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IOS 4.3 Now Available For Download
tekgoblin writes "Apple has just released iOS 4.3 for download from iTunes. The update from Apple includes enhancements to Apple Airplay, Safari, iPad side switch, and the Personal hotspot feature for the iPhone 4. I personally welcome the feature to make the 'mute button' on the iPad back into the screen orientation lock."
Title had me confused with Cisco's IOS. Can we use proper names next time (iOS)?
$99 a year is if you want to release apps via the App Store and have access to beta versions of the OS, along with professional developer support. The $99 includes XCode 4.
$4.99 is an accounting charge due to financial reforms passed after the Enron mess. XCode 3.x comes free with every Mac, and 4.x will come free with Lion, as it's cost is built into the overall cost of the OS.
And XCode 3.x is still free with any new Mac (required to run XCode anyhow). XCode 4 will return to free status when Lion ships. The $4.99 is simply an accounting fee due to Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. Enough new features and functionality were added to XCode 4 to qualify it as a proper upgrade, and Apple hasn't been counting revenue from new Macs and OS X as "subscription" revenue needed to allow it to be released for free.
The bigger news today is that Apple has decided that developing for iOS or the Mac, without even submitting anything to their respective app stores, is now no longer free.
Umm, charging $5 for the latest version of the dev tools is not equivalent to charging all developers for the Mac platform. You can use the older version of Xcode for free or you can use dozens of other tool kits from other vendors and pay Apple nothing.
While $4.99 is chump change, it just seems like an odd thing to do and comes across as greedy.
It is the result of US accounting law. They can't give it away for free and claim it as part of the cost of OS X as they have been since there are too many new features in it to pass muster. So they charge a minimal fee until the next OS X release then claim it is also rolled into the price of that OS for new users.
Seriously, they aren't going to make any significant amount of money from this, so why bother?
I think I just answered this.
I imagine a lot of young, aspiring developers will see this and look elsewhere instead. Maybe that's a good thing?
I suppose it's possible, or they'll use Eclipse or the older version of Xcode or any number of other toolkits.
It's not a lie, it's due to that act, and how Apple runs their books. Yes, all the companies you mentioned give things away for free, and so does Apple, depending on what it is. XCode is classified as part of the OS, a paid component that Apple either sells as a standalone disc for upgrades, or part of the price of a new Mac. If Microsoft claimed Visual Studio was part of Windows and distributed it with every version of Windows 7, then they would have to deal with how to account for a "free" upgrade from VS 2008 to VS2010. They could either claim VS 2010 is simply a bugfix release (not likely to hold up in courts if they were ever challenged on it), or defer the revenue recognition of Windows 7 over a period of time that covers when VS2010 was released. OS X is not a deferred revenue product for Apple, so they already recognized the income before XCode 4 came out. Accounting wise, they can't say that XCode 4 dev time (salary money, etc) was a cost component of the currently released version of OS X.
If you listen to financial reports from pretty much any major company, they report revenue in GAAP and non GAAP terms. GAAP tends to have all the "subscription" and deferred revenue crap, while non GAAP represents exactly what came in that precise quarter. If you want to read more on the details, refer to these Wikipedia articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_GAAP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_recognition
Beyond understanding the basics, there are tons of articles out there that talk about how SOX impacted revenue recognition.