8 ms·

The Mac App Store isn’t for today’s Mac developers

146 points by bjplink 16y ago

sosuke 16y ago
My development falls into the giant right circle and I never considered developing for the Mac OSX until after I created my first iOS game this month and learned of the Mac App Store opening in 3 months. Now it's as easy as reexporting higher resolution art from Illustrator and a few UIKit changes and I can redeploy my iOS game for Mac OSX and find myself in front of another large app hungry audience that will happily open their wallets. I'll be one of the first in line to get on the Mac App Store when I've never before developed or sold software since this month. It is making is so darn easy to have a chance.
- flacon 16y ago
  You make it sound like porting an app from IOS to OSX is easy. Maybe you could write up a blog post or something for ignorants like me who would be interested in doing the same. Thanks for any additional details.
  - raquo 16y ago
    sosuke used cocos2d game engine which has native mac support. Apps would be way more work to port it seems.
    - cleshmd 16y ago
      For those not familiar with Cocos2d iPhone, it is a fantastic open source 2d game framework. The 'mac support' in Cocos2d iPhone is still experimental, and missing a few features : http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/archives/1074 http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/archives/1074 The roadmap indicates mac support should be ready this release cycle (0.95), but it probably won't stabilize until 0.96. Once finished, porting games written with Cocos2d between iOS and Mac should be trivial, allowing for differences in input. If anyone is interested in learning more about Cocos2d iPhone, I've started a tutorial series for people with little or no programming experience: http://www.coconutcollege.net http://www.coconutcollege.net It's not finished, but I think it provides a good introduction to the basic concepts.
      - raquo 16y ago
        Thanks for the link, cocos2d always needs more tutorials. And you're probably talking about versions 0.99.5 and 0.99.6.
      - pstinnett 16y ago
        I had messaged you on the Cocos2d board I think. I started working through your original tutorials but decided to wait until you redid them. Glad to see they're available now - I'll be starting to work through them this weekend!
        cleshmd 16y ago
        They're available, but not finished. I've posted the first four courses, which should be more than enough to get started. The next two courses are written, and I'm (hopefully) going to have the in good shape to post next week.
        pstinnett 16y ago
        Sounds good. They're a great way to just get some guidance into getting my feet wet with iPhone development. Looking forward to them.
      - Luyt 16y ago
        Very nice website. I had to smile a few times because of your writing style ;-)
      - d_r 16y ago
        Thanks for sharing this! I love the clean, detailed presentation. I'm sure it will help many getting started.
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    While Apple hasn't announced anything yet, I have to think that a lot of iOS APIs are going to show up in Lion to make it easier because, you're right, it's very non-trivial now. I mean, I'd rather port a UIKit app to AppKit than a Windows Forms app. But there are a lot more differences than there have to be.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - irons 16y ago
      While Apple hasn't announced anything yet, I have to think that a lot of iOS APIs are going to show up in Lion to make it easier… Prepare to be disappointed. Technology stacks aside, if the interaction models between desktop apps and multi-touch interfaces were in any way relatable, UIKit wouldn't have been invented. If you want to write a Mac app for the new store, you'll be using AppKit.
  - mortenjorck 16y ago
    If Apple ports UIKit to Lion, the API side of things could be very easy. The big challenge here is in interaction design. Some games might make the transition relatively easily. A game that relies mostly on single points of touch has a somewhat decent analog with the mouse, but only if it relies on certain patterns of finger movement. A game that, for instance, involves alternating taps on opposite sides of the screen, would translate badly—it's nowhere near as easy to leap that distance precisely with a mouse as it is with your fingers. Can you imagine playing the iPhone classic Dactyl with a mouse? That kind of difference is present all over in touch-based applications, in differing amounts. It's up to the developer to find what transitions well and what doesn't, but in most cases it won't be a trivial task.
    - wazoox 16y ago
      Most Mac nowadays are laptops, and they all come with a multitouch trackpad. Problem half-solved :)
      - templaedhel 16y ago
        Touchpads are not 1 to 1 though, like wacom tablets or touch screens, you still have to "move" the mouse, you can't just touch where you want it to go.
        FluidDjango 16y ago
