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Today Marks the 10th Anniversary of the Mac App Store

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While the App Store launched on the iPhone in July 2008, the Mac App Store did not become available until January 6, 2011, when Apple released Mac OS X Snow Leopard version 10.6.6. Accordingly, today marks the 10th anniversary of the Mac App Store.

introducing-the-mac-app-store-banner.jpg

Apple announced that the Mac App Store was "open for business" in a press release timed with the launch. "With more than 1,000 apps, the Mac App Store is off to a great start," said Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and former CEO. "We think users are going to love this innovative new way to discover and buy their favorite apps."

Within its first year, the Mac App Store achieved a few milestones, topping one million downloads on its first day and 100 million downloads by December 2011.

All apps submitted to the Mac App Store are reviewed by Apple, and must be sandboxed, a security mechanism that helps protect user data from unauthorized access by apps. Developers can choose to distribute their software directly on the internet, without sandboxing, but all Mac apps must be notarized by Apple in order to run by default on macOS Catalina and later to ensure these apps are free of known malware.

In line with the App Store on other platforms, Apple collects a 30 percent commission from developers on the sale of paid Mac apps and in-app purchases tied to digital goods and services. However, Apple recently introduced a Small Business Program that reduces the App Store's commission rate to 15% for developers earning up to $1 million per calendar year in net revenue. Developers must enroll in the program to participate.

Since its inception, the Mac App Store has attracted its fair share of criticism from developers. Apple has addressed some of these complaints over the years by allowing developers to offer free trials via in-app purchase, create app bundles, distribute apps on multiple Apple platforms as a universal purchase, view analytics for Mac apps, respond to customer reviews, and more, but some developers remain unsatisfied with the Mac App Store due to Apple's review process, the lack of upgrade pricing, the lack of sandboxing exceptions for trusted developers, the absence of TestFlight beta testing for Mac apps, and other reasons.

In 2018, the Mac App Store received a major redesign as part of macOS Mojave, complete with a new "Discover" tab that highlights popular apps and games and features editorials from Apple. Apple also softened its rules surrounding sandboxing. Soon after these changes, Microsoft Office and Adobe Lightroom became available on the Mac App Store, and some popular apps like BBEdit and Transmit returned to the Mac App Store.

mac-app-store-big-sur-macbook-pro.jpg

In 2019, with the release of macOS Catalina and Xcode 11, Apple made it possible for developers to easily create a Mac version of an ‌iPad‌ app. In most cases, adding macOS support to an ‌iPad‌ app is as simple as opening an Xcode project and clicking the Mac checkbox under General > Deployment Info, although some developers faced issues.

2019 also marked the launch of Apple Arcade, which has its own tab in the Mac App Store for discovering all of the games available as part of the subscription service.

Another advancement to the Mac App Store came in 2020, when Apple made iPhone and iPad apps available on Macs with Apple silicon, given that the M1 chip in Macs shares the same Arm architecture as A-series chips in iPhones and iPads. Developers can opt out of distributing their iPhone and iPad apps on the Mac App Store if they desire.

All in all, Apple has certainly made progress with the Mac App Store over the last 10 years, but some developers feel that further improvements are necessary if they are to embrace the storefront. The next decade of the Mac App Store begins now.

Article Link: Today Marks the 10th Anniversary of the Mac App Store
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/06/mac-app-store-turns-10/
I liked the Mac App Store when first introduced, but with the later versions it just become too much iOSified for me.
The looks and the amount of information im able to easily find isn't that great and the overall experience annoys me.

So lately I go through the developers website if possible, this also have the added bonus of programs having the option for broader permissions and access as there is a limit on what is allowed on the Mac App Store. A good example of this is DaisyDisk
 
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"All apps submitted to the Mac App Store are reviewed by Apple, and must be sandboxed, a security mechanism that helps protect user data from unauthorized access by apps. Developers can choose to distribute their software directly on the internet, without sandboxing, but all Mac apps must be notarized by Apple in order to run by default on macOS Catalina and later to ensure these apps are free of known malware."

If only there was another Apple platform that could benefit from this great model.....
 
