I would be okay with a graduate app fee.

Tier 1: Hobbyists, you can have a “self signed” cert that allows you to have any app tied to your own device. You could also freely share source code for other people to compile themselves and put on their own device using their “self signed certificate”. This could be free. Of course you would still have to have a Mac.

Tier 2: a really cheap fee where you could sign apps that were distributed outside of the App Store for Macs. Signing apps that are distributed outside of the Mac App Store don’t require any manual approval or sandboxing.

Tier 3: the current App Store model. But the difference is that the first $x amount is charged at 30% and then it gradually goes down at larger volumes. Say the first $10K? Where eventually it is basically barely above payment processing fees. I’m sure the Epic’s of the world would be okay with this.