You Win, RIM! (An Open Letter To RIM’s Developer Relations):
“You win. I concede defeat. I no longer want to attempt developing an app for the Playbook,” developer Jamie Muraiblogs. “Are you happy now? Surely you must be. Considering how terribly designed the entire process is, from the registration right through to loading an app into the simulator, I can only assume that you are trying to drive developers away by inconveniencing them as much as humanly possible.”
“Having already developed apps for theiPhone and iPad, I had a little experience with the process of signing up for developer programs, and naturally I assumed that yours would be different, but fairly straight forward none the less,” Murai reports. “Well, you know what they say about making assumptions!”
Murai reports, “First, I had to fill out a form with my personal information. No big deal, pretty standard. I do, however, notice that although it is currently free to register with App World, in the future there will be a $200 USD charge. Now just in case you’ve never looked in to competing developer programs, Apple charges $99, and Google charges $25. Considering you are by far the underdog in this game, how do you justify charging double the price of the market leader? Also, with the $99 or $25 charge, Apple and Google let you publish and unlimited number of apps on their stores. You, on the other hand, have decided that for $200, a developer should only get to publish 10 apps, and it will cost $200 for every additional 10 apps. On Twitter, I believe that would colloquially be referred to as a fail.”