        OK, so I'm totally ignorant of workings of trackpad (or its potential to work in ways additional to its current use), but might it not be possible for Apple to add the capability (via software) to enable tapping on left/right edge of track pad to have trigger events that are triggered by touch to left/right side of an iPhone/iPad screen?
        templaedhel 16y ago
        I have actually searched for alernatve divers for my touchpad (on a pc) to do this, with no luck. I am sure it's possible though, the only limiting factrs would be the accuracy of the touchpad, and users unfamiliar with the new mode.
- RyanMcGreal 16y ago
  Possibly related: http://jwz.livejournal.com/1224702.html http://jwz.livejournal.com/1224702.html
  - msbarnett 16y ago
    I'm surprised that JWZ (and, seemingly, several of the commenters) was expecting a full OpenGL stack on a mobile phone, and seemingly wasn't aware of the differences between OpenGL and OpenGL ES, particularly with respect to the absence of the long-since-deprecated-in-regular-OpenGL Immediate Mode. It sometimes seems as though, as a consequence of all the strides made in bringing more serious OS support, better languages and much more coherent UI work to mobile phones in the last few years, many programmers have lost sight of the fact that these are still relatively low-powered embedded devices.
philwelch 16y ago
Will there be any good ways to “crossgrade” buyers from the retail edition of an app to the App Store edition without making them pay again in full? (My guess: No.) You can gift someone an album on the iTunes Store. When you buy a DVD the DVD can "gift" you the iTunes version of the movie (The Dark Knight did this, though it just copied over from the disk). Why can't a software company gift someone an app on the Mac App Store when they buy the app elsewhere?
- geoffpado 16y ago
  Because there's no existing way to handle that. Traditional "gifting" costs the full purchase price of the product, and the "promo codes" developers have to give out for free copies are extremely limited--only 50 codes are given out per upgrade submitted to the store (this is for iOS, I assume the same is true for the Mac). EDIT: What I don't understand is why there's a need to do so anyway. If I recall correctly, there's no such thing for Steam, and game developers have long sold applications both in retail and via Steam with no problem. Supporting two separate applications (one with the traditional purchase and one via the App Store) shouldn't be too difficult, especially if the developer switches over to App Store-exclusive when it hits. He'll simply have to continue to perform upgrades/support however they were before, but will be able to ditch their old payment processing entirely.
  - jbrennan 16y ago
    Most of the games on Steam are developed and maintained by relatively large teams. Compare to most iOS developers and my guess is the teams are much, much smaller. So for the Mac, I'm guessing it would be non-trivial to be supporting two SKUs, cross grading, upgrading, etc with such smaller teams of people.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Traditional "gifting" costs the full purchase price of the product ...of which you get 70% back if you're gifting people your own product. So it really costs you 30%.
geoffpado 16y ago
While I think Marco probably has it right long-term, I think he's actually pretty wrong in the short-term. The difficulty of porting an iOS app (or even writing a Mac app from scratch, given that a developer only has iOS experience) and the nature of the device (mobile is clearly a growing market--is the same true for the desktop?) means that I think we'll see a lot more trepidation in entering the Mac App Store. Traditional Mac developers (Panic, Omni, etc.) will obviously move their apps onto the store, but I don't think we'll see a whole lot of new entries--most iOS apps don't neatly transition onto the desktop, besides some games. I know my couple iOS applications don't have an obvious Mac version, just as my Mac applications didn't have an obvious iOS version. If the Mac App Store is to reach anywhere near the popularity of the iOS App Store, it's going to take a long time for companies to decide that the desktop is even worth it.
- yakisoft 16y ago
  If Panic and Omni find that all they have done is reduce their revenue by 30% then they won't stay long. I'm not at all sure the extra volume will be enough to offset the cost, especially if the store becomes full. It is going to be interesting.
  - crs 16y ago
    Your ignoring the other things you get from the app store. You need to compare the 30% cut apple takes off the top to the possible increased volume of sales, the money saved from not having to host the app yourself or having to run your own payment system. Apple is not just taking 30% off the top to just to be greedy, it is more of a payment for the service they are providing.
    - yakisoft 16y ago
      If you have anywhere near a reasonable volume your payment processing shouldn't cost more than a few percent, nowhere near 30%. Hosting costs aren't going to go away, you will still need a web site, you might be able to save a little download bandwidth but that hardly breaks the bank nowadays. I don't think Apple are being greedy, I'm sure that is a reasonable reflection of their costs, I just wonder how it will add up for developers like Panic or Omnigroup. If their volumes double then it makes sense, if they only increase slightly or not at all then it doesn't.
