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Kaitlyn2004

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 17, 2008
124
21
I want to start making apps that people can put on their iPhone/iPod Touch... and they will be both free and paid.

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/

I'm confused - I thought they provided the SDK free and you can create your apps? You have to pay $100 (or what's the $300 for?) if you want them to be in the app store?
 
I want to start making apps that people can put on their iPhone/iPod Touch... and they will be both free and paid.

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/

I'm confused - I thought they provided the SDK free and you can create your apps? You have to pay $100 (or what's the $300 for?) if you want them to be in the app store?

you can get the SDK for free, but it'll cost you $100 to get your app in the store.
 
So they charge you $100 to be able to list an app in their store, then take an additional 30% off every sale?

mhmmm....

WHY do they charge that initial $100?
 
So they charge you $100 to be able to list an app in their store, then take an additional 30% off every sale?

mhmmm....

WHY do they charge that initial $100?

Because they are reviewing and hosting the app for you and providing space in iTunes. Not to mention that if there was no entry fee, there would be even more useless crap in the store than there already is.

This deal is better than it is for virtually every other mobile platform
 
Ahh okay.

So is it an application, or pay $100 = good to go (instantly)?

And then there is a supposed 3 week wait once you actually submit your app and it appears for download/purchase?
 
A bit of more detail: First off, there's the SDK you can download for free. As long as you've got an Intel-based Mac, you can do a lot of your programming on that. Note, you will NOT be able to test on an actual iPhone; instead, the free SDK comes with an iPhone simulator than runs on the Mac. The simulator is pretty darn good by now, but it doesn't support certain types of sound effects (Open AL), doesn't simulate the accelerometer at all, and it isn't anywhere near the same speed as the actual hardware (so where your program may run at a good speed on the simulator, actual hardware it could get a lot of slowdown and bad loading times). I'd definitely recommend working with the free SDK first before paying the $99, as long as your app doesn't depend on something it doesn't support yet.

So, then there's the $99 program. This gets you three things: the ability to test your app on actual hardware, the ability to publish as many apps as you want to the App Store, either free or for cost, and the ability to write your app for beta versions of the iPhone OS. It also gets you two programmer-support cases with Apple, so if you really just can't figure something out, you can email Apple and they'll try and help you.

The more expensive program you can ignore, that's for a company that wants to develop apps that can be used by anyone at that company, rather than released to the App store.
 
A bit of more detail: First off, there's the SDK you can download for free. As long as you've got an Intel-based Mac, you can do a lot of your programming on that. Note, you will NOT be able to test on an actual iPhone; instead, the free SDK comes with an iPhone simulator than runs on the Mac. The simulator is pretty darn good by now, but it doesn't support certain types of sound effects (Open AL), doesn't simulate the accelerometer at all, and it isn't anywhere near the same speed as the actual hardware (so where your program may run at a good speed on the simulator, actual hardware it could get a lot of slowdown and bad loading times). I'd definitely recommend working with the free SDK first before paying the $99, as long as your app doesn't depend on something it doesn't support yet.

So, then there's the $99 program. This gets you three things: the ability to test your app on actual hardware, the ability to publish as many apps as you want to the App Store, either free or for cost, and the ability to write your app for beta versions of the iPhone OS. It also gets you two programmer-support cases with Apple, so if you really just can't figure something out, you can email Apple and they'll try and help you.

The more expensive program you can ignore, that's for a company that wants to develop apps that can be used by anyone at that company, rather than released to the App store.

Please ignore most of this post, it's very out of date.

Since the launch of v2.0 you have been able to install your app on a phone or iPod for testing.
 
Please ignore most of this post, it's very out of date.

Since the launch of v2.0 you have been able to install your app on a phone or iPod for testing.

Umm actually that post is exactly correct.

You still need to pay if you want to test on a device.
 
Yeah, you may not need to download the Beta OS anymore, but you still need to get the licenses for code signing and the device provision to be able to put an app on a device for testing. And to get those requires access to the part of the iphone developer website that you only get by paying $99.
 
Are you sure? I could have sworn that being able to compile your own program on an iPhone v2.0 was available to everyone as soon as the SDK came out of beta along with the software v2.0 launch.
 
Are you sure? I could have sworn that being able to compile your own program on an iPhone v2.0 was available to everyone as soon as the SDK came out of beta along with the software v2.0 launch.

No. You still need to be able to sign your app, which requires getting a provisioning profile, which requires paying.
 
Are you sure? I could have sworn that being able to compile your own program on an iPhone v2.0 was available to everyone as soon as the SDK came out of beta along with the software v2.0 launch.

No, because you need to pay Apple to get the proper code signing certificates.
 
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