You are generalizing too much. Panic big 10 years ago? Coda came out in 2007, and it was pretty big for a while. So omnigroup is no longer a thing? They are alive and kicking. I agree that they both had faced problems with the Apple Sandboxing scheme, but I guess they'll overcome those issues (even by being out of the App Store).

What about Sketch, AgileBits, Alfred?

I know many long time devs who are still doing it and haven't sold their products to others to maintain... And I also happen know -lots- of new Mac/iOS devs.

Nothing to say about the 30%, it's just a pathetic argument, people have pointed it out already.

There is a reason to charge a $99 fee. There's also a reason to force a user to put a credit card to create an App Store Account, there's a reason to request a CC to create an Amazon account too. And $99 bucks is literally nothing, check MSDN and Visual Studio (https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/how-to-buy-vs.as...).

About 'Apple Centric Skill-set' not being transferable to other platforms? Sorry, but... are you f'ing kidding me?

If you learn -any- framework, made by anyone at all, in-depth (not just copy pasting code here and there), you'll get skills that are transferable to other development environments. I've learned a ton of C/C++ and even some Assembly by doing iOS, I've also dealt with several scripting languages in the process.

If you're a real Engineer, and you really learn and understand a framework (Apple's or not) it should contribute to your growth.

Cheers.