apl 16y ago
I'd say this assessment is largely spot-on. By introducing the App Store, Apple could channel the large community of developers churning out commodity software for iOS towards the Mac. Now they just need to make porting from iOS to MacOS X really simple, and the ecosystem will flourish. One addendum, though: Existing applications won't benefit from the App Store, yes. Existing Mac developers, though, probably will. If you know Cocoa forwards and backwards, then making little (store-exclusive!) apps isn't challenging, but potentially lucrative.
- stevenwei 16y ago
  Yup, brilliant (although unsurprising) move on Apple's part. By bringing iOS and OS X together (from a developer standpoint), they're able to seed iOS with Mac developers and Mac OS with iOS developers, and attract more folks overall to both platforms.
sammcd 16y ago
The mac app store is the end of an era. For a while the mac was the most user-centered AND developer-centered platform that existed. When I bought my first mac apple was actively recruiting developers by having free conferences around the US. Apple has decided to go more in the user-centered direction then the developer-centered direction. This is definitely the right move for them. However it makes me a little sad, its the end of an error. Now I see linux as the developer centered OS with OS X as the most user-centered OS. Its a hard call to make. Mostly I think I am harboring some resentment. "Back in my day we had to write our own licensing code, host a web payment code, and host autoupdates. All the kids these days do is launch the darn app." I think I almost believe its not fair. I guess at the age of 24, I am running into one of the first big changes that I have to accept if I want to stay relevant. I knew this market changed quick, I just always assumed it would be in the way that I wanted it to change.
- count 16y ago
  Only because it's semantically important - did you mean 'end of an era' or 'end of an error'?
  - sammcd 16y ago
    Thanks, I replaced it with what I intended, 'era'. I think my fingers are much more used to typing 'error' then 'era'. :)
    - hasenj 16y ago
      There's still another instance of "end of an error" you forgot to edit. Are you British? :P
- geoffpado 16y ago
  I would argue that bringing a massive amount of new customers to their developers is actually rather developer-friendly. Maybe not "programmer friendly", as Linux is, but how many developers do you see making a living off Linux applications?
brudgers 16y ago
I think there is something missing from the analysis of iOS applications as entertainment. Not only can I show you my new Vuvuzela app while we're sitting in a bar, I can show it to the waitress, your girlfriend, and the guy sitting next to me. iOS apps are entertaining because they are social. A macApp is less sharable than an emailed website link. Besides my dog who am I going annoy with my Vuvuzela? (so to speak). I suspect that macApps will sell based on utility rather than entertainment and that the removal of flash and java are expected to generate much of the initial need.
- cowboyhero 16y ago
  You make a good point about the social-in-the-bar aspect of iOS apps, but I think you're off the mark about gaming. This is an area where the Mac has been weak for more than a decade. Imagine an environment that allows you to purchase a multiplayer networked version of Civilization: Revolutions (or Quake or Plants vs Zombies or a dungeon crawler version of Dragon Age) for $20 and you can play it while sitting at your desk, on the couch with your iPad or out in the world on your phone. Given the popularity of cheap apps and casual gaming, I expect the App Store turns into a Jobsian version of Steam.
  - brudgers 16y ago
    You may be right, but there are some hurdles. Networked games on individual devices don't replicate the social experience of the living room with a console, nachos, Madden and some buds. Sitting at a computer is solipsistic. An issue with the iPad and iPhone for serious gaming is that unlike a wii controller, neither is replaceable for $25 after an over enthusiastic gaming session (durability in general is also an issue). From a business standpoint, I'm not sure how well games fit into Apple's strategy. The market for sophisticated games is mature and growth would mostly come from capturing increasing market share rather than an expanding market and small games are easily delivered to the desktop via the web. The life cycle of a game is also much longer than a movie.
jsz0 16y ago
This is exactly what I was thinking while watching the Lion demo especially with the full screen applications. AppStore or no AppStore the average Mac user isn't going to impulse buy an expensive, complex, multi-function application without an obvious purpose communicated through 2 or 3 screenshots. The key to the Mac AppStore is going to be de-constructing these multi-function applications into smaller task focused tools with re-invented UIs (iOS stylized) at lower prices.

