Okay Geek Farm
An App Store and "LaunchPad" are coming to Mac OS X Lion
Brandon Davenport
Rawr! Something interesting has protruded out of today’s keynote covering Mac OS X Lion and the new Apple applications — an App Store is coming to the Mac along with a system called “LaunchPad”. This is not only surprising, but is completely awesome and is going to be a large advantage for the Mac — but is Apple planning to kill OS X? Probably not, and they aren’t planning to kill the Mac either.
The Mac OS X App Store
There isn’t much to explain here but tell you that an App Store is coming to the Mac — you already know how to use it, and it is surly going to be a familiar experience. Apple is planning to release it sometime in the next three months, and the Mac App store is opening to developers sometime in November. Get your developing hats on folks!
The Good — It is going to create a new trend in app management and commerce. Better quality apps, thanks to a locked down store (and most likely an approval process) and a lower risk of security vulnerabilities because of, again, a locked down system.
The Bad — We are afraid that Apple is going to close out the ability to download apps that aren’t on the App store. We’re also afraid of yet another approval process, and even more restrictions on what people can run on their Mac. There could be a future for Jailbreaking Macs, which is very sad.
LaunchPad brings organization and iPad-like folders to the Mac
This is another innovation coming to Mac OS X Lion that has us really excited, and curious at the same time. It is basically an iPad launch screen, without the candybar/square icons. It features gestures to swipe through panels of apps and it allows you to create folders, just like on the iPhone and iPad (dragging one app into another). It also appears to hint at Apple phasing out Mac OS X which is somewhat worrisome, and makes us start to think about the future.
The Good — This is going to solve a lot of problems we have finding apps on our Macs, and allow us to organize them properly, and find them more quickly (without using the damn finder). It’s also going to speed up the process of installing apps, thanks to the Mac App Store.
The Bad — This is a strong hint that Apple may be phasing out the Mac, as we know it today, and innovating on newer technologies. The focus on OS X Lion seems to be the “iPad-Like” features, and not so much the core elements we have come to know and love. Even though Steve said that “Mac is our main business”, we should still have our ears perked…
