There is some concern over the impending Mac App Store, and rightly so. The Mac App Store would be a tidy revenue stream for Apple – they’d take 30% of all sales, and the advantage, from what I’ve read online, is the potential exposure app developers would receive for their products.
While the advent of the Mac App Store does not mean that the tried and true method if installing apps will go way, one can certainly feel a sense of foreboding. Some speculate that it’s only a matter of time before the garden becomes truly walled off. It would be a sad day indeed to have to jail-break a Mac to run apps that weren’t available on the Mac App Store, and I for one – hope that day never happens. I want the freedom to choose which applications I want to install and use on my Mac.
The terms of Apple’s guidelines (or restrictions, as I see it) would seem to eliminate many popular applications off the bat, including FTP apps, competing browsers, preferencePane utilities, and much, much more. It’s as if Apple is trying to bypass the web altogether. What are your thoughts on the Mac App Store? Will it level the playing field for developers? Or will it hinder the development of apps that don’t fit Apple’s restrictive criterion?
Sound off in the comments below.
-Krishna
P.S. I have some new PC Weenies artwork for sale. Thanks for looking!
