I’m a bit of a hobby coder, and I have enjoyed writing small, home cooked apps (https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/) and publishing them as PWAs that my friends and family can enjoy. I can’t justify an annual 99 USD for an Apple developer licence, and my family have a mix of iPhones and Androids.
This step makes it much less possible for me to do this kind of “home cooked” development, and it makes me sad.
I think Apple would do well to offer a solution for folks like me, maybe a significant discount (or free?) developer accounts for folks with apps with fewer than 50 users or no App Store access, etc.
> But I guess they don’t really care, which is sad.
Hit the nail on the head there.
Currently they care about protecting their iOS monopoly. I'm not sure there is much they care about more.
PWA, alternative browsers, alternative app stores are all just little pawns in the iOS/Android duopoly game
I too was very excited that PWAs are finally here and work everywhere. I thought being open web technology they wouldn't go away easily - guess what Apple always finds a way.
They really just are the new Microsoft from the old days
This step makes it much less possible for me to do this kind of “home cooked” development, and it makes me sad.
I think Apple would do well to offer a solution for folks like me, maybe a significant discount (or free?) developer accounts for folks with apps with fewer than 50 users or no App Store access, etc.
But I guess they don’t really care, which is sad.