profit generator. It's to keep spammers out.

> It's to keep spammers out.

Doesn't seem to be working. Have you seen the App Store? You can buy 'antivirus' apps with $79.99 weekly subscriptions. On a sandboxed platform where you can't "scan" anything but yourself.

Also -- it's not that hard to make $143 in scam sales, which will pay for that $99 account.

I actually would rather the developer program fee was $2,000 if it meant it actually was harder for scammers to get in. Of course, it should be free to make apps for my own phone, and to distribute it to those in my family group.

	▲	y1n0 15 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yeah the app store really has turned into a wasteland of shit. I don't think a $2000 fee would change that. People scamming with the $79 weekly subscription for junk make a lot more than that without blinking an eye.
	▲	insane_dreamer 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		there would be 100x that many spam apps if it wasn't gated by a fee, esp nowadays

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dbbk 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My point is rather, why couldn't they just simplify and make the developer program fee tiered. So indie devs pay $99, and huge businesses pay more.