I can appreciate that there are some restrictions, but I can't see myself using it a lot. I use the macupdate.com for much of my software, and using the macupdate desktop keeps all my apps up to date. Growl notifies me of any new updates so I do not need to worry about the app store. It might be worth looking at to see any new apps as they are released.

Quite so. I can see it being a place I check every so often looking at the 'best seller' and 'what's hot' lists but I don't see it replacing the places I got news about shareware & small apps from before now. Quite a few of my preferred shareware apps do seem to have said 'as of the next version, we're only going to be available via the app store' though.

Jon

Pixelmator is one of those.
I got version 1 but there's an introductory price for it in the App Store at the moment, and you get a free upgrade to version 2 when it's released (whenever that may be), so I think I'm gonna spend the £19 on the App Store version.

Mark

I shall probably be buying Aperture 3 as it's cheaper than the boxed upgrade from version 2.

Once I've installed 10.6, of course. I think the App Store has prompted me to bring the update forward.

No sign of Lightroom on the App Store, sadly.
I guess I'll have to pay the £62 upgrade from version 2 to version 3.
*sigh*

Mark

One thing that I will miss about shareware is that you can at least try before you buy.

There do seem to be a number of apps that are going down the iOS route of having free 'light' versions instead of time limited versions & etc. I can see that catching on quite a lot.

There are curiousities I keep spotting - like app store apps don't have a 'check for updates' option even when they did before. It's obvious when you think about it but it sticks out when you first launch the app.

Jon

I recall reading that Apple were not going to allow demos or lite versions. Maybe that has changed. Anyhoo there has been 1 million downloads on the first day

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2011/01/mac- ... oaded-day/

Longer term I can see this being of benefit to small developers. If they no longer have to maintain a website and yet get even more access to customers then this could be really beneficial. I would imagine that many people will not be interested in buying from shareware developers, but buying from Apple will not be seen as such a risk.

I think anyone who is remotely serious about being a mac developer will still have to have a product website. There's only so much info you can fit onto the app store page and it doesn't allow for things like support forums, online documentation etc.

What you won't need to do any more is set up your own web store to accept registration payments, deal with downloading bandwidth issues on new version release, worry about license protection etc. It basically takes a lot of the drudge work out of being an online software developer. In the case of consumers, instead of typing your credit card details into some website you don't necessarily trust, you're using the existing payment mechanism millions of people have been using for years.

It's a generally positive move that really only has a downside for the likes of ecellerate & Kagi, who have built a business model around providing exactly the same services for developers the app store now provides. I don't know what their terms are but they'll at least have to offer terms equivalent to the app store to survive at all.

Jon

I have never found software via ecellerate & Kagi though I have paid through them.

Here, the price is about 1/3 of the cost of Apeture 3 boxed package on the Apple Store and about 33% saving over the Apeture 2 -> 3 Upgrade... Very tempting, but my iMac keeps crashing at the moment (restarts itself every couple of hours without warning) and I seem to spend more time on my Sony Vaio laptop...

The real shame, is that there are no "try before you buy" options. The new Windows Phone 7 store has a better attitude, every app has to have a free test, which automatically upgrades into the full version if you want it - no lite versions cluttering up the place, once you've bought the app, just the "free" version becomes the full version.

Macintoshes are not phones.

The store won’t be the only way to buy apps for the Mac, but it will be a first “go to” place for many Mac owners. However, a word of caution if this article is correct in its interpretation:

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/01/06/updated- ... app-store/

Whereas that says to me I can't make money from using these products, it sounds like I can buy once and install on multiple Macs that I own/control...