Apple Announces Next OS X Iteration, Mountain Lion

Seemingly out of nowhere, at least for me for which this announcement jumped out me as I was browsing Cult of Mac, Apple has announced today the next version of OS X, to be dubbed Mountain Lion.

Delving into the details of the upgrade, Apple is continuing the process of migrating iOS applications and features back to the Mac. Most notable is the new Messaging app, Notification Center, operating system wide Twitter integration, and GameCenter. Messaging completely replaces iChat, much like Facetime allowing communication between your Mac and any iOS device. In fact, Apple has made the beta version of the application available here. Notifications Center finally provides a native notifications application/system, apparently almost identical to how it appears and operates on iOS. It will definitely be interesting to see how quickly developers get on board, as well as how the system competes with the current notifications solution for Mac users Growl. iOS 5 introduced full Twitter integration to the mobile operating system, and now that integration has found it's way to the Mac. Finally, there isn't too much to say on GameCenter past the unification it allows between desktop and mobile iOS gaming.

While I'm giddy at the thought of a new iteration of OS X, that feeling get's spoiled by the feeling that this upgrade feels, at least to me, to be coming far too soon. The current version of OS X, Lion, has only been publicly available for less than a year. It will be closer to a year by Mountain Lion's release, but that is a ridiculously short amount of time before essentially making it obsolete.

Apple Could Very Well Eliminate HTC From The US

Apparently Apple stands on the verge of forcing the world's largest Android-based phone manufacturers out of the United States market. According to Cult of Mac:

"The Washington, DC-based U.S. Trade Commission Tuesday rules on HTC’s appeal of a July decision that the company’s Android phones violated two Apple patents. The two patents allow smartphones to display and transmit basic data, such as phone numbers, contact information and applications."


A ruling against HTC stands the string possibility of outright banning sales, and such a ruling couldn't come at a worse time as holiday season is upon us. This potential ban could mean a great diminishment of Android's market share in the US from where it stands at twenty five percent.

The original article can be read here.

What are your thoughts?

The Sandboxing Issue

To increase security for an already incredibly secure Lion, Apple is requiring application developers who have their applications on sale in the Mac App Store to comply with a new rule requiring the usage of Lion's new sandboxing feature inspired by iOS. Sandboxing means that an application is partitioned off from the operating system and other applications running on the system, which means that an application is completely prevented from having any unauthorized interaction with other applications and the operating system itself. The problem is, however, this isolation from the system itself and everything else running on the system means that functionality for many applications will be crippled.

Initially the deadline for the enforcement of this new rule was the first of November, but Apple opted to give developers a little more breathing room by extending the deadline until March first next year. While many developers have complied with this new rule and have re-submitted their applications, it's clear by the deadline extension that many others are resistent to this new requirement.

While the desire for increased security is understandable, Apple's push for sandboxing on OS X makes very little sense. Sure some applications make the transition completely unaltered, but others require access to other applications meaning that several key features and functions could get the axe. Of course there is no stopping a user from leaving the safe confines of the App Store and combing through the vast wilderness of the interent to find an application that suits their needs, but again, the point of the App Store is to be the primary place that users rely on to locate applications.

What are your thoughts?

Apple Among The Few Who Pays Their Fair Share

I'm sure most of you are familiar with the Occupy Wall Street protests that have been going on around the country, demanding that corporations and executives and the rich in general pay their fair share in taxes which most don't). According to Cult of Mac, Apple is among the few giant tech companies that do indeed pay their fair share in taxes. Quoted from Cult of Mac's post:

"The report by advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice and nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, checked the financial statements of 280 corporations on the Fortune 500 list. Of those, 30 paid no federal taxes over the previous three years, the groups charge. Among Silicon Valley, both Apple and Intel paid a 31 percent corporate tax, while Internet retail giant Amazon.com paid only a 7.9 percent tax rate on $1.8 billion in profits between 2008 to 2010."

