Okay so what do you think of the App Store so far?

I chose the "wait and see" response simply because there are no Intel Macs in this household, and thus no App Store transactions possible until such time as new computers become a necessity rather than an indulgence.

I chose the "wait and see" because Apple lacks the demo/trial mode. Also, many third party developers offer "special" prices/sales or bundles not available through Apple. And finally, Apple charges sales/VAT (in Texas, 8.25%).

I just perused dkmarsh's linked articles, and they reinforced my reasons for selecting options 5 & 8.

As it has with people's private lives, Apple is becoming insidiously invasive into their computing lives, and I prefer to keep the beast at as looong an arm's distance as I'm able...to retain whatever control over my deuced Mac(hina) Apple has left me after Snow Leopard's "improvements."

Mac App Store hastens Apple's plans to cease boxed software sales - rumor

That's one of the thoughts that's crossed my mind, but not just in regard to Apple stores; it almost smells like they're looking to ultimately take complete control over all software that installs on a Mac.

I wonder whether they'll run into some sort of anti-trust or similar situation along the lines of the bundling issue?

Is that bad?

I would rather buy a piece of software that Apple has approved because I will then know that the developer hasn't taken shortcuts in the way that software interacts with the operating system. I assume that Apple is not going to endorse any software that affects the system.

I think back to computers "pre-Mac". I never had a computer before 1984 and chose to have a Mac because it didn't have all the problems that affected existing computers. For example, any new piece of software for those computers almost always meant a new learning process because they all worked differently.

The Mac philosophy was so simple that it's a wonder no one had thought of it before. No matter what kind of software a person developed for the Mac, it would work exactly the same as every other so that the learning curve was reduced.

A developer could not, for example, create Mac software whose windows worked differently than any other Mac software - no matter what it was. Ditto a whole bunch of other functions. The routines were contained in the Mac chips and the developer went to Apple to get access to them.

If Apple is going back to its roots to prevent the spread of problems, i.e. A developer cannot be endorsed if their software will cause the system to break, then it has to be good.

I doubt it will stop anyone from developing software outside the Apple circle but then the responsibility for problems rests with the person(s) who chose to install it.

ryck

I don't think that's Apple's goal, and I don't think it'd be possible even if it were. There's nothing to prevent anyone who doesn't like the App Store from getting software from other sources--and in any event, the App Store model really isn't appropriate for a lot of software (think Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Suite).

Apple can lock down consumer electronic devices like iPhones, but they can't lock down full-fledged computers. Nor would they want to; a thriving software ecosystem is the thing that keeps the operating system relevant.

I'll respond to you and ryck at the same time...

The comment to which you responded was facetious; if Apple ever tried to do what I suggested they'd be anti-trusted so quickly they wouldn't know what hit them (which in no way means that they haven't got a legal team working on it ).

Hardware is Apple's real business, and I think that controlling which software runs on it should not be a part of their business model.

Sure, they can control parameters up to a point, but if I want to run APE (by way of excellent example) it's none of Apple's business.

I'm beginning to get the idea that "It just works!" has so infiltrated Apple's thinking that they've begun to believe it...forgotten that tag lines are for the marks...that believing them yourself is the first step down the road to nowhere.

Just because Apple thinks the newest version of a piece of software works, is an improvement, whatever, doesn't mean that everybody thinks similarly and wants the old version overwritten by default.

I think App Store.app would be a better piece of software if it offered users a pre-d/l "A & I" option (when feasible).

I wish ryck and those with similar attitudes good luck, but their's is not the route I'll take unless I'm dragged, kicking and screaming.

Doesn't seem like Apple needs too much help with their business model. Or is your "should" intended to connote an ethical, rather than financial, obligation?

User Experience is Apple's business, not hardware, and I think "make it just work" is a design philosophy whose success is largely responsible for the company's ascendancy.

In another thread, you implied that you view Steve Jobs as such a visionary that the company would be in serious trouble without him. What, exactly, would Apple be losing? Not a hardware guy.

So who gets credit for the Flower-Power iMac and the "toilet-seat" (Clamshell) iBook then?

I think that Apple simply understands that they must cater to the largest group. That group bought Mac because they wanted to get away from having to learn more about their computers than they wanted, which included inputting arcane commands in order for it to work.

