Mac App Store launched

[Antony]

As promised, Apple launched the Mac App Store with more than 1,000 free and paid apps available to all Snow Leopard users via the Mac OS X 10.6.6 update. The Mac App Store promises an experience similar to the iOS App Store, with the ability to seamlessly buy and install software through an iTunes account.

The Mac App Store offers apps in Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity, Utilities and other categories. Users can browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what’s hot, see staff favorites, search categories and look up top charts for paid and free apps, as well as user ratings and reviews.



Entirely new apps, as well as current Mac favorites, are available from developers such as Autodesk, Ancestry.com and Boinx. iPhoto®, iMovie® and GarageBand® apps from Apple’s popular iLife® ‘11 suite are available individually in the Mac App Store for $14.99 each, and Pages®, Keynote® and Numbers® apps from iWork® are available for $19.99 each. Aperture® 3, Apple’s powerful photo editing and management software, is available for $79.99.

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[Pu7o]

Hmm... How does this work exactly? Say, if I were to buy iWork there and later had to reinstall the operating system, would I be able to redownload it, or would I have to buy it all over again?

Also, this doesn't stop apps from being installed the normal way (i.e. from a CD or a regular download), does it?

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[Antony]

Hmm... How does this work exactly? Say, if I were to buy iWork there and later had to reinstall the operating system, would I be able to redownload it, or would I have to buy it all over again?

You can re-download it. It is just like the App Store on iTunes Store. As long as you keep your Apple ID for the account.

Also, this doesn't stop apps from being installed the normal way (i.e. from a CD or a regular download), does it?

You can still get the apps from the traditional way.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13

[DJGM]

While it's mainly based upon the same premise behind the App Store for iPhone/iPad, it does look
quite similar to the "click 'n' run" software repositories available on some flavours of Linux.

The main difference as I see it, is that while the Mac App Store appears somewhat more polished,
and a lot more commercialised than the Linux "click 'n' run" offerings, with the addition of apps
you have to pay a few £/$/€ for, rather than it being nothing but free software.

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