[HN Gopher] Apple bets cheaper AI will woo small developers
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       Apple bets cheaper AI will woo small developers
        
       Author : jbernardo95
       Score  : 32 points
       Date   : 2026-06-08 21:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
        
       | bigyabai wrote:
       | Small developers: "Your $99/year tithe has cost me thousands of
       | dollars to provide basic support for your ecosystem."
       | 
       | Apple: "Did somebody say 'we want cheaper AI'?"
        
       | thallavajhula wrote:
       | Reading the title I had a very different notion of what to
       | expect. The article has something completely different. I was
       | hoping this would be something for indie app devs.
        
         | blobbers wrote:
         | uhh isn't it basically free access to API if your apps are less
         | than 2 million downloads?
        
           | hdjrudni wrote:
           | Before opening the link I thought they were reducing the cost
           | per token.
           | 
           | This smells more like a get you hooked and then crank the
           | costs.
           | 
           | Not that I'd be any less skeptical of the first option. We've
           | already seen providers reduce quotas and raise prices.
        
       | Grimblewald wrote:
       | Cheaper isn't as much of a problem as functional.
        
         | emodendroket wrote:
         | I mean, yeah, if it doesn't work at all nobody will use it. But
         | the big players are spending $1k/mo.+ on AI at this point.
         | That's obviously out of reach for many.
        
       | jmclnx wrote:
       | >Apple is hoping to draw in newer developers with lower AI
       | infrastructure costs
       | 
       | Good luck, but define "cheaper" ? If you have to pay, no
       | individual will pay, just corporations.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | How do you come to this conclusion. I know several people that
         | are absolutely not techy dev types, yet they pay for a
         | subscription to chatgpt.
        
           | emodendroket wrote:
           | You can get a certain portion of the population to pay
           | $20/mo. but I think it's a very small population who's paying
           | enough to actually cover frontier models in agentic workflows
           | right now.
        
         | JumpCrisscross wrote:
         | > _If you have to pay, no individual will pay_
         | 
         | Fee with ads is the right fit for most people. But I don't
         | think that describes most Apple customers or developers.
        
       | yalogin wrote:
       | What is the target to write for is the key aspect here. Not sure
       | there is enough on the phone for developers to create new
       | experiences. I fear all of them are going to try to automate
       | everything on the phone for the user. Not sure what value that
       | provides. May be I am overly skeptical , let's see
        
       | sublinear wrote:
       | Is this more scraping at the bottom of the barrel?
       | 
       | I get it. So many tech companies built their platforms around
       | people submitting their work for sale. Now that things have
       | cooled down they're desperate. This is exactly like what happened
       | to the music and movie industries.
       | 
       | If they want to make money they must take bigger creative risks.
       | AI is the exact opposite of that because it's trained on what's
       | already been done.
        
       | genghisjahn wrote:
       | I'm 5'7" thank you very much. That's above average in some
       | regions.
        
       | stevenwireless wrote:
       | but these "free" tokens take up an end user's daily free quota,
       | after which a user needs to pay. ?
        
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       (page generated 2026-06-09 04:01 UTC)