Allow me an analogy. People used to have cars with standard transmissions, having to clutch and shift for the car to proceed (Think: arcane commands). Then along came the automatic transmission and a large number of people, now absolutely the majority, decided that the automatic was much better.

The largest number of Mac owners just want to "put it in D and drive". I think Apple wants to be sure that, if an owner is going to add something to their Mac, it is installed and works in a fashion that facilitates continuation of the Mac experience.


Both pre and post the automatic transmission, there were people who liked to tinker under the hood. It's the same with the Mac - lots of people want to know what's going on in the background, and Apple does a lot to cater to that group as well. And, people like me are glad there's a site like FTM where the folks who know what goes on "under the hood" share their knowledge.

ryck

I agree. It's easy to look at what a company produces and not think of anything else as being their real 'business'. If I am allowed another analogy.......

I haven't been in a McDonalds for more than twenty years (last going when my daughters were children) but I do recall wondering why McDonalds was doing so much better than anyone else in the hamburger business. Let's face it, how tricky can it be to make a hamburger?

I realized that, while hamburgers were involved in the business transaction, McDonalds success was actually due to selling an experience that the kids liked, with bright colours, toys, a place they'd see their friends, et cetera.

Just as importantly, they were selling something else to the parents - cleanliness and a safe environment.

ryck

Hardware is Apple's business, but that doesn't mean Steve isn't an essential part of Apple's success, even though he's not really a nuts and bolts hardware guy in the sense of being a circuit board designer or a chip fabber or something.

His job at Apple, it seems to me, is bringing an almost monomaniacal focus on a certain design aesthetic to the table. He has very specific ideas about the way the hardware ought to look and ought to work, and judging from Apple's success, rather a lot of folks agree with him.

Programmers and compute designers tend, at the end of the day, to such--absolutely suck--at the aesthetics of design. When you let pogrammers and computer geeks do all the software, you get the user interface of Linux; when you let industrial designers and circuit board designers design your hardware, you get the hideous, overdesigned monstrosities of the Asus gaming laptops or the cheap, utilitarian, Stalinesque pragmatism of Dell systems.

Detractors of Apple like to say there's nothing that Apple does that hasn't been done before, and they're right. What they miss is that aesthetics and user experience matter.

Full-fledged operating systems on a cell phone have been done before. What Apple got right that Microsoft got wrong is that desktop systems and cell phones need different user interfaces; the Windows cell phones that have a "Start" menu and a Desktop are an embarrassment. The interface design simply isn't appropriate--something that it took the iPhone to make Microsoft realize.

Linux has had an "app store" of sorts for years; most major desktop Linux distros have long come with a program you can run to access lists of software stored in a repository and automatically (well, more or less, depending on various dependencies and versioning problems--I've never gotten WINE to automatically install correctly on Ubuntu without a lot of headache and hassle) install them on your computer. What they miss, and what Linux programmers always miss, is that presenting a window with a big long scrolling list of software packages in it isn't really a very good interface for an application repository.

Steve Jobs is neither a hardware designer nor a programmer; you won't see him with a soldering iron in his hand or punching code in Xcode. What he's good at, and where his value to Apple is, is that he can look at something and say "This is profoundly stupid design. Putting a Start menu on the screen that pops up a list of programs might be appropriate for a desktop computer, but it's totally wrongheaded for a cell phone. For a cell phone, a sideways-scrolling field of application icons is more usable." And he does that with a ferocity that's barely short of psychotic.

Be real for once! "Controlling" most assuredly implies an ethical issue.


No! Hardware is Apple's business, and "It Just Works" is as you say, but "User Experience" is more appropriately tied to the interaction between Macs, "i" devices, and the world as Steve Jobs envisions it...a (so to speak) come-lately.

And I never suggested that there's anything wrong with "It Just Works" other than that Apple's current position is that just because Apple thinks it works and is good for you you don't need a means to undo the "good" even if you think it's bad.


Thanks to tacit for beginning the support of my position that Steve Jobs is, indeed, a hardware guy; I'll expand on his excellent analysis, though, by suggesting that Jobs is also what I'll call a hardware visionary...a guy who is capable of looking down the road, envisioning a future, and visualizing the hardware necessary to achieve that future (forgetting altogether about whether or not his vision is shared by anybody else).

He's the guy who, 150 years ago, would have realized that the chemical and physical properties of the fraction of petroleum called "gasoline" suggested the automobile and would have put together a team to develop it regardless of the fact that he might not have know the difference between a screwdriver and a wrench.

