I’m not defending this, but after 15 years, I don’t see the point in complaining. We complain (rightfully) about the amount of crap in the App Store and Apple's capricious review policies that don’t stop the scammers, but for better or worse, the $99 fee IS a barrier to entry that I would argue has made the iOS ecosystem better than Android.

I’ve been paying $99 a year for early access to iOS betas and for my own test apps since the program debuted in 2008. I’ve never published an app in the App Store under my own account. But if I’m honest, I do feel I’ve gotten value out of that $1500 or whatever.

If it isn’t worth $100 a year to you, that’s fine. Plenty of people will sell you a slot on their account for less and give you a signing key. Or you can choose not to play. But it seems silly to bitch about something that has literally been the status quo since the inception of the App Store back in March 2008, when the iPhone SDK was released.

I should also note that the $99 in 2008 was significantly less than Apple used to charge for student access for Apple Developer Accounts for Mac before that. (Although those gave you nice Apple hardware discounts).