Within the first 24 hours of the Mac App Store’s public existence, there have already been thousands of words posted on the blogosphere about it – tech pundits dissecting and examining it, finding it lacking, hating it, loving it, whatever. There’s never a shortage of commentary when Apple introduces a new product, and the Mac App Store is no different.
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]What none of these experts – these self-appointed arbiters of what’s hot and what’s not in the digital realm – seem to have acknowledged is that the Mac App Store is, by and large, not for them.
Technical sophisticates who have had Macs for a while and who spend their days living online can find software easily enough – there are plenty of online shops, individual vendor Web sites, software tracking resources, news sites and other ways to figure out where you can get Mac software.
The Mac App Store, which launched with a respectable 1,000 applications or so, from Apple and third parties, isn’t for mainstream users. It’s for the millions of other Mac users who don’t make being a computer geek either a hobby or a profession.
For them, the Mac is simply an appliance – a way of getting things done. Sending e-mail, visiting Web sites, maybe organizing photos. Creating a database, if they’re feeling ambitious, working on some school or work projects, balancing a checkbook.
For those folks, the Mac App Store provides a tightly integrated, clean, Apple-sanctified method of downloading software. A system many of them are already familiar with, having owned iPhones or other iOS devices and having already used the iTunes Store.
But what early adopters think of the Mac App Store is ultimately irrelevant. This new service will live or die based on how it’s used by the millions of new Mac owners who fire up their computers for the first time and click on the Mac App Store icon in their docks.
So I’m sure we’ll continue to see a steady stream of critiques telling us what’s wrong with the Mac App Store and what Apple absolutely, positively has to fix. And in the interim, the floodgates have opened and new customers will continue to stream in, buying and downloading applications just as they have (more than one million in the first 24 hours, according to Apple).
Complaining pundits should be asked: “What have you created lately that millions love to use?”.
Well said!
Well said. But not just for newbies. I’ve had Macs forever and thus my second comment below.
1) My first thought when I opened the store was “Wow, you could kill a lot of time in here.” It’s the thing I dreamed about being able to do when I got the original iMac (1984). Does anyone else remember the days of going to a software store and being able to find, maybe, three Mac compatible titles?
2) My strategy in the Mac App Store remains the same as it always has for me: If it looks useful and is $10 or less, I’ll get it. If I was walking through an electronic store and saw a useful Mac program on the software shelf for $10, I’d think I found a pleasant surprise, a steal, or a bargain.
I’m forever struggling to find applications for MAC on the web… Your search result stills returns a plethora of windows programs even thought you put MAC or OSX in the search field. Further more when you click on the link that say’s “for MAC” it turns out the program is for windows anyway. 2 words Needle and haystack come to mind when trying to find anything to do with MAC on the web. I haven’t opened the app store yet because I do need anything at the moment but it will be my 1st port of call when I do. What the MAC app store guarantees is an OSX program and not any other OS. That may sound obvious but it will be a huge relief as the wheat has been cut from the chaff. Thanks to apple verifying and ultimately sanctioning the App we get programs that have reached a certain standard and hopefully the chances of catching some virus put to an absolute minimum.
I’d say bring on the critics as they will help develop and evolve the App store.
As Apple goes to bigger market and not only US especially in the internet no boundaries world, obviously it’s fans and customers finds App Store is the best place to go and buy. If you are in Asia, with hundreds of pirated copies of things, App Store really helps. I am sure Apple will keep on improving to be the best Store for it’s customers and one of the best in Internet World. Hope, they will on listening.. 😉
The Haters will continue to hate no matter what Apple tries to do. Sure, I’ve been downloading stuff from online since the late eighties with my first Apple Mac Plus and now I’ve got premium newsservers, torrents, eMule, etc. and I can get practically any application for free. But I still understand how consumers that are low-tech users could certainly find the Mac App Store very helpful. These users are in the majority and they’re the ones that Apple is trying to make things easy for. I’ve looked the Mac App Store over and I like it. It may have some teething problems early on, but overall I think it’s a good start. I’ll bet an awful lot of games will be created along with utilities and all sorts of applications. I expect to see 2,000 titles in a few months and it should continue to increase as long as developers are making good money. I hope that Apple is successful with the Mac App Store and that all Mac users can see some benefit from it.