In their quest to app-ify the world, Apple has now release apps for the Mac. Several notes of interest here indeed not the least of which being the ability for Apple to further entrench its users in adopting an “app-only” lifestyle. In other words, if it ain’t an app, I ain’t using it. Not for nothing, this isn’t far off from how many of our clients currently view the app experience. This is clearly evidenced by the amount of times in a day I hear the phrase “there should be an app for that”.
Several of the usual suspects have apps for it out of the gate such as Twitter and eBay. No surprises there. Also not shocking is the fact that Apple has its iWork suite available as well. If history is any indicator it is unlikely this field will not take off in the community even though it might be a little while until it fully matures. Apple currently is estimated to be earning north of $2 billion a year off of their apps (NOTE: This is off of their 30% rake on sales so even simple math tells us how much money folks are making on selling apps) so this will just further contribute to that stream.
In general it will be interesting to see if a user has both the Mac app for Pages (the MS equivalent of MS Word) as well as the regular Mac version of Pages which they will default to. Even more curious is the question of whether or not users will eventually have a Powerbook with just apps on it an no traditional programs. I don’t think I would complain but all things being equal, if I were doing that I would just as well use my iPad to work from.
The code base is the same so we will no doubt be interested in exploring this ourselves. This is just further proof that 2011 is for sure going to be an interesting shift in the way things are done.
