1. It's a nominal fee that keeps a certain kind of crappy app out of the store. 2. Apps can be released for $0, yet it costs money to host those apps.

Apple have to approve every app before it is release so the cost to them is really the approval process.

So charge for approvals. Why am I paying $99/yr to deploy apps to my own phone when I am already forced to buy their phone and their computers.

I doubt anyone actually forced you to buy their phone and computers.

If you want to deploy and iOS app, then you definitely have to. So long as Apple is vertically integrated from hardware to OS to marketplace and it's a 100% walled garden, they will effectively be charging developers a tax to do anything. The fact that they charge a tax on top of all that is what I take offense to. Especially since Google lets anyone make Android phones, lets you develop on any platform and install from any source. And access to publish to their app store is a one-time fee of $25.

He probably means "in order to develop iOS apps"

Nobody forces you to develop iOS apps either. This is the point I think people are missing. Access to Apple's walled garden is valuable enough to people that Apple can charge for it and people will pay it.

If only they held their own system apps to the same standards

This is not wrong, but for the majority of developers isn't it something like make people subscribe to Amazon Prime even if they only buy one book each year?

I feel most people aren't so upset about the idea or reasons behind a yearly fee so much as the yearly fee being so high.

The cost of developing and supporting an app is so much higher than $100/year.

So have the registration fee only when you submit an app to the store.

Oh wait I'm sorry that would be good design. Apple doesn't do that.

The membership fee is $99/yr. That's the equivalent of $330/yr in App Store sales per developer.

The opportunity cost of having developers NOT sign up because of the fee seems negligible. People still come flocking to Apple because they think they need to build an iOS app (and because of Apple's lackluster adoption of progressive web app support, that's still the only good way to get iOS users on board).

EDIT: Also, as others have mentioned, having a lower or zero fee would lower the bar, potentially flooding the App Store with even more low quality apps.

How did you jump from $99/year to $330/yr in sales per developer?

I think it means that 30% of 330/yr , Apple would lose revenue unless each developer did that per year.

99 / 0.3 = 330

It's what a developer would need to create in sales for Apple to make 99 bucks from their 30% cut.

He's talking about revenue for Apple. Apple takes a 30% cut. 30% of $330 = $99.

With Apple's tax, a developer needs to sell that much a year to break even on the membership fee.

That's what I thought but wouldn't that be $165?

How did you end up at $165? That's $99 / 0.6, not $99 / 03. Apple's "tax" is 30%, isn't it?

$165 is your breakeven point where your profits after "tax" are equal to the annual fee, at which point you are in the black and making a profit on incremental sales.

Oh wait that was dumb, the 30% tax means the breakeven point is $141.43.

Also it seems possible now that the GP was speaking from Apple's perspective, not the developer's.

Oh wait, you're the GP. Sorry, I was confused about the point of the discussion.

Wouldn't that be less? Apple gets the 30%, the devs get 70% so they'd have to sell less than $330 to break even.

It's about Apple, not the developer.

For Apple to make $99 of your sales (not accounting for taxes etc), you'd need to generate a volume of sales of which 30% would amount to $99, i.e. $99 / 0.3 = $330.

If you're asking "how much does a developer need to make in sales every year to recoup their membership fee" that's different: $99 / 0.7 ≈ $142 (rounded up). But that's kinda orthogonal to Apple's interests.

$99/(1-.3) = $141.43

$99 your cut used to cover the program fee

$42.42 Apple’s cut

The ratio of the two is almost exactly 70:30

Avoids people becoming "developers" who just want to side load apps by installing developer versions.

It's also an easy way to fight spam by reducing to serious accounts and allowing manual review.

I hate the one step thinking here.

Have the fee when people submit an app for review, not before.

Best of both worlds. Lots of developers, rich ecosystem, high hurdle for spam.

The yearly fee also includes 2 developer tech support incidents where Apple developers can help debug a serious problem in your code that prevents your app from shipping.

I just don't understand why Apple should care at all what people do on their phones. It's paternalism to the extreme.

Paternalism: the policy or practice on the part of people in positions of authority of restricting the freedom and responsibilities of those subordinate to them in the subordinates' supposed best interest.