I'm trying to think of what would've happened if I had to ask my parents for their credit card every time I had to download some tool when I was a kid just messing around with programming.

I probably wouldn't working in the field today, that's for sure.

On the other hand, I begged and pleaded with my parents for weeks to get a copy of Microsoft BASIC, and later on a modem.

So not only did that lead to me being a programmer for a living, I got some negotiation skills out of it too.

I definitely agree with you, having grown up on free tools, but $5 is a lot easier to ask a parent for than $99/year to get access to this kind of stuff.

It's doubtful that today's parents need to be convinced of such things. Not only is $99 cheaper than that piano of yesteryear, it also has a significantly higher rate of return.

Seriously. If one of my kids asked me for 5 bucks to buy Xcode, I wouldn't hesitate for a second. I wouldn't even make them do the dishes first.

The whole using a credit card online adds a lot of hesitation for parents, even if it's $5. It did for mine.

The $99/year thing is not terrible. I remember saving money from my paper route to buy tools/lib licenses to some specialized things I really wanted.

Selling your parents on a single $99 purchase is a lot easier than trying to sell a $5 purchase every week. 'Tis just the way it is.

jarin below mentions he wouldn't hesitate buying his kid Xcode for $5... that only works if the parent is in the field also. How many, say, accountants or lawyers would buy their precocious coder-child a bunch of tools or understand the importance of it?

>"I remember saving money from my paper route to buy tools/lib licenses to some specialized things I really wanted."

Today, a teenager would say, "What's a paper route?"

s/paper route/burger flipping/g?

Problem is you need a car first.

All the hypothetical teenager would have to do is point them to one of the many news articles about other teenagers making millions on the App Store.

Was the world less credit card centric when you were a kid? It may be different now.

iTunes gift cards are not abundant resources everywhere.

They're a lot more abundant than the Mac you need to run Xcode on, though.

iTMS cards are purchasable at every 7-Eleven and nearly every major supermarket, Wal-Mart, Meijer, Target or what-have-you in the USA. You can buy Xcode with $5 in nickles if you have access to a Coinstar machine.

Let's be realistic, the hardware demands are much more serious than $5 on an iTunes card. The problem here is the message Apple is sending.

> iTMS cards are purchasable at every (...) or what-have-you in the USA.

Outside the USA, what do you do?

See the kind of convoluted procedures this silly price is making people do?

Plus until recently you couldn't use a gift card in Canada to purchase anything in the AppStore. Or an American paypal balance, or a canadaian checking account through a verified American paypal account.

I don't understand? I don't like Apple's geographically segmented marketplace either, but in the end it's not too big a problem to get around.

I have never been to a retail store where I didn't see them available.

Speaking of purely US-only experience, of course.

What countries have you been to?

They're in pretty much every major supermarket in the UK and Ireland.

Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think they even exist in Portugal.

iTunes cards are available in most supermarkets and electronic stores in Switzerland.