Ah, I see now what you’re getting at. Thanks for elaborating.

Let’s first address the actual GP, because we’ve drifted quite a bit away from it. That’s partially my fault because I mentioned frameworks.

> The $99/year paid by every developer is more than sufficient to cover the expenses involved in distributing their apps.

They posit that $99/year is sufficient to cover expenses involved with distributing apps.

I challenge that purely on the fundamental premise that App Review, which is part of the distribution, will eat up $99/year in a heartbeat.

Based on my observations with my builds, App Review spends, on average, about an hour in my app for new apps I submit, and for big updates I submit.

With more minor updates, I see them spend, on average, between 15-20 minutes in my app.

I don’t know how much time they spend on “paperwork” outside my app, like going through checklists and checking my App Store listing.

All I know is that they do spend time on that and that they use a tool that highlights changes. Of course, I know when my app changes the status to “In Review” and “Ready for sale,” but I also understand that those statuses can’t be used as an accurate measure of how much time they spend on my app because they select multiple apps at a time for “In Review.”

So, I’ll limit it to the least favorable variables:

- 1 hour for new apps and significant updates
- 15 minutes for garden variety updates

I also know that they get paid around $30/hour based on my personal interactions with them in our free time, but since I can’t find a reputable source on that beyond “trust me, bro,” we’ll knock that down to California’s minimum wage of $16/hour.

$99 buys you a little over 6 hours of labor in California at minimum wage.

Six hours corresponds to 24x 15-minute reviews for minor update builds or 6x 1-hour reviews for new apps and significant updates with these conservative numbers.

How much of that $99 is used up on App Reviews will, of course, depend on the developer in question.
But taking into account that you can submit (near) unlimited builds for as many apps as you have in your portfolio and the hourly pay being more than minimum, it’s not implausible that the $99 is used up within a year.

Especially when you consider all the other stuff that comes into play with distribution.

Expanding it beyond just distribution, you’ll also have to look at the two admittedly underutilized, code-level Developer Support Tickets you get each year and, as I brought up, the development of new and the improvement of already existing frameworks you get access to.

Considering all of this, I’m very comfortable in saying that the $99/year is not “more than sufficient” to cover the expenses.

Now, the matter you brought up. Which essentially boils down to a criticism of differential pricing.

Apple posited in court and structured in the developer agreement, that the commission + the annual fee is primarily a payment for using Apple’s IP.

Both the district court as well as the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals accepted this as factual and completely legal.

You now argue that, because Apple utilizes differential pricing (i.e., by not requiring all Mac app developers to pay a commission in all cases), it says something about the $99/year fee and how much it covers the expenses on Apple’s end.

I think, first and foremost, your premise is faulty. Not all developers that create apps or software in general to be run on macOS pay $99/year.

There’s plenty of stuff you can find on GitHub written in Python or something else that runs on your Mac without the developer having paid the $99/year. Same for apps that aren’t notarized.

This muddied the waters on what fee is covering what if anything.

There are also a lot of developers that pay $99/year to get their Mac app notarized, which changes the value proposition and what expenses the fee covers.

And then there are, of course, the developers who pay $99/year + commission when they publish through the MAS.

Apple has chosen to utilize differential pricing to charge some Mac app developers a commission and not others. Similarly, that means that some developers pay a commission based on what device they publish on.

We cannot surmise what expenses are covered based on the differential pricing.

This is similar to how I can’t surmise which expenses a GitHub Pro subscription fee covers based on the fact that GitHub lets students make use of GitHub Pro for free.

The differential pricing can be the result of a business decision (e.g., it’s harder to reach Mac developers as a customer base, so we’ll give them a lower price, or they cost us less, so we’ll charge them less or, we don’t spend that much R&D on macOS), it can also be the result of a moral or philosophical stance (e.g., the Mac was always more open so we shouldn’t close it up (also a legal motivation in terms of antitrust by the way) or, on the Mac, you can make apps that make little use of our IP so it doesn’t make sense to charge them for IP usage), or it can be the result of other processes or a combination of them.

Whatever the reasoning, it’s a non sequitur to go from “They don’t require it on the Mac” to “Therefore, $99/year covers all expenses”.

Some other tidbits based on your comment:

> Apple charges the same developer fee to both iOS and Mac developers. Mac developers are free to distribute apps how they please, and use whatever payment APIs fit their use case.

This muddies the waters even more. That one annual fee covers development and publishing for all of Apple’s platforms, from macOS to Safari extensions and everything in between.
To Apple, it doesn’t matter if you only use it to develop for macOS or if you create multi-platform apps.

> Presumably, nothing. iOS is a less-complex operating system with fewer features and capabilities than MacOS. It has less legacy frameworks and compatibility modes to support, lower threat surface and less software competition.

This is a faulty assumption, in my opinion. iOS’ complexity is significantly increased with the need to create and maintain a higher security level than macOS.

It’s also no secret that iOS and the iPhone are Apple’s crown jewel, and most of the software R&D goes towards improving it, creating and improving frameworks for it.

To the point that almost all new frameworks get iOS support by default, whereas Apple’s other platforms may or may not get the framework at all, much less simultaneously.

Whatever else one wants to argue, iOS gets the most focus. That’s simply undeniable.

> Again, why can the $99/year fee cover frameworks on Mac but not on iOS?

Like I said, it’s a non-sequitur.

Just because Apple gives Mac app developers a discount in certain circumstances doesn’t mean the $99/year covers the entire kit and caboodle on macOS.

> Your original claim seems to be based on pure assumption and not evidence that proves iOS is more costly to maintain.

My original claim does nothing of the sort. All it aims to do, with basic calculus, is that the $99/year is unlikely to cover just the App Review part of the distribution pipeline, much less the entire distribution pipeline.

I add that it most definitely doesn’t cover anything else that Apple and the courts agree the commission pays for.