Why the fuck is this apple stuff so fucking expensive?
I want to dig into IOS app development but I am seriously considering not to do it because it's fucking expensive...

Backstory:
I am a young dev (in apprenticeship) and my company offered me a phone. That's great because I can save the money that I would have payed for my phone bill.
But sadly it's an iPhone... I thought why not make something cool out of it and start learning IOS development.

But so far all I saw from IOS development are extreme high costs...

Is there some kind of student plan or anything that makes it cheaper to learn?

Can you guys give me any advice on this?
I own an old MacBook but I need a new OS on it... (long story)
Are there anymore hidden costs? Any tips where to start?

Thanks for your help fellow ranters and sorry for the half rant half question

No, Apple consists of greedy cunts and thus, no cheaper option for iOS development.

Agreed with what was said above. Apple shows way tol much fucking greed and makes the development experience feel weird and inclusive. I personally do not like developing for ios (or android for that matter) using their tooling. To me development is about choice and I hate the fact that they try to capture you into specific environments. I mostly use React Native or Cordova out of spite to them. Fuck outta here telling me how to develop apps for a system, I'll do it however I darned well please. On another note, Macbooks are still decent computers for development, just wish they were not as expensive or locked into their hardware.

But they're aware that they prevent young people from developing cool stuff for their users right?

@needToRoll yup, also you can see this
https://devrant.io/rants/627257/...

Building Apple apps isn’t something you should do as an individual for the most part.

Unless you are living the high life with a new MacBook every 12 months and a Phone / watch every release as well it’s probably not going to be profitable in the least.

“But I can run ads” and make people pay to get rid of them.

Well yes but ads still work of traffic.
(Also I find it rare to see an ad on iOS with a couple of ad blockers running, VPN and Safari based )

So not only do you need to have a good bank account, you need the next big app to be able to profit off that app. And your clash of clans / fruit ninja / candy crush remake just won’t cut it.

Once you have all that you then need to constantly update it to be able to ever try and land your self into a featured spot on the app stores competing with the AAA apps.

But on the other hand, if you can get your self a job as an IOS Dev then go for it and let the company pay for it while you create some mighty fine apps👌

$100 a year to teach your self how to build for iOS / Mac can be worth the investment if you push hard enough.

Not that I know of. Mate of mine had to develop an iPhone app (Freelance).had to spend 2500 on apple stuff (something like that)

But iOS is where the money comes from. Someone told me 80% of ad profits come from iOS users. iOS users won't use AdBlock or a free alternative or something. Plus, why not just go tutorials point then learn by doing?

@calmyourtities the average user may not because they don’t have the wits
to install and manage an adblocker and it’s lists 😏

There are options here, like a cheap Mac mini build server, or some of the cloud build services combined with Test flight.

I haven't tried it, and from what I hear, it wont be as smooth an experience as the real thing.

And these service providers also want to get payed, so you'll end up paying somewhere eventually.

@C0D4 thats a good thing?

Running macOS in a VM is possible. Dont know if you can develop with it though.

What about a Hackintosh? Full power of macOS but cheap (cheap == normal in this situation).