The answer is in the letter: "I prefer to be a coder — a maker — a builder of things." ... it's a great feeling to build things and know that thousands of people will use it.
The iPhone is a cool platform to develop for & the AppStore is where the audience is ... not to mention that making a little money on the side is always nice.
People are upset because Apple is taking a good chunk of their money and providing a piss-poor service in return. With the current state of said service relying on it as a professional is a bit of a gamble, but as a hobbyist I can live with it.
Yes, but Apple solved the "I'm too stupid to install apps on my phone" problem. Long-term bets are on Android I guess. I'm an iPhone developer but don't own an iPhone & my main phone is Android-based.
Are you working for someone else's company? I'm trying to figure how can you develop for the iPhone if you don't own one. Even if Bill Gates and Paul Allen managed to write a Basic interpreter (IIRC) without having access to the machine, most people prefer testing their application before offering it :-)
Most of which sucked, despite the theoretically vast capability the J2ME libraries have. Having to cater for the lowest common denominator in a market of highly-fragmented hardware configurations is not much fun.
I tried developing for Symbian (S60) and WinMo, but neither was what I would call an enjoyable experience. In contrast, programming for the iPhone was far more fun than programming for the platforms that came before it, in part because the target hardware was similar enough that you had more freedom to push the boundaries. So I can understand why some people are attached to it.
That said, the situation is a bit better now, with Android maturing fast and the other manufacturers starting to raise their game a bit.
The iPhone is a cool platform to develop for & the AppStore is where the audience is ... not to mention that making a little money on the side is always nice.
People are upset because Apple is taking a good chunk of their money and providing a piss-poor service in return. With the current state of said service relying on it as a professional is a bit of a gamble, but as a hobbyist I can live with it.