> If you are sufficiently skilled to create a popular iPhone app

How much of this skill set is programming, and how much is design and marketing and the ability to navigate Apple's approval process? (Legitimate question, not rhetorical.)

But the company must be making more than 100K by employing that guy. So what does that mean? That a big company is actually a much better wealth creator than most individuals?

With all due respect...I think that the factor we are trying to maximize is not money...It is overall life satisfaction and happiness as a hacker.

Personally I would choose 80K a year building my own awesome apps ,making a name for myself,travelling the world ,meeting awesome people than making 200K at xyz corp where I spend my day exchanging bullshit emails with upper management.

I'm very, very sympathetic about those goals. :) Please do more research about the app market. Most people will not achieve $80k or anything close to it as independent app developers. I wish you every success.

I deal with app developers every day. I read a feed of iTunes store rankings regularly in the course of what I do. 80K is not an extremely rare level of success. In fact, even one of my old college buddies with a total MS-stack background has eclipsed it.

I'm not really in a position to share details, but for A-level geeks, there is much, much more than 100-200k to be made. It's true that most people won't achieve that. Much like 90% of sales-people's income are at sub-median levels, it's closer to a power distribution than a gaussian one.