"the way, to sign a piece of software, you need to pay an extortive $100/year fee to Apple"

This is the main reason I hate these notarization. And the worst thing is if you want to work on some software that require network extension, you can't even do it without paying apple $99 a year. There are workaround like turning off SIP, but it isn't recommended.

Apple won't even let you pay the fee in some cases. I've been fighting with them trying to figure out why they won't accept my ID verification since March. They keep saying my devices are linked to another Apple Account, but I purchased them all directly from the Apple Store and none of them have ever touched another account, so what the fuck.