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Mac App Store Very Promising But With Restrictions

Great for encouraging family friendly/safe to install apps

This is a breakthru for encouraging safe programs to get distributed easily. I personally do not trust most freeware or shareware anymore, lot of it is spyware or has viruses.

This is a way that app developers can charge a small amount for all downloads, just like they always said - if everyone contributed a $1, there would be a great product, don't need to rely on altruism for the 0.5% of users to send in a donation. Expect to see people willing to work on apps and break even or make a profit at various price points. Not worried about "trial software" - put in some tester features with an in-app purchase to upgrade to full version. Expect to get back more feedback and demands from users, faster product revisions expected.

For developers, expect to get more news coverage of top Mac Apps in the Mac App Store, more reviews, more customers. Going to be a big rush, like there was when the iPad apps first came out. Would expect that this is a similar level of effort with many apps - about the same size screen space for an iPad and Mac OSX laptops, might expect apps to cost about that price or higher. The install base for iPad is small compared to the installed base of Snow Leopard - less than a million at launch, now around 8 million, compared with 40-50 million Macs. Should be very exciting time for Mac developers and users as developers get spotlight and users find new apps. Could be a lot more new apps with tie-ins to iOS products too, which benefit from crossover.

From a security point of view, this sounds great for users, since the apps will be vetted by Apple as not causing problems with install, no viruses, etc. With apps more sandboxed too, could help keep the platform bug-free even as market share grows and becomes more attractive to malicious coders.

I think this is likely to cause a doubling of Apple's market share in Macs in the next year or so.
 
They said the app store apps woukd be licenced to all of your personal machines.

Does that also mean that if you bought GarageBand on there today which is only listed as GarageBand not '11' you would get a free upgrade to GarageBand 13 or whatever?
 
Gotta Hankerin said:
Ok. You have proof for your definitive answer? In the demo this afternoon many titles populated the Mac app store. It seems logical Apple would advise some key publishers of the plan to encourage their early participation. Much like how apple works with certain developers to demo new iPhone features. Since the Civilization series has always been a top seller on Mac I don't think my hypothetical is from left field.
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Perhaps my "no way" was a bit too emphatic, but the store is 90 days away from being released, plenty of time for developers to get on board without having to have known about it ahead of time. The demo was probably just a mockup.


jeznav said:
Here comes the $0.99 cents Mac Apps. :D
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Here comes you being disappointed.
 
suss2it said:
Not gonna happen until Windows does something like this.
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No worries.

As we speak, the big giant machine in redmond is busy trying to understand what to copy and how quickly they can do this.

Of course, steevo balmer will first say how bad this idea is, as much as many in this thread have already done.
 
Cougarcat said:
No PathFinder, FruitMenu, Window X, or iStat Menus allowed...pretty much all the OS X utilities I use.
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Since I am "power user" and have never heard of any of these apps, I'd say that you are actually praising the default install of Mac OS for its completeness. :)
 
tdmurphy said:
Several people have said that the App Store is wonderful for developers too because it will make it easier for people to find your apps, install them, you won't have to deal with bandwidth. However, I think 30% is simply too much. .
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That smacks of so much naivete it is ridiculous. How much do you think a traditional publisher and distribution channel would take? You would be lucky to even get 30% compared to getting 70% and whining about losing the 30%.

Or you can go the other route and try to do it all yourself, though you will be paying for you own hosting/administration with both time and money and will likely end up with massively lower volumes.

Anyway I think this is boon to sensible small developers who will get the lion share to app fees.

On the user side it would be great for computer phobics like my mom.
 
dcorban said:
Since I am "power user" and have never heard of any of these apps, I'd say that you are actually praising the default install of Mac OS for its completeness. :)
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Do you use any OS X system utility? Chances are they break Apple's rules, they are unbelievably restrictive.
 
