by aussiegall
Why the Mac App Store is such a priority for Apple
[Via RoughlyDrafted Magazine]
Apple not only announced plans to open a Mac version of its App Store, but slated an aggressive target to begin selling titles within three months. Here’s why it’s so important to the company.
[More]
IOS on Macintosh, Day 2
[Via Scripting News]
There’s been a trickle of other blogs picking up on the idea.
Why??
Why would Apple want to do this? To create as large a market as possible for IOS apps.
Why do they care about that? Well, they make a lot of money selling those apps. That’s a pretty good reason all on its own.
But even more important, for Apple, any developer energy that’s applied to an Apple platform is energy that isn’t applied to a Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Blackberry, Nokia platform.
I probably left someone out. Oh yea. The web.
[More]
Daniel – the first post – and Dave – the second post – both hit on the importance of the App store on the Mac. Daniel provides a nice history of why Apple wants to have software that does not break its heart. He demonstrates how the App store for the Mac will highlight Apple’s strategy of controlling its own future by having a big say in the software for its hardware.
Dave then expands on this strategy, discussing how the App store is especially important for the new mobile laptops like the Macbook Air.
First, as Dave pointed out in an earlier post, the goal of Apple is not so much to put iOS on the desktop – although that will happen – but to have it on notebooks like the Air. The Air then becomes an iPad with a keyboard that can create much of its own content.
It highlights the laptop as just another type of mobile device. And where are the competitors for this new device? Netbooks might but they are hampered by a desktop OS and are in no shape to have the sort of App ecosystem Mac laptops will be able to access.
Now we have a fully integrated set of mobile devices, from the ultraportable iPod Touch and iPhone, to the moderately portable but wonderfully interactive iPad to the stupendously creative Macbook Air. The Stores all act to sell the hardware Apple makes its profits on. And each device has access to a software ecosystem tuned just for it.
And, as Dave again points out, if developers are putting their efforts into creating software that they can easily sell across multiple mobile devices with hardly any reconfiguring, why would they put efforts into other OS that require a separate effort for each device?
There are only so many development projects a company can focus on. The big guys will focus on the markets with the biggest bang for the buck. That will be the iOS set of mobile devices. Others will be an afterthought.
The OS App stores create opportunity costs for any effort not geared to those stores.
It used to be that Windows is where much of the great new software – ie games – was developed and then we might see some of it over on the Mac. Not anymore.
There might be some smaller developers that start in the free and open waters of other platforms but they will always have an eye on the much bigger and easier market of iOS, where your new app could easily be found on any type of mobile devices people use.
A Man With A Ph.D. 