During Apple’s “Back to the Mac” announcement in Cupertino, Apple revealed some features of the next Mac OS X version – 10.7, code-named “Lion,” coming in summer 2011. One of the key features is a new Mac App Store, which Steve Jobs revealed will go online much sooner than that – within 90 days.
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Steve Jobs describes the App Store as “the best place to discover apps” for the Mac, but not the only one, as the App Store will augment rather than replace current efforts to make software available for Mac computers.
It will have many of the same features that iOS device users have grown accustomed to since the App Store’s debut, such as one-click downloads, the ability to acquire free or paid software apps, a 70/30 percent revenue split (in the favor of developers), automatic install, automatic updates, and a license that will cover all of your personal Macs.
Apple is now accepting developer applications for the Mac App Store.
As a neophyte developer, this is fantastic news! Perhaps the “universal” bundle will allow us to include Mac versions along with iOS versions.
I’m wondering a little, though, about the interface implications. I’m interested to see how the trackpad resolution gets mapped to the display resolution, for one thing.
I am really glad to see this coming out. Having one unified area where I can manage all my app updates and discover new software. I like the fact I can still go else where and grab the software if I want but I am lazy so my first port of call will ALWAYS be the app store.
One thing I was curious about is if I have existing software like iWork will the App store recognise that and then include them in my installed applications and check for updates?
When you click software update NOW, and iWork updates will be displayed in that window.
Yeah but will that now be handled by the App Store. Probably a stupid program to use as an example. Say for instance Bento for the Mac and they start selling it in the App store will the App store pick up that I already have Bento installed and then manage the download of updates?