Apple Continues Precedents and Locks Down Mac App Store

Apple is continuing the precedents it had established with the App Store for the iPhone and iPad with its Mac App Store by using a curated experience to control what types of software can be sold on its digital store front. For the OS X Mac App Store, which the MacBook Air could benefit from, Apple will not be allowing trials, demos, and betas onto the official Mac App Store, and I would contend that this would be beneficial to shoppers.

Instead, the Cupertino, California company is urging developers to still offer trials, demos, and betas to consumers. Rather than submit those to the Mac App Store, Apple is advising developers to host those versions of software on their own sites and servers.

While on the iPhone and iOS, not having trials and demos of popular software was shunned by consumers, on the Mac App Store this move could be highly beneficial to users of OS X. In an era where PCs are pre-loaded with so many trials, also widely referred to as “bloatware,” that slows the system down, a clear-cut no trial software policy mandate by Apple would ensure that customers who shop at the official Mac Store will know that they are indeed installing truly free software or paid software. In the past, software that’s available for download on the Internet could be labelled as free as a guise for users to install and download and then find out that it is a limited-time free trial where they would have to purchase the software for the continued privilege of using the software.

With Apple’s policy, users can now be sure they are truly in fact getting what they expect–software that isn’t time limited, disguised as free, or will expire after the beta period ends.

The move here is more acceptable on the iPhone since users can get software and install it elsewhere. Unlike the highly locked down iOS ecosystem where users are only limited to the App Store, if users want trialware, they can find it and use it on the Mac.

Via: 9to5 Mac