this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Dev accounts are free. It’s only when you want to post stuff to the store that you start paying.
You mean when you want to make it available to download in the only way Apple makes possible? It's not like you can just send the apk to someone to run on their iPhone, if you want to share the app with others on an iPhone, you have to use the Apple App Store, you have to pay them $100 + the cost of an Apple computer. Just to share your FOSS app with your friends.
on iOS its called ipa
If dev accounts are free your friends can get their own accounts and load the app.
It just works™️
Did this change? It was about a decade ago. I could develop and test on an emulated device, but testing on hardware was 100% locked behind a $100 paywall.
I could be reading this wrong, but it looks like TestFlight allows you to distribute internally without going through the App Store.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/distributing-your-app-for-beta-testing-and-releases
It mentions the apple developer program which is what I assume the 100 dollar subscription is. I keep seeing people say dev accounts are free but any tools beyond the dev environment are paywalled.
I wasn't even talking about app stores; I never published anything to Google play, just loaded through usb from android studio. The apple program didn't allow even that.
Before TestFlight was a thing, you could self-sign your own apps (.ipa) and install them to local devices through iTunes over a USB cable connected to the device. The developer signing certificate for this was/is free, included when you sign up for the free version of Apple Developer account.
Nowadays it looks like you can still do this directly from Xcode. See section: “Connect real devices to your Mac”
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/running-your-app-in-simulator-or-on-a-device
*The mention of Apple Developer Program in the bullet points of this section is an “if” and is optional. It’s not required for testing apps on local devices.