The App Store, an exclusive location to discover, purchase, and download software for iOS has made Apple’s mobile platform a runaway hit, and the iPhone the most versatile smartphone on the market with over three million applications. In October of last year Apple announced they were bringing iOS technologies back to the Mac starting with the the Mac App Store. Apple has a lot of experience selling applications on a platform they tightly control, but the Mac, which predates the iPhone by several decades, has a lot less restrictions than iOS. Can Apple shoehorn the mature Mac application ecosystem into a shiny blue icon, and what experience will customers have buying desktop apps the Apple way?

The Mac App Store will become the de-facto standard for purchasing software on the Macintosh. It is just too convenient to pass up. Instead of searching the internet or a local Apple Store for a specific application, utility, or game, Apple has brought a variety of Mac apps to users by placing a shiny blue Mac App Store icon in the dock of every up to date Mac. Instead of having to create an account with various online stores, or hand over a credit card to the clerk at a retail checkout counter the Mac App Store allows customers to purchase all of their software with the same Apple ID they have been using on iTunes for years. With the Mac App Store there is no need for, system requirements, complicated installers, CD packaging or serial numbers. Apple has done all of the hard work and all users have to do is click on the buy button. Never again will customers have to search the internet for software updates, or contact the vendor for the latest version of their software. The Mac App Store allows users to update all of their purchases at once, from a single source over the internet. With more and more applications being sold through the Mac App Store every day it is hard to imagine how consumers acquired software in the past, and easy to see why the installation of applications has long been considered a task for the technology savvy.

The Mac App Store is not perfect. For long time Mac users with a hard drive full of software there is no way to upgrade their previously purchased applications to the Mac App Store’s unified update model. Old timers used to trying out software before they buy, participating in beta releases, and enjoying the privilege of upgrade pricing are also out of luck. And unlike the open software market the Mac App Store is curated by Apple who is free to exclude applications of its choosing including system utilities that require root privileges. This limits the Mac App Stores usefulness, and alienates long time Mac developers who used to sell their apps as trialware, or who develop valuable low level system utilities that require root access.

As Mac OS 10.7 Lion approaches improvements to Apple’s Mac App Store are right around the corner. Today’s Mac App Store is just a taste of how customers will discover, purchase, and install apps in the future. The library of applications will obviously grow, but user’s can also look forward to more varied applications, and an installation process that includes some of the valuable utilities the Mac App Store is currently missing. Developers will get around the lack of demos by offering free applications that expand to a full feature set after a paid in app update. The package applications are distributed in might change to allow for the easy removal of Mac App Store purchases including all of a app’s support files and preferences. The future looks bright for the Mac App Store and whether or not you use it today you can be sure it will be around for a long time in the Mac’s future.

As of this week I am using the Mac App Store to purchase applications that are not available to me anywhere else. That includes The Incident for Mac which I love, and Twitter for Mac, which I don’t. The Mac App Store offers developers a lot of opportunity to reach potential customers, but as an Old Mac User I am hesitant to purchase new software from Apple’s Mac App Store if I can get it directly from the developer. This saves the developer the 30% Apple takes with every App Store purchase, and provides me with the piece of mind I am getting a full featured application. I am sure as time passes I will begin to adopt the Mac App Store for more of my purchases, but in the mean time I am eager to see how the apps I have upgraded through the years continue to improve under Apple’s simplified no upgrades app purchasing policy.