Many software packages from 3rd party developers are released on the Mac App Store everyday and Apple is trying to take advantage of that. Apple mentioned that boxed software takes up a large amount of shelf space in the company’s retail stores, and software is less profitable than devices like the iPhone or iPad.

Apple also reduced it’s suite of games available in stores, cutting down over 32 games to only 8 and removed some products from its stores to clear shelf space, including printers and scanners. Hardware products are still available upon request, but softwares will be available entirely on the Mac App Store.

Apple seems to be taking it’s products in another direction, removing anything extraneous from it’s lineup and focusing specifically on the product itself. One move earlier in the year, that defined this change was the introduction of Wireless Syncing to iTunes from an iOS device. Changes such as these are putting Apple on a new landscape and strengthening it’s iOS App Store, Mac App Store, and ultimately their products. Other boxed software packages being removed are:

MC171 Apple Remote Desktop 3.3 10 Managed Systems
MC172 Apple Remote Desktop 3.3 Unlimited Managed Systems
D4222 Xsan 2 VL 10+
D4223 Xsan 2 VL 10+ EDU INST
MC186 Xsan 2 Single License
MC189 Xsan 2 Media Set
D2977 Xsan 2 MAINT 36 MOS SINGLE
D3132 Xsan 2 MAINT 36 MOS SINGLE EDU INST
D2966 Xsan 2 MAINT 36 MOS 10+
D3133 Xsan 2 MAINT 36 MOS 10+ EDU INST
MB957 Aperture 3 Retail
MC455 Aperture 3 ZU Retail
MB959 Aperture 3 Upgrade
MC456 Aperture 3 ZU Upgrade
D4855 APERTURE 3 TRIAL ACTIV KEY RETAIL
D4857 APERTURE 3 TRIAL UPGRADE ACTIV KEY
MC623 iLife ’11 Retail
MC625 iLife ’11 Family Pack

{via AppleInsider}

Apple just announced at their annual WWDC conference that the Mac App Store, previously downloadable will be built in to Mac OS X Lion. Apple also announced that the Mac App Store will now be a feature part of Lion and will allow In-app purchases to be downloaded directly to the app.

Apple also featured something called LaunchPad, which is initiated using a gesture to show an iOS-like display of icons you can page through as well as push notifications which will allow apps to be stored in folders.

This will make the Mac App Store very similar to an iOS interface. Another feature, Resume, instantly resume where you were in an application after you quit it and even works system wide, so that when you reboot all of your windows and apps return how they were. This makes the security of the Mac App Store much more stable and allows users to download applications to their Mac with ease, something that was a painstaking process in Snow Leopard.

Apple has also decided to taking a different move for Mac OS X this year and now allows users to download the entire software from the Mac App Store, instead of an install disc. This makes it much easier for users to purchase and transfer files, and hinders pirating of software install discs.

{image via Engadget}

After reading on Twitter how OS X 10.6.6 had been released and that it held the key to unlocking some App Store goodness I rushed, well, meandered home to fire off the update. Much downloading and rebooting later and I’m sat staring at the now familiar icon behind which there resides a world of applications waiting for my money. I stab at the little icon of loveliness and wait. And wait.

It appears Apple’s servers got a bit of a hammering today, who could see that coming!? Quitting and restarting the app solved the issue. Hurrah!

Once in, the whole experience is instantly familiar whilst also feeling completely foreign. The familiarity comes from the store layout, icons and ads. If you’ve ever used the App Store on an iPad, or indeed inside iTunes then the chances are you’ll feel right at home. The interesting thing though is how it just feels…odd.

Now this is where I try desperately to stop myself from getting carried away and coming across as a miserable, App Store hating crazy person. But stick with me, I’ll come back to what I don’t like later on.

Sat looking at the front page (is it a page?) right now I see a huge ad for Pixelmator across the top, a list of paid-for and free apps below, and charts for both on the right hand side. All pretty much par for the course.

In the menu bar across the top we have the expected Featured, Top Charts, Categories and Updates tabs. Apple has also thrown in a ‘Purchased Apps’ option here, where perhaps predictably the store lists everything you’ve downloaded – including free stuff. Useful indeed.

From here there’s not a great deal to look at. You flick through the charts, check out the apps and buy things. It’s an App Store. It works.

Now onto why it’s not all (double) rainbows and unicorns…

The first issue people will come across is the ‘I already own an app and the App Store doesn’t know’ problem. Obviously this means updates won’t be handled by the store, and you’re left with a stand-alone app that needs updating the ‘old fashioned’ way.

Now if we’re talking about a free app it’s not really an issue. Just download via the App Store and you’re golden. The old app gets replaced and now updates are handled as expected. The problem here is that if the app is a paid-for item then this won’t work. Unless you want to pay twice, of course.

