Keeping low effort apps out of the store helps their bottom line. It's a second order effect.

Of course there are. Many browser extensions are available for all platforms except Apple's, because you need that $99/y (and a Mac) to wrap (and fix up) a bunch of JS you already wrote and tested everywhere else.

I applaud the authors of the few good extensions who went the extra 20.000 leagues. (But I still reluctantly switched to Ungoogled Chromium.)

>discourage low effort apps

Well that obviously didn't work. I got rid of my Iphone, but I remember the app store as being an absolute wasteland of garbage, and discoverability was awful. I don't know if it was a slogan, or an ad campaign once, but there was this thing with "there's an app for that". Yea I guess maybe there is, but good luck finding it, and finding one that isn't riddled with ads and scammy in-app purchases, and then further good luck that the developer of it keeps paying apple 99$ dollars every year so the app isn't delisted.

I'm not saying Google is any better. I've pretty much given up on apps and app stores at this point. If I find something new, it's something I'm made aware of via other channels (or unavoidable bullshit like mandatory app based car parking etc.).

--love Ted K.

But it's asinine for developers to have to pay $99 in order to test their app, such as on TestFlight. When you have an app idea, when you are far from deciding on monetization, you just want to test out the central features of the app among friends, it's wrong to require payment for that.

Remember all apps have once been low effort apps: the first few weeks when you begin working on them. Polish comes later.