Apple Discontinues 'iOS Developer University Program' for Students

[MacRumors]

Apple has discontinued the iOS Developer University Program as of May 15, according to a notice on its website and an email sent to program members.

The program allowed university professors and other eligible instructors to create a development team with up to 200 students, who could create and test apps without needing to pay the usual $99 annual fee for Apple Developer Program membership.

Apple says accredited educational institutions can still enroll in the Apple Developer Program at no cost by submitting a fee waiver request.

Thanks, Nicolás Álvarez!

Article Link: Apple Discontinues 'iOS Developer University Program' for Students

 

[madmin]

Poor students, always getting kicked about these days...

 

[kitkat99333]

Poor students, always getting kicked about these days...

No real difference if you read the full thing

 

[Blackstick]

If it's still free to universities has this really shifted much?

 

[Darren.h]

there is always Android university. and no 30 percent fee to sell your app.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

If it's still free to universities has this really shifted much?

I think it just switches who’s doing the writing. Initially it was on a professor and it could be multiple professors in one school, I’d imagine. Now, instead of keeping track of all that, they’re moving it to the institution level. Could be that the program has gotten enough notoriety that keeping track of it at a per professor level is no longer efficient.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

there is always Android university. and no 30 percent fee to sell your app.

Generally speaking, it’s a bad idea to “sell” an Android app anyway. Developers have found it’s much more viable to just load the app down with ads, far more likelihood to see a return.

 

[Yujenisis]

there is always Android university. and no 30 percent fee to sell your app.

There is no such thing as “Android University” except for its use as a title for a Google Developer blog post from 2008.

Google only offers two types of developer accounts personal or organization/business. There are no special accounts for schools or universities.

Literally everything you said is not true or even real.

 

[GUNSTAR1]

They should just do away with the 99$ fee. Let people test betas as long as crash reports are enabled.

 

[genovelle]

there is always Android university. and no 30 percent fee to sell your app.

Except there is a fee to sell you app as they match Apple’s program. Free apps just like with Apple are free.

 

[genovelle]

They should just do away with the 99$ fee. Let people test betas as long as crash reports are enabled.

You do realize $99 a year is crazy cheap?! Developer Programs for apps were 10k to 50k Per year when Apple started this. The split was also 70% to the platforms. And you covered your Own Promotion.

 

[Pokeymon]

No real difference if you read the full thing

I think you missed the intended humor.

 

[apparatchik]

You do realize $99 a year is crazy cheap?! Developer Programs for apps were 10k to 50k Per year when Apple started this. The split was also 70% to the platforms. And you covered your Own Promotion.

It has also stayed the same for more than 16 years. Which means adjusted for inflation it goes down every year being now about 60% cheaper in constant dollars than what it was when, for example, the App Store launched in 2008.

 

[laptech]

It would not surprise me if the program has been cancelled as a result of a lack of take up by universities because of Apple probably setting conditions in the program that anything that is made, coded, designed, thought of, any ideas that came from the professors and the students become the property of Apple because it was done on their premises under their program and that Apple can take such and use them as they see fit and universities were not happy with this.

A huge number of employers have these type of conditions set into company handbooks/contracts basically saying any idea/design that is done on company time becomes the automatic property of the company. Same applies if any company resources were used, computers, pends, paper, calculators, stuff like that.

 

[Victor Mortimer]

You do realize $99 a year is crazy cheap?! Developer Programs for apps were 10k to 50k Per year when Apple started this. The split was also 70% to the platforms. And you covered your Own Promotion.

Nothing about that is true.

You had to buy a compiler or use a free one.

Then you just distributed however you wanted.

 

[ChrisA]

If it's still free to universities has this really shifted much?

Yes. What is changed is that now you and I can not pretend to be students and get in free.

It used to be that all you needed was to click a checkbox saying you were a student. Now they are asking the university to apply, not each person.

 

[Edsel]

Perhaps this is indicative of Apple retiring iOS in a couple of years?

 

[ChrisA]

Perhaps this is indicative of Apple retiring iOS in a couple of years?

No. All they did was change the way students can get free accounts. It used to be that the person just had to say "I am a student". Now the university applies, not the student.

Apparently, many people were falsely claiming to be students to save the $99 fee.

 

[lkrupp]

Poor students, always getting kicked about these days...

Oh good grief man. What was $99 is now free to accredited universities. How exactly are students getting kicked around?

 

[lkrupp]

The fake claims and disinformation spewed on blog forums is a really big problem these days

 

[bousozoku]

It's all about accounting at Apple. Waiving the fee may take extra paperwork, but they'll have a way to categorize it formally.

 

[turbineseaplane]

They should just do away with the 99$ fee. Let people test betas as long as crash reports are enabled.

Get rid of a fee?

This is Tim Cook Apple we are talking about here 😂

 

[benwiggy]

You do realize $99 a year is crazy cheap?!

Time was when you could get Apple's Macintosh Programmers Workshop tools free.

Apple has explicitly said that un-signed apps will be prevented from running by default in a future version of MacOS, meaning that anyone who wants to compile an app will have to pay Apple a sub. That's going to kill the Mac as a hobbyist platform.

 

[HMI]

I doubt Stanford kids are struggling for an extra $100.

*waiting for the hate* ⏰

 

[zorinlynx]

Time was when you could get Apple's Macintosh Programmers Workshop tools free.

Apple has explicitly said that un-signed apps will be prevented from running by default in a future version of MacOS, meaning that anyone who wants to compile an app will have to pay Apple a sub. That's going to kill the Mac as a hobbyist platform.

This isn't entirely true. Yes, all ARM64 binaries have to be signed, but you can sign them locally without a developer account.