Don’t get me wrong here, I know this isn’t a world-ending problem, but it’s messy. I had hoped that there would be a way for the App Store to check existing licenses and import them, making the whole thing THE PLACE to handle your apps. iTunes for applications if you will. Alas, I was hoping for too much.

My other downer is something that I suspect is more an issue with the way I’m now accustomed to using the iOS store.

Looking through the categories of paid apps you find yourself looking at semi-pro apps priced at semi-pro price points. Alongside those are super cheap, what I like to call ‘throwaway’ products. Here one of two things happens: either the good apps look overpriced, or the cheap apps find themselves elevated to a level they just don’t deserve. On iOS this isn’t such a problem as we’ve witnessed a race to the bottom – developers trying to make apps as cheap as possible to drive sales. This isn’t going to happen with a $99 application and they might not benefit from being lumped in with $0.99 ‘competitors’. Whether this is a real problem or me thinking too much remains to be seen. Time will tell, and I have been known to be wrong before. Once.

Before I leave you to get back to Angry Birds on the big screen, I just want to mention a tweet I saw earlier from the guys over at Evernote.

“Early Mac App Store Effect: Rate of new users on Mac is 1800% higher than normal. Wow.”

That, right there, is why the Mac App Store will be a success despite any flaws or potential issues it might have. Stores aid discovery, and people discovering apps means people paying for them.

What makes this great news for us is this: more apps sold equals many more, and hopefully better apps for us to play with in the future.

Now, what shall I buy next?

In a stroke of marketing genius Apple has unleashed the Mac App Store on the world on the same day as key announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. A show they don’t attend, but most of the worlds tech companies do, as well as most of the world’s tech press. And yet on Twitter, at least, you’d barely know that CES was going on as people all chat about Apple’s new software distribution network.

Once Macintosh users have downloaded an OS X operating system update the Mac App Store becomes an integral part of their daily OS X experience on their desktop machine. In many ways the Mac App Store app is what the iTunes App Store should be. It is a beautiful stand alone app dedicated to downloading OS X desktop apps; free from the clutter that iOS App Store users have to endure with the bloated and incorrectly named iTunes app.

The user experience overall is very similar to that in the App Store portion of iTunes, and it stands to reason that perhaps Apple in future will migrate iOS app purchases to a similar stand alone app, or even as part of a combo Apple App Store app. The process of downloading apps is very reminiscent of the iOS experience, as apps appear in your dock once purchased, and display their download progress with a pretty little blue bar before permanently installing themselves automagically in your Applications folder, and on your dock.

You can delete or uninstall the apps by dragging it to the trash and then authenticating with admin username and password. You can also move the app from Trash back to the ‘Applications’ folder if you’d like to restore the application.

The launch has not been without some teething problems though, which is most likely a function of the Mac based internet at large hammering Apple’s servers for both the OS X update required to run the Mac App Store, and also to download cool apps like Twitter’s new “Twitter” for OS X app – which is beautiful, by the way.

There are a plethora of OS X apps, including Apple’s own Aperture 3, which are available at very attractive (for desktop) prices. And in many ways it is re-assuring for developers that at least for the moment the same “race to the bottom” with pricing is not occurring in the Mac App Store. This may be in part because the Mac App Store is not the only place that developers can sell apps. It remains to be seen how long it is before the App Store becomes the main location that newer (and perhaps more experienced) Macintosh users go to buy apps, and then if a price war then erupts. But for now everything seems rosy in Apple’s latest online retail venture.

Have you tried out the Mac App Store yet? What do you think? Let us know in the comments…

While Apple has emphasized the software’s ease-of-use for less experienced developers, who can stick to the basics with HTML5 and CSS3, advanced developers can utilize JavaScript editing and debugging to produce their iAds. For those without a great development background, there are a variety of templates, components, and animations to help you build excellent iAds with little effort.

The software’s visual designer brings together all of the key elements of your iAd in a single design window and allows you to select the iOS device for which your iAd will be built. When you’re nearly finished, iAd Producer will check your work to identify any errors, and you can then use the built-in simulator to test drive your ads and ensure they’re ready for prime time.

Although Adobe itself is far from on the decline, Apple has made it clear for a while now that they aren’t keen on the company’s Flash format, choosing to support HTML5 instead. iAd Producer offers an alternative to developing in Flash, which many designers have previously chosen to create mobile ads, by using HTML5 and CSS3.

iAd Producer is compatible with Mac OS X 10 and at present there’s no word on a Windows version of the software.

It’s not the first time Apple has invited developers onto its campus – last year a series of ‘iPhone Tech Talks’ around the globe and this looks to be a similar gathering, though obviously a little more cosy.