Yeah... Steve Jobs is, first and foremost, a hardware guy, and his loss may ultimately cost Apple its ascendency; people talk about his team and how it complements his abilities and brings his visions to fruition in ways of which he's incapable, but I've never heard anybody suggest that there's a team-member who can duplicate, let alone expand on, what he is capable of doing.

I truly believe that Steve Jobs has envisioned "The Emerald City" of "Oz," that what we've seen so far is no more that the first few paving stones of the "Yellow Brick Road," that unguessed at paving stones are under development, and that the entire project may ultimately grind to a screeching halt sometime after the "Wizard" passes on.

McDonald's... What an excellent and fortuitous choice for an analogy! (Unfortunately, though, you happened on McDonald's many years too late to appreciate its evolution into the place to which you took your daughters your daughters took you.)

McDonald's is, in its essence, a fast-food company...the creator of the fast-food concept, as a matter of fact.


I remember the first McDonald's in Brooklyn (my neck of it, anyhow), which opened in the early '70s...

McDonald's tag-line at the time was (more or less) "You can feed your whole family, (of 4, I always assumed) with a $5 bill and go home with change."

You took your family to an impeccably clean and comfortable place, got served quickly, enjoyed your relatively good quality, good tasting meal, and went home with change from your fin.

It Just Worked!

[scratch...scratch] Now where have I heard that before? [/scratch]

Then, gradually - it was the result of an evolution rather than a single event - McDonald's changed...radically...from a place where you took your kids to a place where your kids took you.

All the original attractions were still in place (Well... The $5 evolved, too.), but, in addition, your kids played in the playground before and after eating their "Happy Meal," they went home with a toy and/or a promo item, and you went home with a scratch-off ticket and/or a promo item (in addition to the change from your $50 ).

User Experience!

I'll be damned... I've heard that before, too.

Similarly, Apple is, in its essence, a hardware company that, from its humble beginnings as a place where you wanted to be, because It Just Worked, is evolving into a place where you have to be, because it is a, or should I say the, User Experience!

"It Just Works" was on both drawing boards when McDonald's and Apple broke from the gate; "User Experience" was probably not even a pipe-dream at the time.

"User Experience" is the result of years of McDonald's and Apple's having analyzed, developed, and improved (theoretically, anyhow), their business models.

You've misunderstood my position (which I'll support with my own analogy...one that turns yours inside out).

I know a woman who drives a Porsche Carrera with, perish the thought, automatic transmission.

Porsche, like Apple, "understands that they must cater to the largest group," but, unlike Apple, Porsche also understands that the preferences of the minority must not fall victim to those of that group...

Porsche has not chosen to say that the Carrera performs best with a manual transmission and that, therefore, they do not offer it with automatic...a position that is diametrically opposed to that of Apple which has chosen to say that Macs and OS X perform best as presented, and if there's something you don't like, well...tough darts.

In fact, Apple is doing more and more to isolate users who like to tinker under the hood!

Huh? When I got my first Mac in 1993, the compelling factor in my choice of platforms was the Macintosh user experience. Steve Jobs was off running NeXT (which, incidentally, had stopped making hardware altogether and was concentrating on further refinements to the operating system which lies at the core of OS X). The "i" devices weren't even on the drawing board yet.

And I was a (so to speak) come-lately; the "computer for the rest of us" campaign attracted lots of buyers to the original Macintosh who had no interest whatsoever in the DOS user experience. In the Mac user experience, by comparison, both the hardware and software were remarkably transparent. Folks without any background in either could just do stuff.


I'd love to see a parse tree for that sentence.

Actually, you said "I'm beginning to get the idea that 'It just works!' has so infiltrated Apple's thinking that they've begun to believe it...forgotten that tag lines are for the marks...that believing them yourself is the first step down the road to nowhere." I doubt I'm the only one who thought you were dismissing "It Just Works" as just so much hucksterism.

I'm not sure what a "manual transmission" version of a Mac would be but, since a transmission is associated with operation, it's fair to say that a manual version would involve getting to the same place but with more effort.

In that case Mac actually is a Carrera with both automatic and manual operating modes. You can do it the Mac way (automatic) or you can choose to run Windows (manual) on the same machine - with software provided by Apple.

ryck

I agree 100%. In fact, that was the deciding factor for me in buying my first computer, a Mac.