I've gotta say, it's pretty shocking how few and far between tech companies that pay their fair share in taxes are. If other industries follow this trend, it's really no wonder why the country is mired by these financial issues. 

The Death Of A Classic

During today's Let's Talk iPhone event, Apple made it pretty clear that they have no intent on continuing with the venerable iPod Classic. While they didn't outright make any sort of statement, their lack of acknowledgement of the Classic being a part of the iPod family speaks volumes.

Speaking of the rest of the family, they receive only modest updates. The Nano only gets some modest interface changes for ease of use, an FM radio, and slight prices drops. The iPod Touch will be available in white much like the iPhone and iPad, and like the Nano will see a price cut. Then there's the Shuffle, which saw virtually no changes.

Killing off the Classic seems like a really bad move to me, because without it they no longer have a media player with a capacity of at least a hundred gigabytes and that'll leave a pretty big void in the iPod line.

What are your thoughts?

Headphones, Apple's One Lone Vulnerability

By now it is no secret that Apple's earbuds are atrocious. And this is puzzling considering how the tech giant has excelled in just about every other market that they have entered (personal computer, smart phone, digital media player, etc.). When it comes down to it, every single aspect about Apple's earbuds is absolutely awful. The fact that they come packaged with each iPod and iPhone means that they have to be cheap to a certain extent, but Apple goes way too far is ensuring how cheap they are. First of all, they are just plain uncomfortable to use for an extended period of time. The way the hard plastic earbuds sit in my ear starts to generate pain in about half and hour of use. Second of all is the sound quality. It's tinny and lacks any sort of overall warmth and any real bass.

Past how awful they are, the real crime with these earbuds are how expensive they are when purchased by themselves. Apple's earbuds clock in at an unbelievable thirty dollars. My current pair of JVC Marshmallow's cost me half that, and their quality is easily double or even triple that of Apple's earbuds. Certainly you pay a premium over the competition on Apple's products for the superior quality, but when it comes to earbuds you pay a premium only for the brand image. I love Apple to death, but that is just wrong.

What are your thoughts?

Steve Jobs Resigns as Apple CEO

It was announced today that Steve Jobs would step down as the CEO of Apple. In his letter to the board of directors, that can be read in full below, he appointed Tim Cook as his replacement.

"To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:


I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come. I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee. As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple. I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role. I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.


Steve"


In 2004 Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and since then has taken three separate leaves of absence in relation to his ongoing health issues. These health issues are more than likely the primary motivating factor to his stepping down as CEO.

OS X Lion Tips & Tricks

Initially upon firing up OS X Lion you may notice several things to be different, such as the lack of lights below open applications and the font in the Finder sidebar to be a tad bit too large. In light of that, here is a handy list of settings that you may have an interest in tweaking:

Indicator Lights - To become more iOS like Apple made the lights that appear below an application in the dock to signify that it is open an option. If you no longer have these indicator lights, head into the Dock pane of System Preferences and check "Show Indicator Lights…".

Sidebar font size  - When you initially fire up Lion you may notice that the font-size in the sidebar of the Finder and Mail is larger than it was in Snow leopard. This can be easily adjusted by heading into the General pane of System Preferences and selecting "Small" in the Sidebar Icon Size drop-down menu.

Dashboard - Initially Lion sets Dashboard aside as it's own space, accessed by a swipe to the right with the trackpad or Magic Mouse. You can easily reverse this and make Dashboard an overlay once again by heading into the Mission Control pane of System Preferences and unchecking "Show Dashboard as Space".

Clean up Launch Pad - There is a handy little application called LaunchPad Control that easily handles this, allowing you select what you want to see and get rid of what you don't. Head here to download.

