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Sorry, Indie Devs -- Pop Apps Are the Future of App Store (imore.com)
An anonymous reader points us to an opinion piece by Apple blogger Rene Ritchie on the dim prospects for indie app developers, in the face of mass-market, big-name competition. From his piece: Big apps get all the attention these days, just like big movie, music, or book releases and indies get what little is left, when there's even a little left. The App Store is big business, and that's how big business works. [...] Apple could use its considerable power and influence to help shape the App Store economy into one more hospitable to indie developers. After all, those are the apps I love and the ones that dominate my home screens. But the truth is, even if Apple gave indie developers everything they wanted, it wouldn't matter much over the long term. It may help a few for a while, and a very few for a while longer, but the app economy and apps themselves are evolving. Brent Simmons has offered his opinion on the matter. He writes, The Mac has for a long time been overlooked -- first because Windows was so huge, and then web apps, and now iOS. For my entire career people have said that the Mac is a bad bet, that it's dumb to write Mac apps. [...] There was never a golden age for indie iOS developers. It was easier earlier on, but it was never golden. (Yes, some people made money, and some are today. I don't mean that there were zero successes.) And there's a good chance that many of the people you currently think of as thriving iOS indie developers are making money in other ways: contracting, podcast ads, Mac apps, etc.
That's why small stock mutual funds work.
I prefer dividend-paying stocks that pay out profits as dividends.
If I can get paid 200::1 on a 100:1 shot of winning I'm taking that bet every day long with 1/300th of my net worth.
In short, you're a gambler and not an entrepreneur. If you're using your own money, you're doing it wrong. A viable business model would attract Other People's Money (OPM).
open it up so that I don't have to have permission from their dictator just to have access to the tools. [...] Even if I had a friend with an iPhone, I can't just install and test.
When did you come to that conclusion? Apple's rules have changed, and it may have been since then. As of Xcode 7, you no longer have to pay $99 per year to install iOS apps from source code on your own device. Nowadays, so long as you own a Mac and an iOS device on the same Apple ID, you can just build and deploy the app for testing without any recurring fee. Apple charges the fee only when you submit the app to the App Store for review for the first time.