The Mac App Store went live today bringing the iOS distribution model to Mac desktop apps and so far it’s incredibly novel.
The Mac App Store interface, as we’d expected, is strikingly similar to the iOS app store, offering the general quick link options such as redeem, categories, purchases and updates.
The categories are somewhat the same as the iOS app store minus the navigation categories which host GPS enabled apps but including; business, education, games, news, music, lifestyle. Apple has also added a new category called Developer Tools which contains apps like Text Wranger, Folder Spy and Coda. We were immediately greeted with familiar apps such as Angry birds, iMovie and iPhoto.
The official Twitter app aka (Tweetie 2) is pretty slick and is offered free within the Mac store. The interface provides the usual user stream, mentions, direct messages and additionally offers the user’s profile stream as well. Each screen’s icon is readily available within the always-viewable control panel flush to the left of the streams. Conversation threads can also be displayed along with the option to search and it offers the trending topics. Sharing images can be changed in the preferences to share with; yfrog, TwitPic, Posterous, img.ly Twitgoo or Pix.im.
Overall, due to its inability to add horizontal columns I think I’ll stick with TweetDeck for now. It’s a feature I personally can’t seem to live without.
Get it for free (Mac Store link)
Angry Birds
We’re huge fans of Angry Birds here at GeekBeat.TV and I’m sure collectively we’ve probably played thousands of hours on our iPhones, Androids and iPads. It was hard to predict whether the controls would translate properly without the use of the multi-touch screen but the trackpad on the Macbook provides a sweet alternative to the usual control scheme. The gameplay of Angry Birds and the ability to watch it on a bigger screen is a serious treat, so great that I’m afraid there might be a lack of work being done today.
Using a two finger gesture on the Macbook’s trackpad zooms the environment in and out, it’s possible to do that using the mobile version although it seems to work much better on the Mac. Like we’ve said many times before, this physics-based puzzle game is highly addictive and redonkulously fun. A major win for Mac fans.
Get it for $4.99 (Mac Store Link)
Smoovie
Smoovie is a stop motion app that will assist you in creating stop motion movies that can be published directly to YouTube. The app is available for $15 in the Mac Store however we were able to download the free trial on their official site. It works by either using your iSight camera on the Mac or by taking image files to make stop motion sequences. Each image still is displayed in a reel and as we’d mentioned your movies can be published to YouTube or saved within iTunes.
Get if for $14.99 (Mac Store link)
At first glance, having all Mac apps in one tidy place, is similar to unleashing a kid in a candy store. Mac fans will no doubt be sending a better part of their day perusing the titles. We’d think this would be great news for Mac app developers who will have a farther reach to get their apps to the community. However, it remains to be seen whether this store will force developers to reduce prices to compete with the wealth of apps we’ll see pop up in the next year. Like the iOS app store, the Mac Store will explode. Non-tech savvy people (and there are lots out there) who were afraid to download apps from the web will help to drive its success and will likely feel more comfortable installing apps from an Apple-approved venue. Using the update tool will be another added benefit that the new Mac App Store brings — a super easy way to keep everything up to date.
We’ll also mention that there are a handful of apps that still offer free trials on the software on their websites, Smoovie included. And, we noticed that after downloading the free Smoothie trial, when we returned to the Mac Store it showed us on the Smoovie app page us that the app was already installed. Hrrm…
🙂