Finder Status Bar - To hide the system's complexities from the user, Apple has opted to hide the Finder status bar. To fix this, head into the View menu and select"Show Status Bar"

Hidden Library Folder - Apparently to prevent users from tinkering around in the Libraries folder and potential doing something very bad, Apple elected to hide the folder. For those of us power users out there who know what we're doing and need access to this folder this can be particularly frustrating. Thankfully a Terminal command comes to the rescue. So, fire up Terminal and enter the following command and it will be accessible once again: chflags nohidden ~/Library

Review/Impressions - OS X Lion

Polish - Feels incredibly slick, the animations certainly impress. The new look for the Address Book and iCal are certainly off-putting, being a desktop operating system that isn't exactly a theme that one would expect to see. iCal is bearable with it's smooth animations, but Address book is a little too out there for me.

Features - Mission Control definitely impresses, seamlessly combining Spaces with Expose as well as full screen apps. Now having spaces, along with full screen apps, on a single plane it's easier than ever to switch between apps and spaces. Launch Pad certainly has it's utility, but ultimately comes up somewhat lacking and useless for veteran or power Mac users. It will definitely help ease the transition from iOS to the Mac, but it's usefulness beyond that is debatable with the presence of the dock, Finder, and Spotlight to launch applications. Auto Save, while definitely requiring getting used to due to it's casting aside years upon years of muscle memory pressing command-s, certainly makes a step in the right direction. In this day and age a user should no longer have to worry and obsess over saving and just work without distraction. Going in hand with Auto Save, Versions does to single documents what Time Machine has been doing for your system for years. It allow you to view a timeline of the document that you have been working on and either completely revert to a past version or pull bits and pieces from past versions that you've decided that you want restored. Then there is the increased focus on the utilization of the multi-touch interface of the trackpad and Magic Mouse, which overall lend to making to OS X experience feel even slicker. To simply flip between a space or full screen app with the swipe of two fingers is quite satisfying, and impressively no longer do you have to right click on a word and open up the Dictionary app to get the definition. Now all you have to do is perform a three finger tap and the word selected by the cursor becomes highlighted in yellow and out pops the definition.

Performance - While my MacBook is just over a year old, I'm running at the lowest possible RAM requirements for Lion (2 GB) and thus far everything has run smoothly and without issue.

Shortcomings - The increased utilization of multi-touch gestures means the death of prominent gestures found in Snow Leopard. In SL any application that had some sort of navigation (a web browser, iTunes, or Spotify for example) could easily be navigated forward and back with the usage of the two finger swipe gesture with the magic Mouse. Now that that gesture has been mapped to switching between spaces and full screen apps that fundamental system-wide navigation has been dropped and it certainly feels like a step backwards having to drag the cursor up to the forward/back arrows and click rather than easily swiping. Also worthy of note, as with any new operating system, Lion has it's share of bugs and issues to be ironed out with future updates. Thankfully I've only experienced minor bugs so far.

Overall Impressions - Overall, Lion is quite an impressive operating system. It essentially takes Snow Leopard, adds an infusion of iOS, and sprinkles on some extra polish through a nice step forward in terms of aesthetic and animations. If you're machine is capable and you haven't upgraded yet, trust my word and do it now. The outrageous price of only $29.99 is only the icing on the cake.

Three future Lion-compatibility updates to look forward to

Microsoft Office
As reported by MacLife, an update for Microsoft's suite of productivity applications is coming that brings full support of the new features that Lion incorporates into OS X. Frustratingly, the update is apparently still a few months away despite the clear amount of time Microsoft had to work on the update prior to the full public release of the operating system. What I most anticipate with this update is the utilization of Auto Save and Versions in Word, also notable is the full screen support in Word. I will certainly get more mileage out of Word's full screen mode with that button in the upper right-hand corner of the window than I ever had previously.

Rockmelt
Having recently been updated to improve Lion stability, it was announced that a further update would follow adding more complete support of Lion features like full-screen mode and the hiding of scroll bars. Also to be looked for in the update is the support of the dictionary look-up gesture, which upon my testing clearly is not supported in the applications current version. This is definitely a higher anticipated update of mine, the thought of having Rockmelt integrate seamlessly with Lion new features and capabilities is definitely a great one.