In 1983 I was running a television production centre and would see people doing amazing things with spreadsheets, databases, word processing et cetera and I thought "I'd sure like to to have that analytical power at my fingertips".

Then there would be a loud and anguished cry as someone hit a wrong key: "@*&$%@#. I just lost two *@#^*&%ing hours of work. Aaaaargghhh!!" As much as I wanted the benefits of computers I didn't want that frustration. I stayed with pen and paper.

In January 1984 a production switcher told me that the computer for me was at a show up the street, adding something about a device called a mouse and a trashcan on the screen. That day I got my first Mac c/w MacPaint and MacWrite (MultiPlan was on the way) and the rest is history.

ryck

That part, I don't agree with.

Every Mac now includes on its installer DVDs a complete suite of developer tools. Apple has always given away its developer tools for free, but it used to be you needed to go download them from its Web site or, in the days pre-Web, order the disks from Apple (or pick them up from a user's group). Now, they're right there on your installer disc.

And they're remarkably easy, to use, as developer tools go. Xcode is a first-rate IDE, with the level of polish and sophistication that other developer tools made by companies like Microsoft charge hundreds or even thousands of dollars for.

And your Mac also ships not only with the Terminal but also with a complete suite of command-line tools, and on top of that the ability, if you install Apple's Xwindows environment, to run Linux software, including Linux system and development tools.

So in that way, the modern Mac is much EASIER, not harder, to tinter with "beneath the hood."

What Tacit said!!!

I've gotten my sum-total understanding (as far as it goes) of BSD UNIX (and several versions of embedded Linux) from my time spent "tinkering under the hood" of the various releases of Mac OS X over the past several years....and while I haven't installed the developer tools, I have done a tremendous amount of digging around in and modifying the underlying UNIX code that provides the Mac OS X experience for the rest of us.

Having a smoothly functional UNIX installed base to explore using both online and paper-based textual resources for additional info beyond the installed "man" files has been very effective at developing a working understanding of the language "in-context".

My version of that statement would be...


In support of that last statement I submit for your consideration Developer Connection, Apple Script, Automator, Developer Tools, Console, Terminal, MAN, etc. Short of being a member of Apple's development team you can't get any closer to the system internals than that. Of course, all of these demand more knowledge and skill than is possessed by probably somewhere between 80 to 93% of the user base. Based on those users I support, 100% are perfectly content not knowing anything about the internals of OS X, all they care about is "it simply works".

I'm replying to joemikeb's comment on Artie's post, but it applies equally to those of DK, ryck, Lee and tacit: in what way would you change your comments if you include hardware considerations?

I'm not sure if you mean from a "user experience" perspective or for "tinkering under the hood" so I'll answer both.

Hardware and User Experience - Unchanged view, except perhaps that the hardware has improved in a way that it further enhances the experience - faster speeds, better monitors, improved storage et cetera. I will concede that many things we buy these days - cars, communications, and so on - have been enhanced.

Hardware and Tinkering - The amount of tinkering that I would want to do is adequately covered with the DIYs that Apple provides for things like internal resets, memory upgrades, swapping hard drives.......and so on. (Supplemented with helpful tips at FTM)

It's not different than tinkering around the house. There are a number of things I will tackle, after buying code books and reading manuals, but there are also lines I just won't cross.

With Macs there may well be people who want to tinker with hardware more than I do, but they likely have steelier nerves than I.

ryck

Responding to tacit because he posted first...

My bad!

I unthinkingly reused ryck's "isolate users who like to tinker under the hood" in a my own context and wound up with a majorly erroneous statement.

In my context, I think "isolate users who like to control their own destiny" would have been more appropriate.

Back in the mid-90s when I worked for Microsoft training their Windows and Office support personnel the question frequently arose, "Why didn't Microsoft test my hardware and software configuration before releasing a new version of Windows or Office or whatever product they built?" So someone at Microsoft, it sure wasn't me, sat down and calculated how long it would take to do that. The answer came back that the number of possible combinations approached infinity and that assumed all hardware and software development was frozen during the testing. So Microsoft could, and would, test with a very limited number of software combinations on a handful of hardware configurations and left the rest up to the will of the computing Gods and the companies building the hardware.

