Apple Mac App Store Opened with 1000 Apps at Launch
By Usman Aziz | January 7th, 2011The App Store for Mac is now official with support for Apple’s Desktop Mac operating system. The store is launched with a whole 1000 applications that are both free and paid. It requires the MAC OS X 10.6.6 update which was rolled out earlier. This update brings a major change to the OS X platform that is expected to see tremendous growth this year.
The Mac Store works along the same pattern as iOS application store with lists of downloadable applications. These apps have been remade to work with large and powerful PCs as compared to the much simpler ones found with iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Many major distributors have packaged their version for the Desktop to be part of this release while many are following.
Initially, are applications are packaged in the categories: Games, Education, Graphics, LifeStyle, Productivity, Utilities and Design. Apple has also packaged some of it’s software with this App Store such a iMovie ($14.99) and Pages($19.99). On average, these applications costs more than their iOS varients, though they are expected to go down as the competition arises.
A lot of companies are following trends and majority of the companies are expected to release their applications for this store in the coming few months. It will also compete against Google’s newly release Chrome OS and apps and we can see the competition as between iOS and Android, though Mac OS X has a much deeper user penetration. We will have to adopt a wait and see strategy to measure it’s effects on one of the most popular desktop OS.