This seems reasonable when you look from the point of view of a corporation. But hobbyists are single individuals, not corporations. So this basically makes development a privilege for corporations or for people in the first world for whom $99 is nothing.
Obviously the glaring difference is that you can side load apps on Windows without using the app store at all. The day that becomes a serious barrier is definitely a line too far in the history of computing. But Apple has always been a very closed off ecosystem - going back to the nineties they were never very friendly to developers or third party hardware. To me this is just Apple doing Apple - their phone, IMO, is still miles ahead of anything else, though.
> few hobbies are as cheap as this
Quite true.
It's unfortunately not that simple anymore on Windows either with the SmartScreen popup getting in the way and the "Run anyway" button hard to find (not as bad as on macOS but still...).
Your executable needs a big enough "reputation score" for SmartScreen to remain silent, even when properly code-signed (unless it's signed with an expensive EV-certificiate apparently).
Let me guess, you’re from a 1st world country and probably make 6 figures a year (pre tax), likely working in FAANG?
As a guy in a 3rd world country, $99 is a hell lot of money. Your comment comes across as quite tone deaf. If you grew up middle-upper class and relatively sheltered that’s not necessarily your fault, but trust me in many parts of the world $99 is worth much more converted.
It’s a token amount, just enough to prevent spammers from creating thousands of accounts. It’s $99 for your entire organization for a year. Go check what Microsoft charges for a Visual Studio license per seat, per year.
$99 doesn’t even buy you 1 hour of a developer’s time. Even if you develop apps a a hobby, this is not a large amount of money. Few hobbies are a cheap as this.