Apple, on the other hand, recognized the impossibility of the task very early on and chose to limit their risk by tightly controlling the hardware side of the equation. As others in this thread have noted, "Apple is a hardware company". The advent of the i-devices with their plethora of apps and and Apple's understandable desire/requirement for reliability resulted in the iTunes App store where Apple can at least test every apps in isolation before allowing them to be installed on the iPhone or iPad. At least partly as a result of that, the iPhone and iPad have had very few software conflicts or problems.

It seems to me the MAS is a logical extension of that thinking. Unlike the iPhone and iPad you can still purchase applications directly from the developer and install them on your Mac. In fact if you have the app already installed the MAS will recognize that it is installed but it will not allow you to reinstall or update it through the app store. Neither are you forced to accept an update for any app purchased through the MAS. It might be nice to have an archive and install option, but it is easy enough to simply right click on the app and select "compress" from the context menu. As far as I can tell so far all of the installs are simple drag and drop with the addition of "authorizing" the install with the MAS.

If Apple should decide to go with the MAS as their only means of distribution Apple apps, what is wrong with that? It saves Apple and the consumer money and time. I can't remember how long it has been since I purchased software on a CD/DVD from any vendor. Virtually everything on my Macs has been through electronic download. Yes I do burn a CD/DVD of the download image of major apps, but I have never used one of the burned copies. The one or two times I have had to go back a version, Time Machine, has handled the chore quickly and easily. In fact now that I think of it, between time Machine and MAS the necessity of burning a copy is pretty well obviated. I can always go back to the source or back in time.

In short, it seems to me that rather than isolate users who like to control their own destiny, Apple is doing a pretty good job of accommodating those who like to control their own destiny as well as those who lack either the knowledge or desire to do so. Certainly the MAS will make my support of several technophobe Mac users a LOT easier.

Having said all that, I am not sure that Apple has all the kinks worked out of the MAS. I am still having issues installing some apps and some updates.

What's wrong with that is the fact that MAS is limited to Intel Macs running Snow Leopard. Right now there are still too many pre-snowy PPC Macs in that cooling bathwater to cavalierly throw out.

I'll add to that by reiterating how TextWrangler at MAS is (somewhat) crippled.

> Unlike the iPhone and iPad you can still purchase applications directly from the developer and install them on your Mac.

I've run across any number of apps that can be d/l'ed only from the Mac App Store, and, conversely, I've spoken to developers who seem to be unaware that they can go in both directions at the same time.

I wonder if there's some sort of breakdown in communication going on.

> In fact if you have the app already installed the MAS will recognize that it is installed but it will not allow you to reinstall or update it through the app store.

Isn't that contradicted by Ira's


> As far as I can tell so far all of the installs are simple drag and drop with the addition of "authorizing" the install with the MAS.

And that seems to be contradicted by Ira's


> It might be nice to have an archive and install option, but it is easy enough to simply right click on the app and select "compress" from the context menu.

True, but that requires an extra step (or two or three) that users have to remember to perform (and that's ignoring apps that write to /Library and can't be archived); I view Apple's not having built A & I into App Store.app as criminally negligent hubris.

> [i]If Apple should decide to go with the MAS as their only means of distribution Apple apps, what is wrong with that?

Aside from Hals' comment about TextWrangler (which I must assume applies to other apps as well), I guess it all comes down to clarification of how the Mac App Store actually works.

Personally, I'm running more than a handful of legacy apps simply because I do not like their "new & improved" versions for assorted reasons, and if the MAS won't facilitate that, count me out.

Maybe I wasn't as clear as I should have been, and maybe I simply should have coined a new term, but the Mac user experience has evolved into something that, as you've pointed out, wasn't even dreamt of in 1993.


Every ad tag-line is some degree of truth (well...not always) embellished by some degree of hucksterism, and although there's no way I'd ever begin to suggest that "It just works" is 100% hucksterism, because that just isn't so, neither will I say that it's 0% hucksterism.

Under any circumstances, though, what I did say was that you're in trouble when you swallow your own hucksterism, regardless of degree.

> I'd love to see a parse tree for that sentence.

I've never run across the term, but I assume that a parse tree is the same as a sentence diagram, so, anticipating the 1st day of next X-mas...

Oh, get real.

I was just thinking... will we start seeing ad-supported apps on the app store, like we see on the itms?

