The world will shift dramatically for Mac software program makers at some point over the next 90 sidereal day . That ’s the time frame Apple has give for launching an app store for Mac package not unlike the hugely successful App Store for iOS offerings .
The announcement , which came Wednesday during Steve Jobs’spreview of Mac OS X Lion , had been bruit for some metre , though it was gruelling to get a suitcase on just how Apple might port the iOS app - statistical distribution model to the Mac . Now that the computerized tomography is out of the bag , though , there are a number of arguments to be made for and against Apple ’s latest App Store effort .
rent ’s set out with what we roll in the hay . The Mac App Store is slate to found in the next 90 days and will be available , at least initially , only to users running Mac OS X 10.6 . developer can apply for the app fund start next calendar month . On Wednesday , Jobs said that developers will get the same tax revenue split Apple offers to iOS - app maker : 70 percent of the revenue , with Apple pocketing the remainder .
In exchange , developers will need to abide by rule standardised to those that regulate the App Store on Io , include limitation on what kinds of message can be put out , agreeing to utilise only officially sanctioned programming interfaces , and submitting software through an prescribed app review and approval process . On Apple ’s mobile chopine , these processes have at meter been disputative in nature , with a few developer take out out of iPhone ontogeny altogether over Apple ’s vetting policy .
From a consumer ’s perspective , the App Store is probably the most revolutionary promulgation that Apple has made in a long clock time — my colleague Dan Frakes has compose an clause on the many welfare that user will come from a Mac App Store .
From the point of view of developers , however , thing are a little more complicated .
A boon for independent software
Despite its limitations , the iOS App Store is successful with developer , in part because it does n’t play favorites — classics such as Bejeweled and Tetris are listed powerful alongside complete freshman who have no tie-up with large software publishing houses . In fact , as I write this , seven out of the top ten easily - sell iPhone apps have been produced by little and independent vendors that would find it difficult to make a nick in the traditional software program market .
Today ’s OS X software securities industry is rich with applications from small developers — you could argue that these syllabus form the very linchpin of the program ’s software program ecosystem . Still , each of these main vendors is forced to implement their own requital solution , licensing - management system , distribution distribution channel , and client documentation , top to inconsistency and gemination of efforts .
The Mac App Store should lighten developers of the drudgery of such task , allowing them to focus on those features that make their apps unequaled . It should also aim them on a level playing field with every other developer , providing each with a well - organized distribution channel that they can trust on .
Of of course , all this will come at a price . Apple keeps 30 percent of all revenues from the iOS App Store — peanuts compared to traditional in - store statistical distribution models , but gamy than the costs developers incur if they circularize their software through their own means . I suspect , however , that once the costs of delivery and supporting are taken into consideration , Apple ’s ploughshare of the revenue Proto-Indo European will wrick out to be quite sensible .
Customer support will be key
On the iOS App Store , Apple handles customer living for most basic postulation , assisting customers with , for example , installation issues or defrayal problem . Developers are unfortunately cut off from this procedure , which stool create a resonance with one ’s substance abuser base challenging .
This is already a big job on iOS , where the relatively depleted price stage and the chasteness of apps create somewhat reduce client expectations . Mac software , by demarcation , is typically both more expensive and more complex ; as a result , customers wait a comparatively higher point of support from developers .
Although Apple has not annunciate anything in this regard , it only seems logical for the company to augment the capabilities of the App Store so that those who utilise the software package and those that bring out it can lease in meaningful discourse . Until then , developers will be left to their own devices — and forced to parcel out with the sometimes negative outcome of not make a unmediated line to their customers .
Is Apple closing everything?
No preferably had the last morsel of Jobs ’s App Store announcement finish cyclosis than the Internet was buzzing with discussion ( and I use the word “ discussion ” in very generous term ) of how Apple is trying to close its background program just as it has with the mobile twin .
First , it should be noted that Jobs was clear on the fact that the App Store will beoneof the distribution channels available on OS X — but notthe only one . Unlike on iOS , then , Mac users will be able to go on installing software on the nose the way they do now : downloading it off the net , or loading it from opthalmic medium . In the short run , thus , the App Store will be an option to traditional epithelial duct , rather than a replacement for them .
look further into the future , there ’s a fear that the Mac App Store may strangle the openness of the Mac platform , and that concern has more leg . Even if Apple ’s intentions are entirely honorable , a successful Mac App Store could establish a de - facto monopoly that , in a few years , could hard circumscribe the dispersion channels available to computer software developer — specially the smaller single .
Given what Apple outlined Wednesday , though , the only parties that might suffer from a Mac App Store would be traditional retail channels , which are struggling to remain relevant whether Apple gets into the package retail biz or not . For everyone else , the App Store seems like a gain proposition as long as substitute route of software statistical distribution continue available .
[ Marco Tabini is an app developer andMacworldcontributor base in Toronto . ]
