We have just got the Mac App Store installed on our Macbook in between the CES and Techfest madness. The hefty 100MB+ OS update brings in the lovely App Store icon to the OS X Dock. And getting started is a breeze. The interface resembles the iTunes store, and for a moment we wondered why isn’t this integrated in iTunes itself? But then iPhone / iPad already have enough space there we suppose and then this has to be a Mac OS X exclusive 🙂
The Mac App Store begins with 5 clear tabs on the top. These are ‘Featured’ ‘Top Charts’ ‘Categories’ ‘Purchases’ & ‘Updates’. The featured section brings to you the New & Noteworthy apps, What’s Hot, Top Free and the Staff Picks. And not too much to our surprise, less than 24 hours after its unveiling, its ‘Angry Birds’ priced at $4.99 that is the top app on the Mac App Store. Thats sure a sizeable premium over the $.099 iOS price but then its a Mac version! As rumored before we could also see the iLife 11 softwares like iMovie, iPhoto and Garageband listed separately. This will surely help the sales! We couldn’t see too many games listed there, and ofcoure being early days we would hope to see more additions happening. Wondering if the serious titles like NFS or The Sims would make it to the App Store for Mac.
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The experience of the Mac App Store looks pretty much on the lines of the iOS App Store and you just have to click Installed to get started with an app. The Install icon changes to Installing and then Installed once the process is completed, all processed without any more button clicks. Just as expected the Apple account login we use for iTunes works perfectly!
The app page – description and layout:
There are a few free apps we are trying out to begin with using our US iTunes account. The first two are ’Twitter’ and ‘remind me later’. Though it may not fit here, a quick thought about the twitter app. There are things about the Twitter for Mac that we love (the look, feel, the tweet compose box) but there is a lot more comfort and power we feel with Echofon, which remains our default choice for a Twitter app!
We have shared our thoughts on the Mac App Store and its impact before, and we still believe the same. This isn’t a game changer like an iPhone but something that logically comes from the iOS to the Mac OS. It’s a fantastic tool for developers to get discovered and shine and for Mac owners to find apps without scouting on the internet. Removing the distribution cost, we believe many Apps would go cheaper on the Mac App Store (and also cases like the iLife bundle). This is a welcome addition to make the growing Mac userbase somewhat more efficient. We would keep playing with the Mac App Store in the days to come and come back with more thoughts / updates. For now here is what our twitter is buzzing with about the Mac App Store:)
Note: We learnt this late from our friends over at iPhonhelp. You can also download the 10.6.6 update for Mac OS from here (Skipping the default updater) 🙂
Tweets from @2shar @aryayush @abhishekaggy
The link you mention is for the OS Update, not a DMG for Mac App Store. (http://support.apple.com/downloads/DL1343/en_US/MacOSXUpd10.6.6.dmg)
O yea thats what it actually is. Thanks Tushar, corrected 🙂
I pretty much feel its a game changer for mac in the sense of gaming. People are making iphone games everywhere all the companies, the same codes a different approach can give you a mac edition too and it will be sweet because of the high graphic macs the same for productivity apps too..
and easy to find, easy to buy, easy to use works everywhere.. All these software makers are going to realize it in next few days and its going to explode pretty soon..