Mac App Store will have higher sales rates

tdmurphy said:
Several people have said that the App Store is wonderful for developers too because it will make it easier for people to find your apps, install them, you won't have to deal with bandwidth. However, I think 30% is simply too much. I design applications myself, and I work on apps for weeks. It feels wrong for Apple to basically say they are doing a third of the work. I think something along the lines of 5%, for bandwidth costs and the review process, would be more appropriate.
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I think the cost of developer distribution is underrated. There are many customers that do not see your website, so you have lost sales. There are people that don't support your payment method, or you have to support various formats, complicating your website and raising your costs. There are website maintenance and scalability factors. If you create the next Angry Birds, Apple guarantees that it can support facilitating all the transactions related to that product for the life of that purchase for all the customers that purchase it, for all updates, in exchange for that initial 30% cut. All the financial credit card fees come out of the Apple 30% part. You get the opportunity to have information displayed about your product with no cost to you, no web hosting charges, no web development, bandwidth charges, etc, you can concentrate on developing your app, and if you are smart, getting it reviewed and linked.

The purchase mechanism thru the Mac App Store is standardized, easily completed, whereas many software websites are multiple steps, shopping carts, entering your billing info, entering your payment info, do you trust this no-name company with your info? etc. Think folks will be more likely to complete a transaction thru the Mac store than various software vendor sites.
 
I can see it already;

Modmyi.com - jailbreaking news.... Whitesn0w for MacOSX released... optical drive support, killswitch toggle, re-enables support for non-app store "legacy" software.

Coming to a dystopian future near you :D
 
There are a lot of positives for the consumer when it comes to an app store but as others have mentioned here, the primary concern is the inevitable loss of the open nature of a desktop computer. While users may still have the option of running non-app store applications right now, Apple will no doubt slowly phase over to an app-store exclusive model.

Think about this - eventually the OS X platform will be targeted by malware authors much the same way Windows is today once Apple's market share grows substantially. When that happens, Apple will quickly point out the fact malware cannot be distributed via the app store, it can only run as a "rogue" application. They could easily prevent or sandbox the execution of unsigned (non app-store) code as a security measure.

As far as everyone fleeing to Windows, I really wouldn't count on this as most people will see this as a benefit. Beyond that, Microsoft is already planning on incorporating their own app store in Windows 8 and no doubt working towards a similar vision. To both companies, this is a win-win scenario for them and their customers.

Like it or not, this is going to be the future of desktop computing.
 
tdmurphy said:
Several people have said that the App Store is wonderful for developers too because it will make it easier for people to find your apps, install them, you won't have to deal with bandwidth. However, I think 30% is simply too much. I design applications myself, and I work on apps for weeks. It feels wrong for Apple to basically say they are doing a third of the work. I think something along the lines of 5%, for bandwidth costs and the review process, would be more appropriate.
.
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30% is very fair. You need to do almost zero marketing and have access to millions of users wallets.
 
i.mac said:
No worries.

As we speak, the big giant machine in redmond is busy trying to understand what to copy and how quickly they can do this.

Of course, steevo balmer will first say how bad this idea is, as much as many in this thread have already done.
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Microsoft has already talked about app-store ideas for Win8. This is not a groundbreaking idea.
 
Those that are laughing with the tin hat people have to keep in mind that this is Apple we're talking about. They already have 2 platforms with a closed App Store and no other way to install applications. I'm not saying it will happen, but knowing Apple they could certainly try.

Especially because it could be very profitable for them in the end. Only allowing developers to sell their applications via the App Store and holding back part of the profits would mean extra cash for Apple. I'm sure some developers wouldn't like it, but the less-known that want to promote their applications would have a relatively cheap way of buying their way in, and the bigger developers would probably just sign in because they can.

The general idea of a marketplace is good, it's something I've always loved in Linux distributions. It'll allow less-savy users to come in contact with a broader range of software that's more secure for their system.

I'm just speculating here and I hope it never happens, because it would be a very dark day for openness regarding software.

I'm interested what Apple is going to do with non-native applications. Will Tweetdeck be allowed for instance, seeing as it's an Air application, or Eclipse for example, a Java code editor?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

Would there even be a need for a MAc Facebook APp? Where's the value here?
 
Well, I don't mind as long as they don't restrict it like the iPhone and disallow any installation by "regular" methods.

If Apples blocks out any installation by any other ways and starts blocking devs like on the iPhone, they'll be 1984 personified.

In fact, I believe that the iPhone should have the ability to install apps by dragging and dropping and package unpacking.
 
As a developer and consumer I think this could be a great solution. Prices will likely go down which is great for customers and developers will get a great amount of exposure that will make up for the lower sale price.

But...

