So I recently made some purchases through Apple’s Mac App store. Overall I think it’s a good system, particularly for those developers without strong marketing and distribution channels. The net benefit for the world is positive, although I wouldn’t want app stores like this to be the only way of buying and distributing software.
Here’s a quick list of pros and cons, followed up with my “huh…this could change everything” realization.
Pros:
– Purchases are amazingly easy and generally painless.
– instant gratification (click, purchase, download, and go)
– easy to keep apps up to date
– curated experience means good exposure to new/useful apps while (so far) keeping malware out
– App Stores – not just the Mac App store – provide economic impetus to develop for the Apple ecosystem, meaning more cool apps for Mac OS/iOS
Mixed:
– walled garden – it’s nice and pretty, but sometimes you want to break out…
Cons:
– the store is difficult to search
– for a “curated” experience, the store still has a lot of “this passed review?” kind of apps
– broadband is a necessity, particularly for larger apps
And now for the “this can change everything” realization. So most software licenses basically tie the software to a machine, device, and sometimes even by CPU. Under the App Store, once you purchase software, it is licensed to your App store user account. This means you buy software once and can use it anywhere (after logging into the App store and installing the app under your App store user account). It’s basically a floating license (I’m looking at you, Luxology Modo). This makes perfect sense to me – the machine doesn’t matter – it’s not licensing the software. The user though…they matter a lot, they’re the ones licensing the software. I eagerly await for this licensing model to become the norm because it has the potential to change everything.