Speaking as a shareware developer...

A lot of developers really like the App Store because it means they don't have to pay for their own bandwidth, maintain their own ecommerce systems, host the app for download themselves, track and send out customer records, and so on, and so on.

That kind of stuff is surprisingly tedious, difficult, and expensive. Apple handles everything from hosting to bandwidth to customer records (you'd be surprised how many folks register my software and then email me six months later to say they've lost the serial number; with App Store purchases, I as a developer would not have to deal with that).

Apple charges 30% of each transaction as their cut. That might sound like a lot, but many developers I know are more than happy to pay it. If as a developer you want to go your own route, your choices are to go through PayPal (which takes a smaller cut, but is sometimes finicky and problematic), get your own credit card merchant account and payment gayeway (which is what I do--it's cheap but there are a huge number of hoops you have to jump through, and you're responsible for maintaining your ecommerce software, payment gateway, and so on, plus keeping on top of security, maintaining compliance with the PCI security requirements, keeping on top of patches and security updates for your software, and so on, and so on), or you can go with a remote-hosted shopping cart who will do that all for you...and probably charge you, err, 30% of your transactions as their fee.

If you have a popular app, the bandwidth bills can add up fast. If you want to sell through your own merchant account, you'll still pay transaction fees, plus merchant accounts are extraordinarily difficult to get for companies that have not been in business for many years. When you actually start looking at it, the Apple App Store starts to look like one hell of a good deal.

If I could distribute though the app store, I would. I continue going my own way only because my apps don't meet Apple's requirements--therein is the rub, at least for me.

A very detailed and enlightening post.
Thanks.

And now we can read it twice.

Thanks for the excellent analysis of the "deal."

(But you've overlooked my real question...whether developers can go in both directions, i.e. sell their apps through the Mac App Store and independently?)

OK... Criminally negligent reality.

Developers can and are pursuing MAS and independent marketing paths for the same products at the same time. Depending on the choice of the developer there may or may not be functional differences between the MAS and independent versions. One other obvious and expected difference is the DRM method used between the two.

Yep, they sure can. There's nothing in the Apple Store Ts & Cs that prohibit that at all, and in fact quite a few developers do do this.

I can understand why many developers, especially smaller developers, would choose not to, for the reasons I list above. I reckon it's very tempting, once you're in the Apple App store, to just want to go hands-off and let Apple send you a check every month. And the App Store is large enough that even after Apple's 30% cut, that check might still be bigger than what you could do on your own.

That's actually a danger I see in the App Store model, to be honest. Not that Apple will come in and take over Mac app sales by imposing draconian terms on developers or forcing people to stop selling through other channels, but simply that they will make it so easy and convenient to use the App Store that a lot of developers will simply decide they don't want the hassle of selling software on their own.

That might create a situation where Apple, without aggressively trying to force developers to use the App Store, will end up with de facto control over Mac software sales anyway. As more and more apps appear on the App Store, it gets more and more traffic. That makes it more and more attractive to other developers, who may choose to put their apps onto the App Store simply for the exposure, and once there may decide that it isn't worth the bother to try to maintain their own Web sites or distribution channels.

There will always be some developers who don't go the App Store route, and there will always be developers who do both, but I think the App Store model may become so attractive to developers that it starts strangling off other software distribution channels without having (or needing!) any rules or prohibitions against developers selling their apps outside of it.

> I think the App Store model may become so attractive to developers that it starts strangling off other software distribution channels without having (or needing!) any rules or prohibitions against developers selling their apps outside of it.

Thanks for your insightful post.

I find the above quote interesting; I sounds like it suggests the possibility of a trust that may not violate any antitrust laws.

It took me some time to get MAS working correctly (see my thread in the OS X 10.6 forum) but I have come to really like the convenience of MAS. Some of the salient features are:

• Pro
  1. After purchasing an application, it can be redownloaded as many times as needed but all trace of the app has to be removed from the system including any copies on other mounted volumes before redownloading will be allowed. If you also use Time Machine this obviates any need to keep download backups.
  2. The app can be downloaded and installed on up to five "authorized" Macs at no additional cost. Ie. all purchases are essentially "family pack".
  3. The entire purchase and install process could not be easier. Tracking and obtaining updates for MAS purchases is easy to do especially for the technophobe
• Con
  1. Moving a downloaded App to another folder requires admin password authorization
  2. There is no "trial" download and install available
  3. The entire purchase and install process could not be easier -- perhaps leading to spending more money on apps than you intended
• Wish List
  1. I wish some of the more popular open source apps such as NeoOffice, and GIMP were included, but that might create some nasty licensing issues.
  2. I wish trial downloads were possible
  3. I wish some of the application descriptions were more fulsome. It is hard to figure out what some of them do and the screenshots are often not that much help.