Last.fm Desktop Client
While the current version of the Last.fm client is compatible with Lion, it is not compatible with the latest version (10.4) of iTunes that brings compatibility with Lion features and full 64-bit and Cocoa support. That transition to 64-bit breaks the compatibility between the two apps as the Last.fm app is strictly 32-bit. Because of this, I and I am sure many other Mac Last.fm users, have used the brilliance of the Time Machine to restore the previous version of iTunes and regain full scribbling ability. This update will allow Last.fm users to update to the newest version of iTunes and enjoy the performance improvements brought by 64-bit and Cocoa support as well as that Lion functionality.

EDIT: The Last.fm update is now live. Go and download it now.

Apple to Release Lion Tomorrow

After over half a month of speculation and rumors, Apple has finally revealed the a concrete release date for the latest iteration of OS X: tomorrow. It was announced this afternoon by Peter Oppenheimer during the Third Quarter Financial Results call.

I will have all my initial thoughts and impressions once I get a hold of my copy in a couple day's time.

Mac App Store Picks: Games

The Mac App Store has been available for a couple months now, and the selection of games keeps increasing. Whether they're iOS ports or full-fledged console title ports there is a lot that the App Store has to offer. In this post I will give a quick overview of some of the gems that I've managed to find:

Rainbow Blocks

A simple and quite addicting little puzzle game where the objective is to match and eliminate groups of blocks of the same color, the larger the group the more points you get. Each update generally adds features and makes the app overall slicker, but beware of a few bugs in the latest update.

Minesweeper

As the app is titled, this is minesweeper plain and simple. As with Rainbow Block with each update more feature and polish are brought to the app. Now you can open up an Inspector while you play to keep track of various stats.

A Monster Ate My Homework

This is a rather charming game that is based upon an iOS game. The objective of this physics-based puzzle game is to fire ball and topple the monsters off of the platform while leaving only the homework left. Multiple difficulties, plenty of challenge and future packs of levels promise plenty of replay value.

Flight Control

This is an iOS classic brought to the desktop. The addictive aim of this game is to guide aircraft into their respective landing areas while avoiding collisions. Online and local leader boards provide plenty of drive and motivation to keep on pushing for an ever higher high score.

Asphalt 6

Another game originally of the iOS platform, Asphalt 6 flawlessly makes the transition and takes the top spot as the best racing game currently available through the app store. The graphics are pretty top-notch, the gameplay is incredibly fun and addictive, the tracks are well-designed and offer plenty of variety, and the selection of cars is absolutely drool-worthy. The inclusion of online multiplayer and leader boards round out the impressive package.

Apple Reveals the iPad 2

At this morning's event Apple unveiled the long-rumored and awaited second generation of the iPad. And from the looks of things, just when competitors were just finding their legs in the tablet market they've got even more ground the cover. The most notable changes that the iPad 2 brings are power and size. It's dual-core A5 chip brings twice the processing power to the table and nine times the graphics performance. While this immense boost in performance won't necessarily be very noticeable over the course of regular day-to-day use, apps that are really graphics and processor intensive will really benefit. Then comes the size. Apple has managed to make the iPad one third thinner, while adding in several features and retaining the original's ten hour battery life. That is certainly an achievement.

Also worthy of mention are the front and rear-facing cameras and the smart case. With the front-facing camera, the iPad can now use Facetime much the same as the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the Mac. The Ipad has the real advantage here, being the perfect size to be feel completely comfortable and natural. While you'd think it'd be a little awkward on something so big as the iPad, the rear-facing camera can allow you to capture video and work on it straight on the iPad using the new iMovie iOS app also revealed today. While the iPad 2 is bound to have several great accessories, the best will no doubt be Apple's smart cover. They designed at the same time and alongside the iPad 2 so that it seamlessly integrates with it. The iPad has magnets built inside which instantly and without hassle allow the cover to snap on and align itself. As shown in a demonstration video, it's as easy and simple as slapping it on and off. That isn't all that makes it awesome, though. The iPad can sense when you're lifting the cover off, and it instantly wakes up, not only that the bottom is covered with microfiber cloth which means you really have nothing to worry about when it comes to cleaning the display.

