programmers to reach a large audience. But some developers worry about Apple’s future road map, and the potential the App Store has to turn the Mac platform into a more closed, controlled environment subject entirely to Apple’s whims.

“I wonder when Apple will stop shipping Safari,” said Mike Beltzner, director of the Firefox browser at the Mozilla foundation. “It’s obvious already from [Wednesday's] keynote that they’re looking to bypass the web.”

Apple in a press conference Wednesday announced that the next-generation Mac operating system, Mac OS X Lion, will launch with a Mac App Store similar to the iOS App Store serving its mobile devices. Steve Jobs said the company was planning to take lessons from mobile and weave their benefits into the Mac platform.

When the Mac app store opens, users will be able to automatically install apps and seamlessly run updates whenever they’re available, just like on the iPhone. Apps downloaded through the Mac app store will load in a quick-launch tool, similar to the springboard interface of the iPhone and iPad.

Most Apple developers seem thrilled about the opportunity to sell their wares through an online Mac store, but some have dissenting views. Here are the pros and cons of a Mac app store, gathered from brief conversations with programmers.

More money, more innovation

The Mac app store presents an opportunity for programmers to reach an audience of 50 million Mac customers (for comparison, that’s about half the size of the audience of iOS users). That could amount to hot sales for Mac apps and a few lucky success stories, like the few we reported on when the iOS App Store was young.

Just as the App Store did with the iPhone, we can expect a wave of new programmers opting to make apps for the Mac. As a result, customers will get thousands of Mac apps enabling Mac computers to do things we never even thought about.

“I think it can breathe some new life into Mac software,” said John Casasanta, partner of the MacHeist software bundle.

App discoverability

Even though the idea of a Mac app store is to create a one-stop-shop for all your third-party software, it won’t necessarily make it easy to find apps.

In the case of the iOS App Store, discoverability is still a problem. The list of best-selling apps is the easiest way to find apps, but otherwise the App Store doesn’t provide an adequate method to sift through the other 300,000 apps. You have to do as much research to find the right software as you would searching the web for third-party apps.

If the Mac app store accumulates a large number of apps (and it sounds like it will), customers will likely face the same paradox of choice.

A race to the bottom or top?

The iOS App Store currently serves about 300,000 apps, but many agree that the majority of offerings in the store are sub-par, and are priced at 99 cents or less. Many are even free, and offer minimal value that corresponds to their cheap price.

Casasanta wonders if we’ll see a similar “race to the bottom” with the Mac app store. However, he said he was more optimistic about the Mac app store, because the Mac developer community long ago established standards for quality. As a result, he thinks Mac users will see a plethora of quality software.

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Authors: Brian X. Chen

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