I'll be one of the first in line to get on the Mac App Store when I've never before developed or sold software since this month. It is making is so darn easy to have a chance.
Some games might make the transition relatively easily. A game that relies mostly on single points of touch has a somewhat decent analog with the mouse, but only if it relies on certain patterns of finger movement. A game that, for instance, involves alternating taps on opposite sides of the screen, would translate badly—it's nowhere near as easy to leap that distance precisely with a mouse as it is with your fingers. Can you imagine playing the iPhone classic Dactyl with a mouse?
That kind of difference is present all over in touch-based applications, in differing amounts. It's up to the developer to find what transitions well and what doesn't, but in most cases it won't be a trivial task.
It sometimes seems as though, as a consequence of all the strides made in bringing more serious OS support, better languages and much more coherent UI work to mobile phones in the last few years, many programmers have lost sight of the fact that these are still relatively low-powered embedded devices.
Apple has decided to go more in the user-centered direction then the developer-centered direction. This is definitely the right move for them. However it makes me a little sad, its the end of an error. Now I see linux as the developer centered OS with OS X as the most user-centered OS. Its a hard call to make.
Mostly I think I am harboring some resentment. "Back in my day we had to write our own licensing code, host a web payment code, and host autoupdates. All the kids these days do is launch the darn app." I think I almost believe its not fair.
I guess at the age of 24, I am running into one of the first big changes that I have to accept if I want to stay relevant. I knew this market changed quick, I just always assumed it would be in the way that I wanted it to change.
If anything, the creation of yet another possible revenue channel only makes the OS more friendly to me, not less.
"Back in my day, we had to roll our own blitter if we wanted to do anything serious" could also be said, but that doesn't mean modern graphics libraries and hardware are less developer friendly. Eliminating the need to do repetitive grunt-work is always a good thing.
- Apple decides which apps go and which don't.
- I have to read a list of rules to know if I can actually sell my application
- Apple takes 30% of my money.
- Apple decides what programming language I can use.
I thought it was agreed upon that the app store is not overall good for developers.
And there's probably a lot of overlap in fact. If iOS is the client, I think it's a pretty good bet Linux is the server.
Traditional Mac developers (Panic, Omni, etc.) will obviously move their apps onto the store, but I don't think we'll see a whole lot of new entries--most iOS apps don't neatly transition onto the desktop, besides some games. I know my couple iOS applications don't have an obvious Mac version, just as my Mac applications didn't have an obvious iOS version. If the Mac App Store is to reach anywhere near the popularity of the iOS App Store, it's going to take a long time for companies to decide that the desktop is even worth it.
You can gift someone an album on the iTunes Store. When you buy a DVD the DVD can "gift" you the iTunes version of the movie (The Dark Knight did this, though it just copied over from the disk). Why can't a software company gift someone an app on the Mac App Store when they buy the app elsewhere?
EDIT: What I don't understand is why there's a need to do so anyway. If I recall correctly, there's no such thing for Steam, and game developers have long sold applications both in retail and via Steam with no problem. Supporting two separate applications (one with the traditional purchase and one via the App Store) shouldn't be too difficult, especially if the developer switches over to App Store-exclusive when it hits. He'll simply have to continue to perform upgrades/support however they were before, but will be able to ditch their old payment processing entirely.
...of which you get 70% back if you're gifting people your own product. So it really costs you 30%.
A macApp is less sharable than an emailed website link. Besides my dog who am I going annoy with my Vuvuzela? (so to speak).
I suspect that macApps will sell based on utility rather than entertainment and that the removal of flash and java are expected to generate much of the initial need.
This is an area where the Mac has been weak for more than a decade. Imagine an environment that allows you to purchase a multiplayer networked version of Civilization: Revolutions (or Quake or Plants vs Zombies or a dungeon crawler version of Dragon Age) for $20 and you can play it while sitting at your desk, on the couch with your iPad or out in the world on your phone.
Given the popularity of cheap apps and casual gaming, I expect the App Store turns into a Jobsian version of Steam.
An issue with the iPad and iPhone for serious gaming is that unlike a wii controller, neither is replaceable for $25 after an over enthusiastic gaming session (durability in general is also an issue).
From a business standpoint, I'm not sure how well games fit into Apple's strategy. The market for sophisticated games is mature and growth would mostly come from capturing increasing market share rather than an expanding market and small games are easily delivered to the desktop via the web. The life cycle of a game is also much longer than a movie.
One addendum, though: Existing applications won't benefit from the App Store, yes. Existing Mac developers, though, probably will. If you know Cocoa forwards and backwards, then making little (store-exclusive!) apps isn't challenging, but potentially lucrative.
