I find it so weird people suddenly act like macOS and Windows just don't exist when talking about iOS app distribution.

All these ridiculous arguments saying Apple deserves to tax developers whatever they want and the ecosystem can't possibly exist without the AppStore.

Because indie macOS apps have never existed?
Because downloading a Windows app from a developers website is not a thing that has ever existed?

Because no software ever existed before the AppStore?!?

"Dev tools wouldn't exist without Apple!!!"

Xcode used the open source GCC for years, until Apple replaced it with LLVM (which is also open source).

When I did jailbreak tweak development my build environment was all command line terminal tools, and it was fine.
In some ways better than Xcode is even now, in terms of debugging and inspection tools available.

"I'd have to manage app distribution and payments myself!!!"

But Stripe exists?
And has an SDK they want to make as easy as possible to use.

Also have those people never bought a paid indie Mac app on Gumroad?

https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper

Free apps (stick the zip file on your website)

Paid apps: gumroad

Paid app gets successful enough it's worth it: add a payment thing to your own website.

Like macOS and Windows apps have been doing for decades?

🎙️ MacWhisper

MacWhisperQuickly and easily transcribe audio files into text with OpenAI's state-of-the-art transcription technology Whisper as well as Nvidia Parakeet. Whether you're recording a meeting, lecture, or other important audio, MacWhisper quickly and accurately transcribes your audio files into text.📲 MacWhisper is now also available on iPhone and iPad, download it here.🎁 Get 5 euros off in January by clicking this link.Full Feature List Easily record and transcribe audio files on your Mac Full text and speaker search through all your transcripts System wide dictation with Whisper to replace Apple's own dictation, even with the best Whisper models Just drag and drop audio files to get a high quality transcription Automatically record meetings in Zoom, Teams, Webex, Skype, Chime, Discord and more. Record directly from your microphone or any other input device on your Mac All transcription is done on your device, no data leaves your machine. This makes MacWhisper a great app for sensitive audio such as interviews. 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Support for OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), Groq, Ollama, XAi, Deepseek, Custom OpenAI API endpoints and Azure AI models for easy prompting Support Cloud Transcriptions through OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Deepgram, Groq and custom Whisper servers Manually add speakers to your transcript for a cleaner export Menubar app for accessing Whisper anywhere from your Mac Global, access MacWhisper from anywhere in a spotlight type view for instant transcription and easy pasting into other apps ChatGPT integration (with your own API key) Ignore segments such as [SILENCE] from appearing in your transcripts Supports GPT4, GPT4 Turbo, GPT4o and GPT4o-mini as well as older models Anthropic Claude Integration (with your own API key) Record and transcribe system audio (to record meetings for example) Supports Tiny (English Only), Tiny, Base, Small, Medium and Large (V2 and V3) models Add your own custom GGML models Change the starting timestamp for the transcript Translate audio file into another language through Whisper (use the Medium or Large models, the results will not be perfect and I'm working on more advanced ways to do this) Translate the full transcript by adding your own (free) DeepL API key. Translate subtitles into different languages Inline and separate video player with subtitle and multiple translated subtitles support Transcribe podcasts by combining single track audio for each host (beta) One time payment, no subscription. Pay once and use forever. Higher priority support. I'll try to email you back as soon as possible if you run into anything. If you're a journalist, student or non-profit, send me an email at [email protected] and tell me about your work to get 25% off 🙂 If you purchase MacWhisper Pro and are not happy with it, let me know within 7 days what could be improved and I'll refund you. Support for OpenRouter Support for ElevenLabs Scribe and Deepgram Nova After downloading MacWhisper you will have to fill in your license key to unlock all Pro features.If you want to purchase more than 20 licenses, or if you're looking for an MDM deployment or something custom, please send an email to [email protected] or check out the MDM Documentation.100+ Supported LanguagesMacWhisper can transcribe audio in the following languages:English, Chinese, German, Spanish, Russian, Korean, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Turkish, Polish, Catalan, Dutch, Arabic, Swedish, Italian, Indonesian, Hindi, Finnish, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Greek, Malay, Czech, Romanian, Danish, Hungarian, Tamil, Norwegian, Thai, Urdu, Croatian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Latin, Maori, Malayalam, Welsh, Slovak, Telugu, Persian, Latvian, Bengali, Serbian, Azerbaijani, Slovenian, Kannada, Estonian, Macedonian, Breton, Basque, Icelandic, Armenian, Nepali, Mongolian, Bosnian, Kazakh, Albanian, Swahili, Galician, Marathi, Punjabi, Sinhala, Khmer, Shona, Yoruba, Somali, Afrikaans, Occitan, Georgian, Belarusian, Tajik, Sindhi, Gujarati, Amharic, Yiddish, Lao, Uzbek, Faroese, Haitian Creole, Pashto, Turkmen, Nynorsk, Maltese, Sanskrit, Luxembourgish, Myanmar, Tibetan, Tagalog, Malagasy, Assamese, Tatar, Hawaiian, Lingala, Hausa, Bashkir, Javanese, Sundanese.System RequirementsMacWhisper requires a lot of computer memory to work well. To use the Medium and Large models your Mac should have more than 8GB of RAM. Performance on older Intel based Macs can also be bad but I have not been able to test this properly.Privacy Policy and Terms of UseReviews👨‍💻 Check out my other macOS utilities:OpenAI Bundle - Get all my OpenAI apps at a discounted rateMacGPT - Use ChatGPT on your Mac and from your menubarDetective - GPT Vision for macOSVoices - High Quality Text to Speech with OpenAIText Assistant - Generate useful text and manage your prompts with GPT and your own OpenAPI keyVivid - Double the brightness of your MacBook Pro by always using HDR modeForehead - Hide the Notch and round your MacBook cornersCooldown - Quickly toggle Low Power Mode from your menubarSpeedy - Fast Speedtest in your menubarPippo - Improve the Picture-in-Picture video player with seek controlsWhisper was made by building on top of all the hard work from Georgi Gerganov, check out his Whisper implementation here: https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp

"I'd have to deal with 3rd party marketplaces"

No.
That's what Apple is trying to force on you with these new restrictions & blocking side loading by only giving 3rd party AppStores.

If they actually enabled actual side loading. You can just stick the app on your own website.

"Apple would never build cool technology into iOS if they couldn't charge app developers for it!"

Ok.... but that's just not true.

If they did iOS would fail and Android would win.

Apple builds iOS to be awesome so users want to buy iPhones.

Just like..... the Mac!
They want Mac apps to use new technology they add so the Mac is useful.

Apps not adopting the new stuff is a big problem for Apple on the Mac.

Apps using Apple's new technologies quickly is a big help to Apple for the iPhone

Every single argument people make about Apple needing to tax developers to be on iOS can be answered by saying.

Ok. But the Mac. And Windows.

You have to ignore 20+ years of computer history to justify Apple's arguments.

"What about iCloud sync!" That costs Apple money"

Which is why they charge me the end user £9/month to have all my data back up and sync to my iCloud account.

"Push notifications use Apple's servers"

True! That isn't really directly charged to the end user, or the developer currently.

Except, websites have free and open access to push notifications now too.

So open access to push notifications on devices is already open at this point.

Every argument can be countered by saying:

But the Mac.
But websites.
But they already charge the end user for that service.

There is no legitimate argument so Apple needs to keep twisting out of things, trying to redefine words and terms involved, and ignoring computing history or their own actions.