146 points by bjplink 16y ago

My development falls into the giant right circle and I never considered developing for the Mac OSX until after I created my first iOS game this month and learned of the Mac App Store opening in 3 months. Now it's as easy as reexporting higher resolution art from Illustrator and a few UIKit changes and I can redeploy my iOS game for Mac OSX and find myself in front of another large app hungry audience that will happily open their wallets. I'll be one of the first in line to get on the Mac App Store when I've never before developed or sold software since this month. It is making is so darn easy to have a chance.

flacon 16y ago
You make it sound like porting an app from IOS to OSX is easy. Maybe you could write up a blog post or something for ignorants like me who would be interested in doing the same. Thanks for any additional details.
- raquo 16y ago
  sosuke used cocos2d game engine which has native mac support. Apps would be way more work to port it seems.
  - cleshmd 16y ago
    For those not familiar with Cocos2d iPhone, it is a fantastic open source 2d game framework. The 'mac support' in Cocos2d iPhone is still experimental, and missing a few features : http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/archives/1074 http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/archives/1074 The roadmap indicates mac support should be ready this release cycle (0.95), but it probably won't stabilize until 0.96. Once finished, porting games written with Cocos2d between iOS and Mac should be trivial, allowing for differences in input. If anyone is interested in learning more about Cocos2d iPhone, I've started a tutorial series for people with little or no programming experience: http://www.coconutcollege.net http://www.coconutcollege.net It's not finished, but I think it provides a good introduction to the basic concepts.
    - raquo 16y ago
      Thanks for the link, cocos2d always needs more tutorials. And you're probably talking about versions 0.99.5 and 0.99.6.
    - pstinnett 16y ago
      I had messaged you on the Cocos2d board I think. I started working through your original tutorials but decided to wait until you redid them. Glad to see they're available now - I'll be starting to work through them this weekend!
      - cleshmd 16y ago
        They're available, but not finished. I've posted the first four courses, which should be more than enough to get started. The next two courses are written, and I'm (hopefully) going to have the in good shape to post next week.
        pstinnett 16y ago
        Sounds good. They're a great way to just get some guidance into getting my feet wet with iPhone development. Looking forward to them.
    - Luyt 16y ago
      Very nice website. I had to smile a few times because of your writing style ;-)
    - d_r 16y ago
      Thanks for sharing this! I love the clean, detailed presentation. I'm sure it will help many getting started.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  While Apple hasn't announced anything yet, I have to think that a lot of iOS APIs are going to show up in Lion to make it easier because, you're right, it's very non-trivial now. I mean, I'd rather port a UIKit app to AppKit than a Windows Forms app. But there are a lot more differences than there have to be.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - irons 16y ago
    While Apple hasn't announced anything yet, I have to think that a lot of iOS APIs are going to show up in Lion to make it easier… Prepare to be disappointed. Technology stacks aside, if the interaction models between desktop apps and multi-touch interfaces were in any way relatable, UIKit wouldn't have been invented. If you want to write a Mac app for the new store, you'll be using AppKit.
- mortenjorck 16y ago
  If Apple ports UIKit to Lion, the API side of things could be very easy. The big challenge here is in interaction design. Some games might make the transition relatively easily. A game that relies mostly on single points of touch has a somewhat decent analog with the mouse, but only if it relies on certain patterns of finger movement. A game that, for instance, involves alternating taps on opposite sides of the screen, would translate badly—it's nowhere near as easy to leap that distance precisely with a mouse as it is with your fingers. Can you imagine playing the iPhone classic Dactyl with a mouse? That kind of difference is present all over in touch-based applications, in differing amounts. It's up to the developer to find what transitions well and what doesn't, but in most cases it won't be a trivial task.
  - wazoox 16y ago
    Most Mac nowadays are laptops, and they all come with a multitouch trackpad. Problem half-solved :)
    - templaedhel 16y ago
      Touchpads are not 1 to 1 though, like wacom tablets or touch screens, you still have to "move" the mouse, you can't just touch where you want it to go.
      - FluidDjango 16y ago
        OK, so I'm totally ignorant of workings of trackpad (or its potential to work in ways additional to its current use), but might it not be possible for Apple to add the capability (via software) to enable tapping on left/right edge of track pad to have trigger events that are triggered by touch to left/right side of an iPhone/iPad screen?
        templaedhel 16y ago
        I have actually searched for alernatve divers for my touchpad (on a pc) to do this, with no luck. I am sure it's possible though, the only limiting factrs would be the accuracy of the touchpad, and users unfamiliar with the new mode.
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
Possibly related: http://jwz.livejournal.com/1224702.html http://jwz.livejournal.com/1224702.html
- msbarnett 16y ago
  I'm surprised that JWZ (and, seemingly, several of the commenters) was expecting a full OpenGL stack on a mobile phone, and seemingly wasn't aware of the differences between OpenGL and OpenGL ES, particularly with respect to the absence of the long-since-deprecated-in-regular-OpenGL Immediate Mode. It sometimes seems as though, as a consequence of all the strides made in bringing more serious OS support, better languages and much more coherent UI work to mobile phones in the last few years, many programmers have lost sight of the fact that these are still relatively low-powered embedded devices.