The iPad was certainly revolutionary the first time around, and it's certainly looking to be just as revolutionary the second time around. 2011 will indeed be the year of the iPad 2.

New Lion Features to Get Hyped Over

Along with the refresh to the MacBrook Pro line, Apple announced a developer preview and a slew of new features that will be found in the next iteration of OS X, fittingly named Lion. Previously revealed in the Back to the Mac event last year were the App Store, LaunchPad, Mission Control, and complete support for full screen applications. Now added to that list are: increased usage of gestures with the trackpad and Magic Mouse, Autosave, Versions, Resume, Mail 5, and Air Drop.

Increased Gesture Usage
If you've ever used a Magic Mouse, you'll know how limited it's functionality is straight out of the box. To really take advantage of the revolutionary Multi-Touch interface you need a third part app like MagicPrefs or BetterTouchTool. Clearly Apple looks to rectify this with Lion, though in the demo video below only a trackpad is used a Magic Mouse was used in the Back to the Mac demo.

Shoot, no more video. Got taken down due to copyright claims by Apple.

Autosave
As you can clearly tell by the name of the feature, you no longer have to consciously save the file or document that you are working on, Lion will handle it for you. There is also a lock feature which means that you can close your documents and keep them safe from unintended changes being automatically saved. You can also choose to revert the document to the state it was in upon opening.

Versions
This is a feature that acts much in the same manner as Time Machine, only for continuously saved versions of your documents. Not only will this allow you to revert to a previous version of the file, but you can also copy and paste directly from those older versions.

Resume
Much in the way multi-tasking works on the iOS devices, this means that when you open up and return to an application, things will be as they were when you lasted used it.

Mail 5
With Lion, as expected, Mail gets a refresh. It now has adopted an appearance similar to that of the Mail found on the iPad. Not only that, mailboxes are now handled in a bar across the top of the application rather than a menu on the side giving the app a much cleaner appearance.

Air Drop
This feature allows easy file-sharing with any Mac. You simply click the icon in the Finder to see who else are using Air Drop and simply drag and drop files onto their name.

All of these newly revealed features are getting me more and more excited for Lion's release this summer. I'll certainly be there on day one to pick up my copy.

The Blisteringly Fast Thunderbolt

Today Apple has released a refresh for the MacBook Pro line, and one of the most notable new features is the Thunderbolt port technology courtesy of Intel. To me this represents a pretty monumental shift in ports and how peripherals will interact with our computers. Consider this: Thunderbolt is twice as fast as USB 3.0. For those of you unfamiliar with USB 3.0, it's the latest iteration of the popularly used port and provides over ten times the speed of the previous generation. Thunderbolt is twice as fast as THAT. To give you a better idea, check out this graph from the MacBook Pro page on the Apple website:

It's pretty insane isn't it? I'm really curious to see how this plays out, and how much a role that Thunderbolt will play in the future of Apple's computers and computers in general.

Apple Knows It's Way Around the Mouse and the Trackpad

I've noticed that when a couple of my friends at UWT whip out they're wireless mice to use with their laptops in place of the trackpad (which I fully understand, especially seeing that they're using PCs which almost certainly means an unpleasant trackpad) that they have to use a USB dongle to connect the mouse to their computer. I got to wondering why this is. Do they're computer not have bluetooth? Do the mice use a totally different radio frequency? Whatever the answer is, it just doesn't make sense to me. Why take up a USB port when it's possible to just connect straight up to the computer via bluetooth just as my Magic Mouse does with my MacBook? And then, as I brought up earlier, there is the trackpad. On my Mac Book it's one large panel of touch-sensitive glass, the entire trackpad is the button. Where with PC's the trackpad is small and ugly with two buttons of course for left and right-click. On my MacBook the trackpad does so much more than any other, as well, thanks to multi-touch. I can switch applications with the swipe of four fingers, I can move back and forth in any web browser with the swipe of three fingers. Swiping down with four fingers shows me all open applications with expose and swiping up clears the screen and displays the desktop. In fact, having the experience of both the MacBook's trackpad and the Magic Mouse I find using PCs (whether desktop or laptop) incredibly unpleasant as it feels archaic and primitive. When it comes down to it, Apple certainly knows it's way around the mouse and the trackpad. They were the ones to pioneer the mouse after all.