No word as yet as to who has been invited or what will be discussed (it wouldn’t be secret otherwise, would it now?) but the smart money is on developers being grilled on how the Cupertino outfit can improve its App Store, especially with the Mac App Store due to launch inside the next 90 days.

Could this also be a sign that iOS 4.2 is nearing completion? It’s pretty much a given that developers will be able to get their hands on a new build at the meeting – hopefully this one will finally include video support in Airplay. If Apple sees fit to host a press conference to release 4.2 in November, we may well see apps that have been put together at this summit which would also mean the obligatory 30 minutes worth of random devs being paraded on-stage to show off 2 minutes of app goodness. You all just love those don’t you?

Nope, didn’t think so.

[via MacRumors] ]]> https://touchreviews.net/apple-secret-ios-developer-conference/feed/ 0 https://touchreviews.net/mac-app-store/ https://touchreviews.net/mac-app-store/#comments Wed, 20 Oct 2010 23:25:47 +0000 https://touchreviews.net/?p=11342 Read More]]>

Apple has been successful in revolutionizing the way users discover and install applications on their iOS devices. They are  now ready to bring what they learnt from the App Store for iPhone and iPad to the Mac.

Steve Jobs, during ‘Back to the Mac’ keynote event announced that Apple will be launching the ‘Mac App Store’ which will be compatible with Lion and Snow Leopard. The Mac App Store will provide a marketplace for all developers registered with Apple to sell their Mac Apps on the new App Store. Developers will be offered 70/30 split (in favor of the developers) the same deal which is currently offered to the iOS developers.

Some of the main features of the Mac App Store are :

• Best place to discover apps
• One click downloads
• Free and Paid apps
• Automatic installation
• Automatic updates

I think the automatic installation and the ability to discover some of the best apps for your Mac will certainly help the new app store in becoming yet another success for Apple. The demo during the keynote event showed how easy it was to install an app with one click which is an excellent example of Apple’s expertise in designing simple software that ‘just works’

The new store will also encourage developers to participate in the ‘Mac Developer Program’ as Apple’s store for mac apps will provide them with the opportunity to reach out to the masses.

Apple will launch the Mac App Store in 90 days from today and will start accepting developer submissions in November. It was certainly a very wise decision by Apple to allow people using Snow Leopard to access the store as that would help in reaching out to a much wider audience.

Developer of the popular game for iPhone called WordCrasher in a recent tweet expressed his interest in exploring the idea of bringing his game to the Mac which indicates that in a matter of months we might see our favorite iPhone apps and games making their way to the Mac!

Yes, you read that correctly. Eight days ago tickets went on sale for WWDC 2010 ranging in price from $1295 to $1599 USD and now they’re sold out. What more of an amazing comment on the importance of the iPhone / iPad product line than that. While I’m sure there were some Mac application developers that were put out by the deemphasis of their platform, I think any smart developer interested in making money has at least one iPhone or iPad app in the works or already in the App Store. Macs are increasingly becoming specialist tools, a development platform of choice and I think Apple understands that and acknowledges it with the way they’ve structured this year’s conference.

Now I’m not saying the Mac application development is dead. There will always be a need for a development platform. If Apple wanted to create a compiler and IDE that ran on the iPad they could, I have no doubt the platform has the computing power to do that. The differentiation between the two platforms though is distinct and done on purpose. The iPad is a consumer-class device for product consumption. You can type documents, make spreadsheets, compose e-mails, and make presentations but at the end of the day most people are sitting on the couch with their iPad reading a child Alice in Wonderland or watching the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy. The same people that might have bought a baseline MacBook for those tasks now have a device specialized and streamlined to perform them. The Mac then becomes the developers tool of choice and what are developers making? Yeah, developers are making iPhone and iPad apps. Doesn’t it all make sense now? Developers may show up at the conference with their MacBook Pro but what they really want to do is make apps.

So even in the subtlety of how Apple has structured a developer’s conference we can see a glimpse of their future plans. iPads and iPhone 4G are for the public. Apple wants them to be ubiquitous and everyone to have three or four of them. The general population doesn’t need to worry about how to make applications or muck with their device, eliminating much of the worry involved in the operation of today’s generally available PC. Do people kind of hold their breath and hope their iPad boots like most Windows users do? Of course not. Macs on the other hand are for developers and the specialist classes. They need keyboards and mice, they need large screens that are easy to look at for long periods of time. They need to know about what they’re making and what they’re making are apps; and lots of them.

What do you make of the WWDC reception? Is it a projection of the strength of the platform or simply the fervor of its devotees? What do you want to see come out of the conference from a consumer perspective? Are you attending? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.