I’m very excited about the brand new Mac App Store released yesterday, not only because I think that that the store makes finding new and unknown apps relatively easy and that it removes the “How to install apps?” barrier for new and non-computer-savvy users.
The other reason why I am intrigued by the launch is for companies and especially all IT departments worldwide. This thought was sparked by my friend Peter, as we were tweeting about the possibilities for Apple to offer an instant download of all your apps. Here is where the store could be a blessing.
One Purchase – Unlimited Computers
When seeing a few tweets this morning from Don McAllister who was wondering over if Apple imposed the same 5 device limit to application as it does in the iTunes Store, almost everyone had been agreeing to the fact that surely that would be the case.
After a little digging, Don found a text in the help files that says that you can use a purchased application on any number of computers that you have.
This of course can be a major downside for developers who have previously been having family packs available or other licensing agreements. It is however a big benefit to everyone else, all consumers who just need to purchase applications once and then install on all Macs.
This could save a lot of work…
When you purchase an app right now from the store, Apple will keep track of that and add it to a “Purchased” list so that you can see what you have purchased from the store.
If Apple so chose, this could be opened up to lists for easy downloading of all the apps you have purchased, awesome for when you have a new Mac that you want to set up, as Peter told me whilst tweeting about the store. That would be just superb wouldn’t it?
So, that led me onto a different train of thought. What if Apple would let you create your own app lists. Simply put a list of different apps that you have purchased. This could be used for further quickly downloading Apps you always install on new Macs. It could also be a blessing to the Corporate IT world.
Let’s say you manage a pool of 100 different macs. Let’s also say that you set up about 20 new macs a year where every new mac needs to have a certain amount of applications that you always install. What if you could make a list of those in the Mac App Store and for each Mac just log into the store and say “Download all apps from this list”.
Apple clearly has a lot of potential with the Mac App Store and I really hope that they are going to do something with it to take it to the next level compared to the iTunes App Store. As the desktop computers are more evolved systems, there is hardly any limit on how great of an experience Apple could make this new store.