Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
What bothers me about this -- and it bothered me enough to leave the platform -- is not fees, or &quot;hobby computing,&quot; or &quot;it&#x27;s just for my own use,&quot; or trying to figure out why this or that would be in Apple&#x27;s interest.  What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of what a computer <i>is.</i><p>I am, of course, aware that many (perhaps most) computers in the world are effectively appliances, but at some level, the great glory of this glorious, epochal machine -- the &quot;personal computer&quot; -- is one&#x27;s ability to program it and make it do something new.  It is not just a machine; it&#x27;s a machine for creating machines.<p>Take that away, and . . . to what shall I compare it?  It&#x27;s like giving someone a deck of cards and telling them that these cards can <i>only</i> be used to play blackjack.  You can&#x27;t <i>invent</i> a card game, or change the rules, or build a house of cards, or do card magic.  Putting such stipulations in place isn&#x27;t just annoying or inconvenient.  It&#x27;s a kind of basic betrayal of the concepts and affordances that underlie the thing itself.<p>[edit: grammar]