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Schranke said:
So lately I go through the developers website if possible, this also have the added bonus of programs having the option for broader permissions and access as there is a limit on what is allowed on the Mac App Store. A good example of this is DaisyDisk
Click to expand...

I was going to make the same point, of Mac App Store apps (especially utilities) sometimes being crippled versions of what's available direct from the developer, and was also going to cite DaisyDisk as a good example. If there's an app I want, I don't see any compelling reason to choose the MAS version over the developer version even if both are exactly the same, but there seems to be advantages in favouring the dev version (no MAS constraints for future updates, earlier updates, quicker patches etc). I guess the MAS version does bring the advantage that the app is less likely to be doing something 'naughty' at a system level, but for system utility apps they need to be able to operate at this level so there's got to be a degree of trust.
 
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davidec said:
Funny it seems like it’s been around for ages. Congrats apple
Click to expand...

Black.Infinity said:
Like it was yesterday
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lol... perceptions can be quite different.
This also lead to starting the "new style" of macOS, i.e. from 10.7 Lion onwards it started to look and feel more and more like iOS, Apple eliminated the need for a physical distribution of the OS (although Lion was available for purchase on a USB stick, which I have just because it's cool), deprecation of the "real" Mac OS X Server, etc.

A lot of different opinions on all that back then....
 
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The design of the current Mac App Store is terrible - unclear, chaotic and disorganized. To find something, user has to click and click back, click and click again, scroll and scroll, everything is big and white, the content is not separated from the form, elements are not separated from each other, huge wasting of space - really uncomfortable, unpleasant and stressing for visual perception.
The design of the first App Store was entirely different - clear, well arranged and pleasant for eyes.
 
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NightFox said:
I was going to make the same point, of Mac App Store apps (especially utilities) sometimes being crippled versions of what's available direct from the developer, and was also going to cite DaisyDisk as a good example. If there's an app I want, I don't see any compelling reason to choose the MAS version over the developer version even if both are exactly the same, but there seems to be advantages in favouring the dev version (no MAS constraints for future updates, earlier updates, quicker patches etc). I guess the MAS version does bring the advantage that the app is less likely to be doing something 'naughty' at a system level, but for system utility apps they need to be able to operate at this level so there's got to be a degree of trust.
Click to expand...
I made the mistake of purchasing an animation app (no names mentioned) directly from the vendor's site as there was no MAS version available. I was appalled to find that it slapped a bunch of icons on the toolbar for managing stuff you can buy from their site, checking for updates etc, as well as starting up a bunch of background programs.

This kind of behaviour I can do without, as it's a utility I only wanted to use sporadically. I suspect the reason it wasn't on the MAS was because it would never pass the review process in a month of Sundays.
 
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Naraxus said:
An abject failure in every sense of the word. I don't know of anyone who uses it for anything other than MacOS updates
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Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Xcode, Codye, Final Cut Pro, Compressor, Motion, Logic Pro, MainStage, Twitter, Amphetamine, Magnet, Final Draft, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher... most of which I use at work are all in the App Store.

Also... updates are in System Preferences not the App Store.
 
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Pakaku said:
I've never really understood the point of the store when Macs were never as locked down as iOS.
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App discoverability will be a major factor, and it's something Apple's done a lot to improve in recent years. The store allows developers to make their apps easily findable, and from they're from a trusted source so they should be safe, work properly, etc.

One-click app installs are also a huge convenience factor for lot folks out there too.
 
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Pakaku said:
I've never really understood the point of the store when Macs were never as locked down as iOS.
Click to expand...
Not yet... just wait.

In any case, my reaction is that it has been 10 years and one only hears crickets in the store. There are some excellent apps in the store, but Apple is not pushing it hard enough. It just reflects Apple's neglect of the Mac.

Yeah, you read that right, I stated that Apple neglected the Mac. Case in point: the crappy spellchecker, which dates to the 1980's in the single-word-by-single-word checking algorithm ('to the' is far more likely in English than 'tot he', but the latter is not flagged). Another case in point: In spite of huge screen space on an iMac, there is no system option for always displaying full file names in the Finder. The columns do not dynamically adjust their width even if there is space to do so. The list goes on...
 
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