How About an App Store for the Desktop?
When Apple released the iTunes Store back in 2003, the company revolutionized online sales of Music. It did the same for mobile Application in 2008 when it released the iTunes App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch. While many would argue that the App Store is far from perfect (long delay in approbation, you can only publish stuff that Apple deems acceptable, etc.), there’s no denying the numerous advantages of having an App Store. Search for “football” and you’ll get a bunch of games and apps that relates to your favorite sports. From a developer perspective, there’s certainly a big advantage. On a personal note, there’s no way my application would sell as much without the centralized listing.
Even with as many as 100 000 apps, even a listing of only compatible apps for your device come up when you search for “football” is basically the equivalent of coming out on page 1 of a Google search for that same term.
This whole thing begs the question, should Apple and Microsoft create a centralized App Store for the desktop? When you think about it, we already have that for games. It’s called Steam and it’s been a huge success ever since it came out back in 2004. As is the case with Steam for gaming, having an App Store for the desktop doesn’t mean you cannot sell your app any other way, it just gives you an additional place to sell it.
The gaming consoles also have that same concept. All the major consoles today have their own integrated store where you can buy games and add-ons for your device. So far, computer software is the exception to the rule and the negativity surrounding the App Store policies might make Apple or Microsoft think twice, but I don’t see why it would be a bad thing. Again, it’s an additional place to sell your stuff, not the only place to sell your stuff.
With the success of the iTunes App Store and Apple’s way of doing things, I wouldn’t be surprised if the company came out with such a concept in the near future. It could be one more way for the company to differentiate Mac OS X from Windows and add to the list of reasons why “OS X is easy to use”.