Awesome Mac Apps (Updated)

Once I had my own computer, I gained the freedom to download any and however many apps I wanted without my dad being all paranoid. With this newfound freedom, I really started to pay attention more to Mac|Life and they're occasional articles about great apps for the Mac. Thanks to them I have found, and now currently use, several fantastic applications. And I branched out from there, I began browsing Apple's OS X downloads site and I now make full use of the Mac App Store. With that said, here are some excellent apps that 'd like to share with you:

iTunes Controllers
This category is pretty full, so I thought I'd make a general category and share the best that I've encountered. I have gone through several, and I have to say that the best I have found are: Bowtie, Tunesbar, and TunesArt. Each one has it's share of positives and negatives: Bowtie is great in it's customizability but I just don't like how the often it gets in the way, Tunesbar is fantastic in that all you have to do is scroll up to the menu bar and it pops down but that creates issues when making normal use of the menu bar. By far the best out of these three is TunesArt. It offers features of both Bowtie and Tunesbar without getting in the way or becoming an annoyance. To check what song you are listening to all you have to do is hover your cursor over the menu bar icon and a drop-down appears showing you the information and artwork for the track and this dropdown displays itself whenever you start listening to a new track. It even integrates functions that you often need another app for, most notably finding and placing lyrics in the ID3 tags of your songs. Last.fm integration is pretty standard fare with iTunes controllers, but TunesArt goes even further and allows for iPod scrobbling. I have yet to encounter another controller that actually lets you do that. I'll stick with the official Last.fm app but it makes me happy to know when I want to scrobble from my iPod I'm no longer stuck to just one application.

BetterTouchTool/MagicPrefs
This application can't quite be as universally recommended seeing as it is an enhancement of the Magic Mouse's abilities, but it deserves mention for what it does. Right out of the box, or more like plastic container, the Magic Mouse does do a whole lot. Looking at it's preference pane, all you can do is toggle tracking speed and basic functions. There is next to zero utilization of the numerous possibilities afforded by it's multi-touch interface. MagicPrefs fixes this wonderfully, allowing full customizability of the interface. You can set different functions to different fingered clicks (as in one, two, three fingered), different taps, two and three finger swipes, and dragging and pinching actions. While it can become a bit of a mess when you have several functions set, it's absolutely amazing what you can make the Magic Mouse do with MagicPrefs. There is another application of this category that deserves note, BetterTouchTool. It offers the same level of customization as MagicPrefs (if not perhaps a little more) in a different interface where you set up and add gestures to a list, it even allows you to customize the multi-touch trackpad. And as an odd bonus it allows you the function of window snapping. A welcome feature, though more than a little out of place.

EDIT: I now condemn MagicPrefs, after making things overly difficult I thought I'd try out all my set gestures in BetterTouchTool and what do you know, they all work without any of the trouble that they had in MagicPrefs. How could I have been so blind for so long?

Anxiety
This is a great little app that lives in your menubar that allows to easily add and manages tasks on your to-do list across both iCal and Mail. You can set it to open up and appear at start-up, giving you a constant reminder of what you need to get done.

iExtractMP3
This is an excellent little app I found thanks to Mac|Life. If you've ever wanted to have only the audio of a Youtube video, this app will do just that. It accepts any .flv files that you've downloaded, and as the app is named, extracts the audio for you and drops it into your source music folder. Definitely a nice little utility to have on hand.

