And there is the Apple dev annual subscription.

By the way, I have (in the past) managed to run macOS on Vmware successfully, but one needs a pretty strong PC to make this work without having the fans lifting the PC off the groud.

> And there is the Apple dev annual subscription.

Only if you're publishing.

We had to pay $299 for the enterprise license to distribute iOS applications internally to just our staff[1]. This circumvented the App Store entirely and we used MDM tools (AirWatch) to distribute. Was this avoidable? I'm genuinely curious as I am not specifically an iOS/Mac dev.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/

No. In order to publish (even just within your organization) you need to establish a trusted relationship, and Apple charges for that. There is plenty of room for argument about how much Apple should be charging for this, but the process does have some costs to Apple, so it is only right that they charge something.

This is a disingenuous argument, you have to buy a PC to develop Windows. And you have to pay $100-300 for windows, AND you have to play $600-$2500 _per year_ for Visual Studio

You can develop for Windows without Visual Studio, and Visual Studio has a free tier that includes some commercial usage. If you own pretty much any desktop computer or laptop, it can run Windows (including Macs). I think you can even get Windows licenses for testing purposes for free, if you prefer to work on macOS or Linux and just test on Windows (EDIT: on reviewing this part, the terms on those test images aren't as clear as one would like, even though they clearly are provided for developers, so count cost for 1 license if you want to be sure).

No it's not. You can buy a PC from many different vendors, HP, Lenevo, Dell etc. They compete and the price goes down, and customers get a choice. You can also run linux for free and use VSCode for free which also runs on Linux.

With Apple I have to buy the PC from Apple at it's marked up price since no competition. So it is a fair point.

What do you mean no competition?

Why on earth would you want to develop Mac software without buying a Mac? This argument really does make no sense at all. It’s like complaining that if you want to drive Porsche, you have to buy a Porsche from Porsche. Er, yeah. That’s how that works.

Please quibble about renting and dealerships or something. Please. I dare you. I double dare you! I swear I won’t stop laughing for a week.

Dare accepted. You know that is a false analogy. If you want X you need to get X.

It would be more like a mechanic being required to buy his tools from Porsche to be able to work on a Porsche.

And it's good you bring this up, this too is a problem in the auto industry world. Car manufacturers are pulling these stunts and creating locks for their cars so only approved tools can be used with it.

To continue the analogy, it would be like buying an Epson printer and being force to use Epson ink. Or buying a house and being forced to buy your DIY suppliers from the real estate agent.

We can keep going with analogies all day.

Visual Studio Community (which is everything you'd need if you aren't a large team) is free. You can use it for up to 5 users for commercial work.

I use Community professionally.

Your personal accusation of disingenuousness distracts from what would otherwise have been a good point. Let's see what a barebones setup costs for developing with a solid IDE on each platform:

macOS:

$800 Mac Mini (Apple's most affordable offering that runs macOS)

$90 Acer SB220Q Monitor

$FREE Xcode

Total: $890

Windows:

$200 Dell Inspiron 11 3000 (Most affordable Dell PC I could find being sold new)

$1200 One time payment for Visual Studio (but you don't get updates)

Total: $1400

So if have to both buy a computer and need a full featured IDE then Visual Studio's license wipes out any savings you get from avoiding the "Apple tax". It gets even worse if you want perpetual updates to Visual Studio which cost $800/year but come free with XCode.

This is counter to what I had expected beforehand myself, I expected the "Apple tax" to make the bar of entry much higher than PC development.

If, on the other hand, you can get by with a less advanced IDE or are developing in a non-proprietary language like Java, Python, or Scala the cost goes way down:

Cheapskate Option:

$200 Windows/Linux laptop

$FREE Eclipse/JetBrains CE IDE/Visual Studio Code

Total: $200

This is certainly more affordable than the $800 macOS alternative. Although one could debate whether the above mentioned IDEs are on equal footing with XCode/Visual Studio.

Visual Studio Community is free. It doesn't have the fancy cloud/devops enterprise-y stuff, but it's not like Xcode does either.

Ah! I didn't know Visual Studio Community was even a thing. Figures though, since I've never used either.

This is incorrect - you can go and buy a used Mac Mini for 250USD.