> Then why does a multi-trillion dollar conglomerate need that pittance from a million ordinary people?
Because the store gets spammed by million of bot applications ? Having a small fee for store review is probably a decent noise floor.
You can still develop apps on your devices without a dev license - the week long cert is annoying, they probably want to avoid people side-loading via this mechanism (which I am against FWIW).
But you can develop on your devices without paying 100$/year
> Because the store gets spammed by million of bot applications ?
They're a search engine company. They can't figure out how to put real apps on page 1 and spam apps on page 500?
Also, then why are they charging the fee if you use someone else's store?
> the week long cert is annoying, they probably want to avoid people side-loading via this mechanism
It seems like you understand their underlying motives, so then why are you defending them?
But this isn't about the store. It's about being able to install apps even without going through the store.
I'm not talking about putting the App into the Store, just installing it on my phone.