Apple's MAS effect

Photo / Apple Inc

The Mac App Store (MAS) arrives 6th January - that's Thursday US time, which means we will get the news on our Friday.

There is speculation that it will sell apps at bargain prices, which hasn't exactly been the Apple norm.

I often think this kind of speculation is more wishful thinking than anything else, but the arrival of the Mac App Store posits several scenarios. One is that developers may be OK with selling lower priced software through an online Apple Store, as they'll save on the cost of CDs/DVDs (masters, manufacture, packaging and distribution).

Developers may rush to be represented on the App Store, since it will get loads of press and could have a similar effect on application (software) development as that enjoyed by iOS App developers. This is the best-case scenario because it would mean Mac users get cheaper software, delivered with aplomb, and software which may potentially be vetted to fit Apple's software design guidelines.

Along with this, developers would get a good monetary deal despite lowered prices, as they do with the App Store, and as musicians get with the iTunes Store (if some record companies weren't so rapacious, anyway). Apple hands over revenue margins that are high by any standards, while raking off a healthy percentage for its efforts.

All of the above would spur application development like never before on the Mac platform. The release of free taster and/or beta versions (also a là the App Store) would further spur interest in Mac software and garner feedback to those developers in an Agile way, and more than anything else, this might finally give Apple gaming a real kick up the ... in the pants.

This is all win, win, win. Win.

Apple has posted resources for intending MAS developers, btw:

Apple's iOS App Store has definitely been a winner. Apple may pass the 500,000 apps in-store milestone soon after mid-2011, based on current data, and if current rates of submission keep at the present level. Having (unofficially) passed 325,000 active titles as of December 26 2010, the App Store is now seeing 25,421 apps submitted per month, App Store watcher 148Apps posted.

If all those pending apps were approved, Apple would exceed the half-million iOS Apps tally near the end of June.

The xverse blog reckons there will be iOS 800,000 app developers by WWDC, which is also in June - the site has many other predictions. (If you like tech predictions, read them - I shy away from making them, myself.)

Not only that, but virtually all of those iOS apps have been developed on Macs using Apple dev kits - that represents a lot of Mac-using and Mac savvy developers out there ready potentially for making Mac OS applications.

Another scenario, though, may be grimmer.

Realmac Software's blog reckons plenty of developers have been posting that they'll keep selling their US$50+ apps at the same price. Realmac wishes them the best of luck with that, because "the App Store has a habit of shaking things up, and we think that's exactly what'll happen with the Mac. We're dead certain that there's going to be [US]99¢ apps available at launch." That would be about ... you guessed it, NZ$1.29.

But the Realmac blog reckons that, if it's right on price (which I doubt), most won't be much good - at least soon after launch.

The blog concludes positively, but the writer also reckons it may be the end of 'upgrade prices' on the Mac platform, since Apple has already been selling the latest iLife suite with no upgrade discount offered, just a whole new suite for a good price. Well-priced, a reason to update becomes pretty compelling despite no upgrade discount from a previous version.

The awaited update to iWork is widely expected to be the first big application Apple will use as the flagship, new MAS offering.
Non Apple items visible in a screenshot on Apple's Mac App Store site was showing three non Apple offerings already, a couple of days before the roll-out - these were Roll 'em, Color Studio and Fast Lane.

Apple will be including the App Store by default in Mac OS X Lion, the next version of the operating system (AKA OS X 10.7) which ships 'soon'. Other than that, I guess it'll be some kind of downloadable thing, or perhaps added as a facet of iTunes in a free update.

(Will that mean that Apple can sell Windows' apps for those PC users of iTunes? And for those using Windows on their Macs? Well, why not? But I have heard not a whisper on that idea.)

Either way, Macintosh apps will be thrust into the mainstream. The Realmac Software's blog writer(s) reckons that new Mac applications - as has been the story with iOS apps - will become more focussed than those offered up till now. The trend to offer "every option under the sun" in a Mac app will be changed by a need to slim down, if just for bandwidth reasons if for nothing else, with feature sets much more focussed on offering the majority of users that most important feature.
And less code bloat is always good.

But Markus Nigrin on The Pocket Cyclone reckons iOS developers will mostly adopt the same price points and the same strategies for the Mac as iOS App developers have, with long term prices calculated on a similar level as their iOS apps. Nigrin polled several developers in his speculative post.

He reckons Mac Users should expect great software that's constantly cycled with better features, low prices, simple one-click purchasing, charts, reviews and "all the good stuff."

We'll know soon enough.

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com