Yep, it does create some nasty licensing issues, though not from the perspective of Apple. Many open source licenses, including the GNU open-source license, require that any software distributed under the license be "freely redistributable." Since you can't simply copy apps downloaded from the MAS from one machine to another, that violates the free redistribution clause of the GNU license, so the GNU licenses forbids distributing those apps in the app store. (The VLC iPhone app was pulled from the iPhone app store for that reason.)

Plus, it costs money to put apps in the store, even if they are distributed for free. If you're already an open source developer distributing apps for free, you might not want to pony up for your app store fee.

To change the subject a bit, I wonder if the degree of control over MAS apps that Apple is maintaining suggests that similar control over OS X is on the horizon, possibly even beginning with Lion?

Unlikely. On the one hand, Apple wants to control software in the app store to preserve their market position (hence the ban on apps that significantly duplicate Apple's own apps) and Apple's image (hence the controls on user interface and on content like sex).

However, the success of any platform depends on people finding what they want, and that often means iPhoto workalikes and porn. Attempting to control consumer electronics devices like the iPhone is one thing; trying to control the way a desktop general-purpose computer is another.

America Online succeeded in large part because of the sex chat rooms. The Mac succeeds in large part because of the huge library of apps that includes things that Apple doesn't like, from user interface modifications like WindowShade to sex games to browsers like Firefox.

From a benefit standpoint, Apple's greatest gain is a huge and successful, but tightly controlled, app store that promotes popular software in one place and also offers Apple a steady revenue stream, while at the same time also encouraging a thriving software ecosystem that offers owners alternate ways to get software that Apple doesn't want to make available in the App Store. I think it'd actually work against Apple to try to control the desktop systems more.

But then again, Apple *did* make the hockey puck mouse, so sometimes they do foolish things...

If you combine with you get
That said, can you tell us if your experience is that developers are offering trial d/l's?

Many commercial developers offer trial downloads including such big names as

• Adobe
• BareBones software
• Bento by Filemaker
• Filemaker Pro by Filemaker
• I could go on down the alphabet but this should be enough to prove my point.

If you want to get into small developers and shareware it would probably be easier to list the ones that do NOT offer some sort of a trial download.

Trialware could be tricky to integrate into the current management, but surely free demos would be simple to do? Like the free apps we see already on ITMS? Where you've got so many titles with "xyz LITE" and "xyz full/pro".

And a lot of the time the only difference between the LITE and full versions is one is ad supported and the other is bought and has no ads.

From a developer standpoint, releasing and maintaining two codebases is something of a pain in the ass, even if they share a lot in common. And you have to go through the submitting and review process twice to get 'em both in the app store.

In the past, nearly all trialware and shareware, from my own little programs all the way up to Adobe Photoshop, has had a single program that you download and install, and if you like it you buy a serial number that unlocks it or extends the trial period or whatever whatever.

Unfortunately, that model doesn't really work with the App Store system very well; the App Store system requires a payment up front, before download, so downloading a free app which you then go to the developer's web site to pay for and unlock actually violates the App Store Ts & Cs (for obvious reasons).

What *could* be done, though I haven't seen it personally yet, is you could use Apple's in-app-purchase API; you'd download a free version of the software, then to register/unlock it you'd make your payment via the app's own in-app purchase system. That'd require a bit more coding, but probably less than maintaining two separate apps.

is it possible to have a "registrator" application? So for example you could have xyz app and xyz pro. The app is a trial/free/etc, and the pro is ONLY an app to indicate the xyz is registered. then you put the full price on the pro app and it can remain relatively or completely static as you make changes/updates to the main app? The presence of the pro app on the device causes the app to become the full version.

Possible? Sure, though I can think of some ways to defeat it fairly easily. The biggest problem I see, though, is that it wouldn't be intuitive for the user. I think that an in-app purchase would be a lot more seamless, and I'm a bit surprised I haven't seen it yet.