Random Apple Memory

The App Store was integral to the whole concept of apps, recalls Adam Banks, and the Mac version… wasn’t

The Mac App Store: from launch to the present day.

When the App Store arrived on the iPhone in 2008, it was to bring thirdparty software to a device that had launched with none, and to create a ‘walled garden’ for the only apps that users could install. None of this applied to the Mac, yet it seemed inevitable that its App Store would follow. Confirmation came at an October 2010 special event.

Noting that seven billion apps had been downloaded on the iPhone, Steve Jobs announced that Lion, the next update to Mac OS X, would have ‘a Mac App Store,’ paying the same 70% cut to developers, with apps downloaded to the new Launchpad screen. Delivered as a software update ahead of Lion, the Mac App Store would be the standard method for installing a new operating system.

Jobs’ assurance that this would be the ‘best place to discover apps’ got the attention of developers, for whom the move made obvious sense. Fortunes were being made on the App Store, and compared to the fragmented Mac software market, where new products had to hope to find users through blogs and adverts, it looked like the promised land. But apps that wanted to be included had to follow rules so stringent they excluded many popular products that were already on the market, and some worried that the Mac was also sliding into a walled garden.

When the Mac App Store opened on 6 January 2011, it saw a million downloads on the first day. Since then, however, Apple has released few figures. Users can still run unapproved apps, but any not registered to a developer ID are blocked and must be authorized with an Administrator login. With Mojave, Store developers get more leeway on some rules, but macOS updates move back out. Maybe the Mac App Store is happiest being nice-to-have, not must-have.