I talked a bit about some of the things I bought from the App Store, but some of you may not be real familiar with it. Apple has taken the lessons it learned from the app store for the iPhone and iPad and brought it to the Mac. Unlike the iPhone and iPad stores, you are still free to get your apps for the Mac elsewhere, but the Mac app store adds a lot of convenience and makes it easy to find things. I wasn’t so sure about this approach, but after having used it, I think this will be absolutely huge.
The app store makes it super easy to find apps, but it also makes it really easy to buy them, install them, and update them. It’s essentially all done for you, and it’s all done through the same account you use for iTunes and the other app stores. Another nice thing is that since all of these are vetted by Apple, there’s no worry about spyware or trojans.
Initial reports seem to be very favorable from both the consumers and developers. The only issues revolve around apps that you already have installed on your Mac and then they appear in the App store. Unless they were actually bought from the app store, they will not qualify for the easy updates that you can get through the app store. So for now, you will still have to update like you always have. The good news is that a lot of software companies are selling their apps at their usual upgrade prices. That means that when it’s time to upgrade to the newest version you can convert over to the app store version I did that with Graphic Convertor. I’m a little jealous of the people starting from scratch, they will be able to use the app store for almost all of their app purchases without the messiness of us legacy users.
So if you have 10.6.6 (and if you don’t, why don’t you?), you should definitely check out the app store and see how Apple is changing how we buy programs. God, I love this company…