If Apple strictly follow's their guidelines 80% of the apps out there will be rejected outright. YummySoup! may even be rejected because the web importer is designed to look just like Safari. Another big problem is how do you you give your current users free access to the newly released App store version? Developers are not likely going to want to have to maintain two identical apps, the app store version and the traditional buy from my website version. Last, would be upgrade fees. When a major version is released developers should be able to be compensated which the current iOS app store doesn't allow. The only solution would be that everyone is going to name their apps for example, "YummySoup! '10", "YummySoup! '11", etc. to make them new products in the App Store's system.
 
Bytor65 said:
That smacks of so much naivete it is ridiculous. How much do you think a traditional publisher and distribution channel would take? You would be lucky to even get 30% compared to getting 70% and whining about losing the 30%.

Or you can go the other route and try to do it all yourself, though you will be paying for you own hosting/administration with both time and money and will likely end up with massively lower volumes.

Anyway I think this is boon to sensible small developers who will get the lion share to app fees.

On the user side it would be great for computer phobics like my mom.
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For the record, I am not angry over here or anything, and I don't believe I am being naive- I just think Apple is taking more than they need to. Developers should be rewarded for their work by both users and Apple, because Apple needs software on their system and should encourage people to develop for it. I don't like thinking that if I buy CandyBar for $30, I will be giving $10 of it to Apple. Do they really deserve that much when these guys are putting so much work into the software? Yet developers might feel forced to submit their apps for fear that people will start to see them as "unofficial", since they can't be updated or purchased as easily.

In the end, if what you say is true and developers make significantly more because of the publicity and ease of purchase, then this is indeed an improvement. But I think Apple is trying to profit too much off of people it should show some respect to.
 
GFLPraxis said:
Seems fantastic for indie developers; devs with established methods of delivery, like Adobe, will probably not want the 70/30 split.
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The split isn't so much the issue, IMHO. For any company, it's a simple cost/benefit analysis. If the attention the app store brings is worth the 30% hit, then it's a no brainer to do it.

The restrictions on what will or will not pass muster in the approval process are what concern me. There are an awful lot of apps that will be rejected based on the criteria they've laid out. Apps that do very legitimate, useful things.
 
dcorban said:
Since I am "power user" and have never heard of any of these apps, I'd say that you are actually praising the default install of Mac OS for its completeness. :)
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"Power user" is in quotes for good reason. For shame! You should check out iStat Menus. Excellent utility.
 
Of course Apple won't let any and every app into the Mac App Store. Just like retail stores (Fry's, Best Buy's) are selective about which products and services they offer, Apple is no different. In 3 pages of posts, I haven't seen anyone realize that MOST PEOPLE AREN'T LIKE YOU AND ME. Sure, MacRumors makes it seem like we're all computer experts to some degree, but most people aren't.

I think for most people (my age, older and senior citizens), the Mac App Store will enable them to find apps. It's easier to switch because most people don't know what apps for Mac can replace the ones they've been using on their old PC. Just think about it, Macs are easy to use but finding apps that they've been using on their old PC isn't easy at all. This makes it even easier to switch once developers start selling their apps on the Mac App Store. It's also easier for developers, the small/medium large ones that sometimes have trouble marketing their apps. Sure, 70/30 isn't exactly super awesome, but it's better than marketing your apps yourselves. Big companies like Autodesk, Adobe, VMWare, etc. are big enough to handle marketing by themselves. Indie developers probably look at this to be a blessing. The restrictions aren't too bad, you can't use kexts but most apps don't anyway. Other restrictions apply of course.

Apple is trying (KEYWORD) to broaden and expand their horizons. Most people know that Macs are expensive and for creative stuff. That's always been a good part of the history of the Mac. With the Mac App Store, Apple is trying to break away from their tradition and appear like more mainstream/general consumer. I know that this Mac App Store will be another reason to entice people to switch to Mac. It's easier to replace the PC in their life with a Mac knowing you can easily find apps that are quality.

Apple isn't throwing away their prosumer audience (a little bit but not like an about face) but is trying to be the middle ground. That's the only way they can hope to rival Microsoft/Windows again. if you (prosumers) don't like it, you don't have to use it. SL is not outdated by any definition, and Lion won't adversely affect your performance/speed needs.
 
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