My thoughts on the Mac App Store

This post proves that this is not a newsy blog.

A few weeks ago, I upgraded my MacBook Pro to Mac OS 10.6.6. With this upgrade, came AppStore.app, the desktop equivalent to the App Store that’s been a large part of the success of iOS. My first impression was “this looks like Novia’s Ovi Store” — it shows a lot of applications and very little information. Looking around, it seems pretty easy to use, but I can’t see myself ever using it.

After years of installing software via `yum install $package`. I got some flak on Twitter for saying this, but the flak was crap. First, I wouldn’t expect anyone to read the man pages for a GUI app on any platform. That’s what the built-in documentation is for (and if it doesn’t exist, that’s a serious bug in the program). Secondly, I wasn’t even talking about the interface. It’s more the idea of paying for the software. Not out of greed, but out of the philosophical feelings about FLOSS.

That having been said, I think the App Store is pretty great overall. My big complaint about Mac OS X is the lack of a package management system. The ability to easily keep packages up to date is a serious strength of Linux distributions, and things like MacPorts and Fink don’t really cut it for casual users. I hope that Apple does the un-Apple thing and makes it more accessible to developers. In the meantime, it’s a great and overdue addition.

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