My development falls into the giant right circle and I never considered developing for the Mac OSX until after I created my first iOS game this month and learned of the Mac App Store opening in 3 months. Now it's as easy as reexporting higher resolution art from Illustrator and a few UIKit changes and I can redeploy my iOS game for Mac OSX and find myself in front of another large app hungry audience that will happily open their wallets.<p>I'll be one of the first in line to get on the Mac App Store when I've never before developed or sold software since this month. It is making is so darn easy to have a chance.
I think there is something missing from the analysis of iOS applications as entertainment. Not only can I show you my new Vuvuzela app while we're sitting in a bar, I can show it to the waitress, your girlfriend, and the guy sitting next to me. iOS apps are entertaining because they are social.<p>A macApp is less sharable than an emailed website link. Besides my dog who am I going annoy with my Vuvuzela? (so to speak).<p>I suspect that macApps will sell based on utility rather than entertainment and that the removal of flash and java are expected to generate much of the initial need.
I'd say this assessment is largely spot-on. By introducing the App Store, Apple could channel the large community of developers churning out commodity software for iOS towards the Mac. Now they just need to make porting from iOS to MacOS X really simple, and the ecosystem will flourish.<p>One addendum, though: Existing <i>applications</i> won't benefit from the App Store, yes. Existing Mac <i>developers</i>, though, probably will. If you know Cocoa forwards and backwards, then making little (store-exclusive!) apps isn't challenging, but potentially lucrative.
This is exactly what I was thinking while watching the Lion demo especially with the full screen applications. AppStore or no AppStore the average Mac user isn't going to impulse buy an expensive, complex, multi-function application without an obvious purpose communicated through 2 or 3 screenshots. The key to the Mac AppStore is going to be de-constructing these multi-function applications into smaller task focused tools with re-invented UIs (iOS stylized) at lower prices.
While I think Marco probably has it right long-term, I think he's actually pretty wrong in the short-term. The difficulty of porting an iOS app (or even writing a Mac app from scratch, given that a developer only has iOS experience) and the nature of the device (mobile is clearly a growing market--is the same true for the desktop?) means that I think we'll see a lot more trepidation in entering the Mac App Store.<p>Traditional Mac developers (Panic, Omni, etc.) will obviously move their apps onto the store, but I don't think we'll see a whole lot of new entries--most iOS apps don't neatly transition onto the desktop, besides some games. I know my couple iOS applications don't have an obvious Mac version, just as my Mac applications didn't have an obvious iOS version. If the Mac App Store is to reach anywhere near the popularity of the iOS App Store, it's going to take a long time for companies to decide that the desktop is even worth it.
<i>Will there be any good ways to “crossgrade” buyers from the retail edition of an app to the App Store edition without making them pay again in full? (My guess: No.)</i><p>You can gift someone an album on the iTunes Store. When you buy a DVD the DVD can "gift" you the iTunes version of the movie (<i>The Dark Knight</i> did this, though it just copied over from the disk). Why can't a software company gift someone an app on the Mac App Store when they buy the app elsewhere?
The mac app store is the end of an era. For a while the mac was the most user-centered AND developer-centered platform that existed. When I bought my first mac apple was actively recruiting developers by having free conferences around the US.<p>Apple has decided to go more in the user-centered direction then the developer-centered direction. This is definitely the right move for them. However it makes me a little sad, its the end of an error. Now I see linux as the developer centered OS with OS X as the most user-centered OS. Its a hard call to make.<p>Mostly I think I am harboring some resentment. "Back in my day we had to write our own licensing code, host a web payment code, and host autoupdates. All the kids these days do is launch the darn app." I think I almost believe its not fair.<p>I guess at the age of 24, I am running into one of the first big changes that I have to accept if I want to stay relevant. I knew this market changed quick, I just always assumed it would be in the way that I wanted it to change.