Would you rather pay an exorbitant developer program fee upfront before you know your apps will make any money?
The nominal developer program fee is not designed to be Apple's profit generator. It's to keep spammers out.
My point is rather, why couldn't they just simplify and make the developer program fee tiered. So indie devs pay $99, and huge businesses pay more.
> It's to keep spammers out.
Doesn't seem to be working. Have you seen the App Store? You can buy 'antivirus' apps with $79.99 weekly subscriptions. On a sandboxed platform where you can't "scan" anything but yourself.
Also -- it's not that hard to make $143 in scam sales, which will pay for that $99 account.
I actually would rather the developer program fee was $2,000 if it meant it actually was harder for scammers to get in. Of course, it should be free to make apps for my own phone, and to distribute it to those in my family group.