philwelch 16y ago

Will there be any good ways to “crossgrade” buyers from the retail edition of an app to the App Store edition without making them pay again in full? (My guess: No.) You can gift someone an album on the iTunes Store. When you buy a DVD the DVD can "gift" you the iTunes version of the movie (The Dark Knight did this, though it just copied over from the disk). Why can't a software company gift someone an app on the Mac App Store when they buy the app elsewhere?

geoffpado 16y ago
Because there's no existing way to handle that. Traditional "gifting" costs the full purchase price of the product, and the "promo codes" developers have to give out for free copies are extremely limited--only 50 codes are given out per upgrade submitted to the store (this is for iOS, I assume the same is true for the Mac). EDIT: What I don't understand is why there's a need to do so anyway. If I recall correctly, there's no such thing for Steam, and game developers have long sold applications both in retail and via Steam with no problem. Supporting two separate applications (one with the traditional purchase and one via the App Store) shouldn't be too difficult, especially if the developer switches over to App Store-exclusive when it hits. He'll simply have to continue to perform upgrades/support however they were before, but will be able to ditch their old payment processing entirely.
- jbrennan 16y ago
  Most of the games on Steam are developed and maintained by relatively large teams. Compare to most iOS developers and my guess is the teams are much, much smaller. So for the Mac, I'm guessing it would be non-trivial to be supporting two SKUs, cross grading, upgrading, etc with such smaller teams of people.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Traditional "gifting" costs the full purchase price of the product ...of which you get 70% back if you're gifting people your own product. So it really costs you 30%.

geoffpado 16y ago

While I think Marco probably has it right long-term, I think he's actually pretty wrong in the short-term. The difficulty of porting an iOS app (or even writing a Mac app from scratch, given that a developer only has iOS experience) and the nature of the device (mobile is clearly a growing market--is the same true for the desktop?) means that I think we'll see a lot more trepidation in entering the Mac App Store. Traditional Mac developers (Panic, Omni, etc.) will obviously move their apps onto the store, but I don't think we'll see a whole lot of new entries--most iOS apps don't neatly transition onto the desktop, besides some games. I know my couple iOS applications don't have an obvious Mac version, just as my Mac applications didn't have an obvious iOS version. If the Mac App Store is to reach anywhere near the popularity of the iOS App Store, it's going to take a long time for companies to decide that the desktop is even worth it.

yakisoft 16y ago
If Panic and Omni find that all they have done is reduce their revenue by 30% then they won't stay long. I'm not at all sure the extra volume will be enough to offset the cost, especially if the store becomes full. It is going to be interesting.
- crs 16y ago
  Your ignoring the other things you get from the app store. You need to compare the 30% cut apple takes off the top to the possible increased volume of sales, the money saved from not having to host the app yourself or having to run your own payment system. Apple is not just taking 30% off the top to just to be greedy, it is more of a payment for the service they are providing.
  - yakisoft 16y ago
    If you have anywhere near a reasonable volume your payment processing shouldn't cost more than a few percent, nowhere near 30%. Hosting costs aren't going to go away, you will still need a web site, you might be able to save a little download bandwidth but that hardly breaks the bank nowadays. I don't think Apple are being greedy, I'm sure that is a reasonable reflection of their costs, I just wonder how it will add up for developers like Panic or Omnigroup. If their volumes double then it makes sense, if they only increase slightly or not at all then it doesn't.

