I wonder how many of the people that are upset here, own an iPhone. My guess would be, a lot.
Why do people think it's ok on the iPhone (which i assume they think, because they bought it in the first place), but are upset when such things would come to OS X?<p>I think, this blog entry is not based on real information, but i think it would be in the spirit of Steve Jobs. So, i'd not be as surprised as most people, i guess.<p>All hail to more censorship, closed systems and external control!
I think an App Store for OS X would be an excellent idea. One of the main reasons I used to port my games to OS X was that promotion on Apple's website would bring in $20k+, well worth the cost of a port. An App Store would only increase the incentive develop for OS X.<p>A <i>mandatory</i> App Store, like this article suggests? Like younata said, that would be insane.
I'd actually like to see desktop app stores become popular. We've had them in the Linux world for years, though there's no mechanism for payment. Ninite gets us partway there on Windows, but it's still crude compared to apt.<p>I can't imagine any desktop OS vendor locking down the system though.
It's not all that far fetched in one form or another. If we started to see a significant amount of malware for OSX I bet Apple would strongly consider it. I look at the issue with Mcaffee last week, and the Microsoft BSOD inducing update on infected machines earlier this year, as an untenable situation. Computers can't just stop working randomly or become exploited this easily. I would hope we could find a better solution but if open platforms continue to be plagued by these problems it's almost inevitable we'll see a shift towards locked down platforms in the future. We've already seen Microsoft move in this direction carefully with WHQL certified drivers. Who knows? In 5-10 years Linux might be the only open platform left. It's only going to take one major catastrophe to put the pressure on Microsoft, Apple, etc to lock down. Add in some government saber rattling and fear over "cyber warfare" and it's a done deal.
iPad/iPhone/iPod touch are mainly content consumption devices, that is why Apple locks them down. So even the most technologically ignorant person can use them worry free and not end up with all the issues like they've had with Windows and even sometimes OSX machines.<p>OSX machines are REAL computers that let you do whatever you want. And OSX is mature, you won't be seeing many changes to it besides those that trickle up from kernel optimizations that occur on the iPhoneOS platform (Apple has moved many devs over from OSX to iPhoneOS).<p>An app store may be in the cards for OSX, but app lock out (locking out anything except app store apps) is not going to happen. If Apple did something like this, it would kill a large portion of their creative, scientific and development market. It will just be an easy application distribution system for those who want to a more convenient way to buy software (and for developers who are willing to give Apple a cut for this convenience).
As long as they don't lock things just like the iPhone, and I'm sure it's quite impossible. Because we can run official developer tools on the Mac.<p>Mac is the only device left that we could tinker without paying contracts, etc.
<i>No software will be able to run on Mac OS X 10.7 without being approved and signed by Apple, Inc.</i><p>Remember when we used to own our computers?<p>Time to sell my Apple stock and donate the money to a Linux distro.
Well, it might work for them if the admission rules were less strict than in the mobile App Store.<p>And the mobile App Store turned out to be very profitable.