While android also has this problem (requiring a Developer account), it is not that bad, because you can still publish apps outside of the app store.
Sadly Google is hard at work to remove this functionality.
A cool project, when you want to use AirPods outside of Apples ecosystem. Sadly, you have to use a rooted android device with a small patch due to a bug in the Android Bluetooth implementation.
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238
Not surprising in my opinion.
It is not hard to setup a VPS with whatever you want to deploy nowadays.
99% of the websites out there don't need to be able to infinity scale and it is way cheaper to host your stuff on a VPS, that doesn't have the risk of exploding in cost the way s3 does.