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.