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Several years ago, I bought a MacBook Pro, downloaded Xcode, and intended to write some widgets related to City of Heroes (among a few other little iOS app ideas I had in mind). Once I got everything set up, I started learning Objective C and details of how to program for the iOS GUI. I got knee-deep into it and was really close to releasing something, so I sent my $99 to Apple to join their developer program so that I could actually publish stuff.
They e-mailed me back and said that they needed a copy of some official ID to prove that I am who I say I am. "That's weird," I thought. What difference does it make? It's not like Apple has to fill out tax forms for me or anything. And when I was signing up, it never told me that I'd have to provide any identification, but still, whatever. So I made a copy of my driver license and snail mailed it to them the next day. A few days later, I got another e-mail from them saying that they required a notarized copy of my identification. Again, nothing in what I signed up for or in the first e-mail said this.
This was at the same time that Apple was clamping down on a lot of developers. Daily, I read stories on Slashdot about people whose apps had been pending approval for weeks or months. Also, some high-profile apps had either been denied or pulled, including Google Voice, a Commodore 64 emulator, and it was around the same time also that Apple declared that all apps had to be developed in Objective C, screwing over Adobe and Mono in the process.
So after I got the second e-mail, I thought long and hard about it. Do I really want to subject myself to the walled garden that is Apple? In answer to that question, I sent them back a reply asking for my $99 fee back, along with telling them that as a developer, I wasn't going to put up with these hoops. If I had this much trouble just to push out a couple of widget apps for free to my friends, I was inclined to believe the other developers who were complaining about Apple's draconian approval process, and I didn't want any part of it. A couple of months later, I sold my MacBook Pro, and I haven't looked back.
I might work on some Android apps, but if anyone else wants stuff developed for iOS, they're going to have to find someone else to do it, someone who has more patience for those types of shenanigans than I have.
Oh, and just for the record, Objective C is hideous.
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So what were we talking about? Oh right, Google! Let's do that!