Apple has just released the new Mac App Store, a centralized way to distribute, purchase, install and update Mac applications, much in the same way you can now do it for the iPhone and iPad.
From a programmer's point of view, this is really the next logical step, as they already have the platform in place for the mobile devices, and as all the devices including the desktop computers use the same operating system, it's mostly a matter of adapting the technology to make it work on different screen sizes and with various restrictions in place.
Much has been written about the closed nature of the Apple application stores, and while it makes a lot of sense on the mobile devices, it remains to be seen how much of a good thing this can be for desktop applications. I think that a lot of the success of failure of this new store will depend on whether this is acceptable or not for the end users as well as the developers. Think for example of the number of "tweaking" applications available for Mac OS X. If these are not accepted in the store, surely developers will not be happy, and users will also suffer as they will not be able to get as much from the store in terms of choice.
Despite all these limitations, I think that this new application store is more revolutionary than evolutionary. It will be the first time a serious effort will be done to completely integrate an application store with an operating system, all this coming from the same vendor. Sure, MacUpdate or Bodega and others have tried to do this for a while, but their efforts never really took off, mostly because not every mac users can find them easily, without knowing about them. In the case of the new Apple built store, it will be installed by default on every Mac, and it will make it really easy for users to find new applications, and even better, get notified of updates, etc.
This is also great new for Mac users that have always suffered from lack of choice for applications. Before the Mac got to it's current marketshare, it was very difficult to find equivalent applications to Windows applications, mostly because the marketshare was smaller and developers wouldn't seriously target the Mac as revenue was not guaranteed. With an integrated application store, this could all change, and with Mac marketshare growing, this could definitely make it very interesting for developers.
A lot of existing iPhone and iPad developers will also be able to port their apps relatively easily, although they will have to refactor the front-ends, as the frameworks are not exactly the same. Despite this they already know the programming language (Objective C) and most of the UI building can be done in Interface Builder, so it shouldn't be that much of a port.
I think also that this new store is revolutionary, because if it does take off like the iPhone and iPad ones did, it will be immediately imitated by other OS vendors. Actually here Ubuntu is already a player in this space, but again, on Linux most of the stuff is free, so maybe there is no interest for developers to make any money there. On Windows however, you can be sure that Microsoft will be looking at Apple's effort very closely, and if they see that it is picking up, they might start integrating something similar. Of course for them it's always a bit more tricky, as somehow Microsoft always gets more heat for integrating things than Apple does (why this is is a mystery to me :)).
Anyway, exciting times on the desktop side for once, it will be definitely interesting to watch !
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