So, you have $150 annual fee just for the developer account. Plus an additional massive cost every I time I need to replace the device.
The starting costs are significantly higher; maybe not 3k, maybe just 2k, but that’s the same anyway: Completely unaffordable.
And running costs are massively worse, too.
Only if you ignore the free credit cards that are independent of a current account from Advanzia, Santander Consumer, Barclaycard, Hanseatic, Payback, Targobank, ICS, and some I forgot.
Then there are also a lot of unconditionally free current accounts that offer a card (credit or debit) that can be used to pay that subscription, such as those from DKB, Comdirect, ING-Diba, Consorsbank, Wüstenrot, Norisbank, Fidor, N26, and so on.
Those offers are not hard to find, some of them are available for over a decade or more now. Even pretty much every consumer bank you can name in Germany has such a card on offer for less than 40€ yearly. That includes small cooperative banks. If yours does not you should consider switching (or opening a second account), competition is fierce.
Santander, Barclay, Hanseatic, Targo, DKB, Comdirect, ING-Diba, Consors, Wüstenrot, Noris, and N26 require that you have at least 600€ each month of movement via the bank account, or at least 1200€/year via the card.
I’ve tried getting a card from all of them. All of them refused, as I’d not use them enough.
> If yours does not
I’m a customer at 2 major national german banks (postbank and commerzbank), and a local one, none of them (or their subsidiaries, such as comdirect) offer this.
I just want a credit card, I’ll use it at most once a year, for at most 100 bucks. That is not available from any bank.
The only offer that exists even similar in cost is the old MyWirecard offer, and they closed my account due to not using it enough.
Not to mention that all that gives you the ability to, you know, sell apps on the App Store and recoup your expenses. $2000 is a very reasonable entry price for something you could be making your living with. It's expensive for a hobby, granted, but it's not like the stuff you buy is single-purpose. And it keeps resale value amazingly well.
You can really stop it with the made-up numbers now. This is ridiculous.
For what I am doing, it literally is.
> $2000 is a very reasonable entry price for something you could be making your living with.
For a student that has 50€ left each month after rent, food, etc, $2000 is quite a fucking bunch of money.
> Oh quit the nonsense! I'm paying nowhere near 40€ for my credit card in Germany
Which bank? A credit card without being required to be linked to an account with a certain monthly or annual transfer?
> Not to mention that all that gives you the ability to, you know, sell apps on the App Store and recoup your expenses.
Which is so useful when the whole goal is to port existing GPL'd open source apps for my projects to iOS, and provide them for free.
