The Mac AppStore (MAS) is coming to a Mac near you on the 6th January 2011, but is it going to change the software landscape on the Mac forever ?

Number of applications:

If there is one thing that we can be sure of, it is that the number of applications available for Mac OS will increase due to the introduction of the MAS. There will be iOS developers jumping on board (who are in for a shock when they see NSTableView), and also developers coming “Back to the Mac” after spending some time doing iOS development.

Quality of applications:

Quality and Quantity are two very different things. Just because the quantity of applications increases, that doesn’t mean that the number of high quality applications (that we have come to expect on the Mac) will increase accordingly. I (unfortunately) think that there will be a lot of substandard applications released for the Mac, simply because of the MAS making distribution easier. I do however think that there will be a few gems uncovered because of it.

Price of applications:

When the Mac AppStore was first announced, developers contemplated raising their prices to compensate for Apple taking a 30% cut of the revenue (compared to <10% for most other providers), now developers are thinking the opposite … lets lower prices. I don’t think that this will be as extreme as the “race to the bottom” on the iOS AppStore, as Mac applications usually take longer to build than there iOS equivalents. This is mainly because iOS has a more modern set of APIs, and on the Mac you have to support extras like Drag and Drop, Keyboard Shortcuts etc.

I think that Mac AppStore application pricing will fall into 4 main categories:

• < $5 - Simple single purpose applications
• $10 - Simple applications with an iOS sized feature set
• $20 - $40 Fully featured applications
• $40+ Professional applications like Microsoft Office, Adobe creative suite etc

Application Sales:

The simple fact is that people are more willing to give their payment details to Apple, rather than entering them on an indie developer’s website. If, and it is a big if, you get a prime place on the Mac AppStore (featured,top 25s etc) your sales are likely to be huge. For all the other applications on AppStore, time will only tell if it dramatically increases sales beyond the number of sales gained from the security of purchasing through Apple. I do believe however that non MAS sales will suffer a lot. The people that currently purchase applications online are likely to be “tech savy”, and therefore they will know about the MAS. Why would these users not switch to purchasing all of their applications through Apple ? the fact is they will.

Hello AppStore bye bye Serial codes:

There are a few benefits of distributing applications through the AppStore rather than handling distribution yourself. One of the major pains is payments and serials, which can take up a considerable amount of an application’s development time. This along with handling updates, is now removed from a developers workload with the introduction of the MAS, saving developers time and a lot of headaches.

Conclusion:

On the whole I can only see the Mac AppStore being a positive thing for Mac users and developers alike. Developers have a central place to sell their products from, and they don’t have to worry about getting it listed on numerous application sites. Users will have a an application (pre installed on their Mac !!!) which will allow them to search, view and securely purchase thousands of applications using just their Apple ID.

This could be a very big year for the Mac…