Apple to charge $99 for Developer Programme & software certificate

Ready to crack on and unleash some applications for the iPhone later this year? Be sure to set aside $99 to get your application onto the store however, as Ars Technica reports "Developers have to register with [Apple]. For that $99, we give them an electronic certificate that tells us who they are .... if they write a bad app, we can both track them down and we can turn off the app's distribution".

In addition to the $99 licensing charge to distribute the application (whether it's a free or commercial app) companies seeking a proprietary solution will need to cough up another $200 ($299 total) for the 'Enterprise Programme'.

Another item worthy of note those still using PowerPC machines: if you want to develop for iPhone, you'll not only need Leopard, but an Intel-based Mac to run the SDK. Disagreements about architectures aside, what does your $99 get you?

• Complete set of resources in the iPhone Dev Center

• Testing of your code on iPhone and iPod touch

• Code-level technical support from Apple engineers

• the ability to reach every user via the Application Store

The paid-for Developer Programme is currently US-only "and will expand to other countries in the coming months."