Back in the Windows Phone days, they'd send you a phone for developing an app. I wrote a crappy calculator app during a CS class and got a free phone out of it.
I spent more time doing the app submission than I did writing the app. They didn't care what it was. Similarly Blackberry had a similar program a little while later where I just ported the same app and got a Playbook tablet.
It was fun as a poor college kid, but look where it got both of them.
I remember this period. I remember a few dozen devs I knew just submitted dumb/garbage apps and grabbed the bounty.
Don't think it helped the Windows Phone ecosystem at all because instead of a few decent apps, you now had to wade through hundreds of terrible apps and sometimes you'd get lucky and find a decent one.
Counterpoint: I got a free Amazon Echo (gen 1 echo, echo dot, echo show) for free by writing a few voice apps. Amazon has so ce cleaned up the lowest effort ones I made.
I could feel the submission process get tighter as time passed. I think the idea was to see what apps people come up with and what gains traction? Kind of like the story where the management lets people on the grass and paves a walkway on the most walked path?
Customers paid money for it, Apple wasn't instructing people on how to build a soundboard and handing them a check or an iPhone for submitting it. Quite the opposite, all of those developers paid Apple $100 to join the developer program.
I spent more time doing the app submission than I did writing the app. They didn't care what it was. Similarly Blackberry had a similar program a little while later where I just ported the same app and got a Playbook tablet.
It was fun as a poor college kid, but look where it got both of them.