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macOS mac testing question
- Thread starter perlsyntax
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Do you have a developer account?
The iPad runs iOS (vs OSX for the Mac), which requires a paid developer account to load applications onto a device.
The iPad runs iOS (vs OSX for the Mac), which requires a paid developer account to load applications onto a device.
In each case, it's an arbitrary decision that Apple made based on what would be most profitable for them. There's no technical reason that Apple couldn't require you to have a paid developer account to test Mac apps on your Mac, or to allow you to test iOS apps without a paying developer account, but on each respective platform, it guaranteed the most profits for Apple.
The Mac is a minority platform. Windows computers far outnumber Mac computers. One of the main reasons is because Windows users fear that the apps they use on Windows won't be available on OS X. Further, because so few people use Macs, developers often prioritize Windows over OS X as a target for their apps. So it's in Apples best interest to make developing for OS X as easy as possible, thus they allow testing to be done without paying.
iOS is a pretty big mobile platform. Tons of consumers are using it, so tons of developers want to support it. So many developers want to support it that, in fact, Apple can afford to charge them to test their apps on iOS. It causes a small number of developers to not make apps for iOS (which theres no shortage of) while simultaneously giving Apple a lot of easy money. There are over 200K paying iOS developers, which gives Apple an easy $20M/year. Chump change for Apple? Perhaps. But it'd be silly to turn down easy money like that.