Archive for January 2011
Mac App Store Is Official! Prepare For Another Gold Rush!
The Mac App Store has been known about for just about 90 days and it finally makes it’s massive scale launch to millions of Mac users today! For the first time on the Mac OS platform users will have a built-in way of downloading full programs and 3rd party applications. So could this be yet another generation of a gold rush for developers just like the iPhone OS and then the iPad OS were? So far a couple thousand applications are sitting on the shelves of the Mac App Store and they are not just total rip offs of most iPhone and iPad applications.
The main apps you will definitely notice first are actually primary applications you would typically purchase at an Apple Store like the iLife Suite, the iWork Suite, Aperture and several others. And for a much lower price than you would get at any of the Apple Stores. What would normally be $199 for Aperture is now $79 on the Mac App Store. Don’t ask me what economic factors gave Apple the ability to lower the price that much. Just buy it and don’t ask questions. Another very interesting series of applications you will find in the Mac App Store would be the apps that came over from iPhone and iPad developers. The biggest contender in that category would be the ever popular game Angry Birds. Now this is not just the iPad version slapped on the screen of the Mac. It truly does have a bit of a different feel to it like the game was written specifically as a software piece. Only instead of multi-touch on the screen you now have the choice of using a mouse or the trackpads that come with Macbooks or the Magic Trackpad for desktops.
Now even with these great graphics, incredible sound, and unbelievable processing speeds powering them, the apps for Mac brought over from the iOS platform such as Angry Birds or FlightControl just feel a bit unnatural. I do suppose many of us have been brought up in the world where we just completely got away from games using a keyboard and mouse and just got so used to the idea of accelerometers and multi-touch support. However for some of the other applications being developed for all platforms of the iOS and Mac families have really shown to bring the best of both worlds to both platforms. Especially along the lines of Utilities applications and Development applications.
So does this look to be the next Gold Rush for both developers and Mac users? Well, Apple has been host to 2 for 2 so far so I would say this has a very good chance of taking off in a very big way. Obviously the Mac App Store will not have as much of a great impact on the world as instantly as the original iPhone Apple Store when it was for the ones who owned an iPhone and not a full Mac. But either way, if you are a developer, you may have found your next big project for the summer. And if you are a Mac consumer then you better hide the credit cards because a whole new gold mine of applications is about to show up!
