Apple's app-happy Mac App Store

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Apple's launch of the App Store for the Mac last week came just too late for this column, but by Friday the company was already claiming over one million downloads.

This is a staggering number by any criteria. There are plenty of software vendors who would sell a close relative, in order to shift anything like that number of applications. The figure is all the more impressive, given the Mac's relatively small installed base, and the fact that only OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) users, and only those willing or able to download a software update, could access the store.

Of course, a fair number of the 1,000 apps on offer are either free, or are various updates to Apple technologies that were available for download from Apple anyway – such as the Facetime video calling utility. But users' enthusiasm for the store appears to have overcome objections from IT industry observers, who have raised concerns about Apple's fairly tight conditions for distributing apps via the store.

Those restrictions range from the reasonable (no porn), to the logical (no beta or demo apps) to the less practical (no software that expires – which is hardly great for anti-virus vendors or accounting app vendors, taking just two examples of applications that rely on paid-for updates.)

Apple argues that such restrictions are necessary, to preserve the Mac's consistency and ease of use. And fears that Apple will, somehow, turn the Mac into some kind of locked-down, walled garden that only runs approved software are almost certainly exaggerated. If nothing else, the Mac's ability to run other operating systems via Bootcamp would make that fairly pointless.

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