apl 16y ago

I'd say this assessment is largely spot-on. By introducing the App Store, Apple could channel the large community of developers churning out commodity software for iOS towards the Mac. Now they just need to make porting from iOS to MacOS X really simple, and the ecosystem will flourish. One addendum, though: Existing applications won't benefit from the App Store, yes. Existing Mac developers, though, probably will. If you know Cocoa forwards and backwards, then making little (store-exclusive!) apps isn't challenging, but potentially lucrative.

stevenwei 16y ago
Yup, brilliant (although unsurprising) move on Apple's part. By bringing iOS and OS X together (from a developer standpoint), they're able to seed iOS with Mac developers and Mac OS with iOS developers, and attract more folks overall to both platforms.

sammcd 16y ago

The mac app store is the end of an era. For a while the mac was the most user-centered AND developer-centered platform that existed. When I bought my first mac apple was actively recruiting developers by having free conferences around the US. Apple has decided to go more in the user-centered direction then the developer-centered direction. This is definitely the right move for them. However it makes me a little sad, its the end of an error. Now I see linux as the developer centered OS with OS X as the most user-centered OS. Its a hard call to make. Mostly I think I am harboring some resentment. "Back in my day we had to write our own licensing code, host a web payment code, and host autoupdates. All the kids these days do is launch the darn app." I think I almost believe its not fair. I guess at the age of 24, I am running into one of the first big changes that I have to accept if I want to stay relevant. I knew this market changed quick, I just always assumed it would be in the way that I wanted it to change.

count 16y ago
Only because it's semantically important - did you mean 'end of an era' or 'end of an error'?
- sammcd 16y ago
  Thanks, I replaced it with what I intended, 'era'. I think my fingers are much more used to typing 'error' then 'era'. :)
  - hasenj 16y ago
    There's still another instance of "end of an error" you forgot to edit. Are you British? :P
geoffpado 16y ago
I would argue that bringing a massive amount of new customers to their developers is actually rather developer-friendly. Maybe not "programmer friendly", as Linux is, but how many developers do you see making a living off Linux applications?

brudgers 16y ago

I think there is something missing from the analysis of iOS applications as entertainment. Not only can I show you my new Vuvuzela app while we're sitting in a bar, I can show it to the waitress, your girlfriend, and the guy sitting next to me. iOS apps are entertaining because they are social. A macApp is less sharable than an emailed website link. Besides my dog who am I going annoy with my Vuvuzela? (so to speak). I suspect that macApps will sell based on utility rather than entertainment and that the removal of flash and java are expected to generate much of the initial need.

cowboyhero 16y ago
You make a good point about the social-in-the-bar aspect of iOS apps, but I think you're off the mark about gaming. This is an area where the Mac has been weak for more than a decade. Imagine an environment that allows you to purchase a multiplayer networked version of Civilization: Revolutions (or Quake or Plants vs Zombies or a dungeon crawler version of Dragon Age) for $20 and you can play it while sitting at your desk, on the couch with your iPad or out in the world on your phone. Given the popularity of cheap apps and casual gaming, I expect the App Store turns into a Jobsian version of Steam.
- brudgers 16y ago
  You may be right, but there are some hurdles. Networked games on individual devices don't replicate the social experience of the living room with a console, nachos, Madden and some buds. Sitting at a computer is solipsistic. An issue with the iPad and iPhone for serious gaming is that unlike a wii controller, neither is replaceable for $25 after an over enthusiastic gaming session (durability in general is also an issue). From a business standpoint, I'm not sure how well games fit into Apple's strategy. The market for sophisticated games is mature and growth would mostly come from capturing increasing market share rather than an expanding market and small games are easily delivered to the desktop via the web. The life cycle of a game is also much longer than a movie.

jsz0 16y ago

This is exactly what I was thinking while watching the Lion demo especially with the full screen applications. AppStore or no AppStore the average Mac user isn't going to impulse buy an expensive, complex, multi-function application without an obvious purpose communicated through 2 or 3 screenshots. The key to the Mac AppStore is going to be de-constructing these multi-function applications into smaller task focused tools with re-invented UIs (iOS stylized) at lower prices.