Apple’s Mac App Store now open for business

By Aemon Malone Published January 6, 2011

Apple today launched its new App Store to deliver apps to Mac desktop and laptop computers. According to Apple, the Mac App Store opened up with over 1,000 apps — of both the free and paid variety — ready for downloading.

Customers of the Apple’s iTunes, which supplies apps to iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads, will find familiar app categories that range from games to productivity. Apps currently available include third-party apps as well as a few of Apple’s own creations. Customers will be able to purchase the ’11 versions of the iPhoto, iMovie, and Garageband apps for $14.99 apiece. There’s also apps for Apple programs Pages, Keynote and Numbers that are marked at $17.99. Aperture 3, Apple’s high-end photo-editing program, is going for $79.99.

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The Mac App Store will reportedly keep in place the same developer compensation model used for the iOS app store: developers will keep 70 percent of revenues with Apple taking a 30 percent cut.

The Mac App Store is being made available as part of an update to the Snow Leopard 10.6 OS X. Users who don’t run the Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 on their computers won’t be able to update to 10.6.6, and will be shut out from the Mac App Store.

Apple had reportedly originally hoped to have the App Store up and running by mid-December, but pushed the launch date back to January due to “numerous issues.”

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