<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">No, not kidding.� I know the costs.� Perhaps my word choice was poor.� I believe that one should, like Apple for instance, make their APIs and devkits free to developers.� Not 3500/year for ADC membership.� It is my opinion that is what Apple should do; make ADC membership free to developers.� Especially Apple, which seems to make things difficult for their developers every few years or so, or, alienates them by copying their applications and including them in their OS as a feature every so often.� Also, I feel they should make it free because of their smaller market share.� There are many reasons one could argue for or against this notion.� Now, maybe you want to take a class, or go to WWDC, then you can pay for that.� But my point was, I suppose it isn't all that bad that they're charging 1K for the Intel dev kit as it includes a computer.� I didn't know that it was a rental, however.� Now I don't know what to think.� I'm not a developer, just a lowly IT manager, so I couldn't care less.� I use Macs because at home I like being a user, not a sysadmin. �I don't want to re-compile my kernel at home, or compile my software from source (again, at home). �I just want it to work when I plug in my digital camera, or other such banal activities, and I like the quality of their hardware and the elegance of OS X.<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>--alan</DIV><DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On Jun 7, 2005, at 2:45 PM, Shawn King wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">I was kind of under the impression that if you wanted people to</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">develop software for your platform, you wouldn't try to gouge them to</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">pay for the tools to do so.</FONT></P> <BR></BLOCKQUOTE><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">You're kidding, right? It costs Developers up to $3,500/year to be members</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">of Apple's ADC Premier Membership and $500/year to be a ADC Select Member.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>