Caffeine
Have you ever been reading a PDF or watching a video and frustratingly have your MacBooks backlight auto-dim on you after an extended period of inactivity? This has happened to me more times than I can count, and thanks to Mac|Life I came across this excellent utility. It sits up in the menubar, and when you want your MacBook's backlight to remain on just click on the coffee cup icon and it holds off that energy-saving feature.

Album Artwork Assistant
Every now and then when I import an album into iTunes, iTunes will fail in retrieving any artwork. If you're OCD about how tidy your music library is like I am, this is an annoying and frustrating inconvenience. Album Artwork Assistant others a nice and simple solution, you just highlight the songs that you want to add artwork to and open the application and it will search Google for you to find the artwork.

Soon to come:
TrashMe, AppFresh, HyperDock, Growl

The Mac App Store

October twentieth, along with revealing a new iLife and previewing OS 10.7 Lion, Apple announced the opening of the Mac App Store within ninety days from the event. Now, what are the implications of the Mac App Store? There is a lot of good that can come out of it, as well as plenty of bad, and after seeing what that bad is, I've gotta say that I'm on the fence about it now.

When the Mac App Store was announced I absolutely loved the idea. The key for me was that it is centralized location where I can get and discover applications for my Mac. Up until now, I have had to rely primarily on Mac|Life when it comes to the discovery of applications. To name a few that I have gotten because of them: MagicPrefs, Anxiety, AppFresh, TrashMe, and RockMelt. With the exception of AppFresh and TrashMe, due to the nature of the apps, I use the apps every single day. Beyond that, there is no real easy way to discover new applications. All you can is tirelessly search the internet, and hope you can come up with what you're looking for. It will really make app discovery easier, which brings me to another key good thing about the Mac App Store: making app installation and management incredibly simple. As it is right now, you have to download and mount a disk image (though they often mount themselves) and then install the application. Being an experienced user, I have no trouble with doing this but it is a little too complicated and not exactly consumer friendly. The Mac App Store will fix this, downloading and installing directly into your apps folder. Then there is the matter of updating your applications. As it is right now, each application has it's own settings and has it's own dialog window that will pop when an update is available. Of course there are apps out there, earlier mentioned AppFresh comes to mind, that will keep track of all of your applications and inform you which ones need updates, but the Mac App Store will act as a native, centralized location to update all of your apps.

Then, of course, we have the negatives. The really big one in my, and many others, mind is rules and restrictions Apple has over what applications will be available in the App Store. The iOS App Store has it's own share of issues with what can and cannot be sold, but the Mac App Store is on a far larger scale and has much greater implications. While the majority of the restrictions are reasonable (as stated by Rik Myslewski in Mac|Life), there are a key few that have the potential to create trouble. To sum them up: Apple is completely free to decide whether they like the interface or not, after a certain point apps that duplicate the functions of apps already existant in the store won't be accepted, and apps that appear to be similar to Apple's own apps will be rejected. I had no idea about these restrictions until I read about them in a column yesterday in Mac|Life. Each of these will have an incredibly negative effect on what is offered and will skew what is offered in the store in Apple's favor so as to eliminate possible competition. I love Apple, but this is stepping over the line. The rejection of apps that perform functions similar to those already in the store discourages competition between apps and will give users less to choose from. A good example that comes to my mind would be web browsers. They could simply say enough with say Safari and some other browser and just cut it off. That's wrong. That would mean other, possibly better browsers like RockMelt would be rejected just because that function has been filled. Then we have the rejection of apps that appear similar to Apple's own. Doesn't that seem just a little ant-competitive to you? Finally, not to be overlooked, is the decision over an apps interface. It makes senses with Apple's intense focus on aesthetics and keeping things nice and cleaning looking, but that could a potentially fantastic app could be turned down just because Apple doesn't like the way it looks.

Sure, it is Apple's app store, and being theirs they have every right to decide what is and isn't sold there, but those three restrictions are a little too favorable for Apple, and if the Mac App Store becomes as big as they intend it to could potentially kill the free market. What are your thoughts?