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Apple Announces iLife '11, FaceTime Mac, Lion, Mac App Store, MacBook Air
Apple once again streamed their latest keynote where they unveiled iLife '11 (more fullscreen and Facebook in iPhoto, Audio editing and automatic trailers in iMovie, Rhythm correction and lessons in Garage Band). FaceTime for the Mac will connect video chat to phones with a Beta starting today. Next we get a preview of OS X Lion which will have an App Store and new UI bits shipping this summer. The Mac App Store will launch on Snow Leopard in 90 days. The New MacBook Air is under 3lbs, 13.3" screen, Core 2 Duo, solid state only storage. There's also an 11.6" version starting at $999 with 64gb of storage shipping today.
Will the app store have the same lock down?
With no apps that can use plug ins?
No games with user maps or mods?
No sex apps?
No fat app?
$99 year fee even for free apps?
fixed price points?
will you be able to buy app and use it on all systems you own? will app dev be able to have app that you need to buy per system?
can apple pull a app at any time?
Will there be a max app size?
One step closer to macos lockdown just like the iOS platform
As Ron Gilbert just put it
"For you Apple apologists claiming Apple will never lock down the Mac, step one is in place and you all let it happen."
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
They are *not* locking down OSX. You will still be able to get apps anywhere you want.
Gone!
Actually, it's worse than lame as they're now locking down Mac OSX just like they do with iOS.
You mean except for the fact that it was explicitly stated that the app store wasn't the exclusive place to get apps for Mac OS X? How can it be locked down when nothing has changed beyond having a new source for downloading apps from?
I know that every other comment under the sun here is going to focus on the app store and DRM concerns, but I'm also somewhat concerned about the fact that CPU speeds on these new Macbook Airs seem to be... rather pathetic. C2D 1.4 and 1.86 Ghz processors? Is Xcode really that much better at leveraging the GPU, to where they can release something like this when announcing Lion and its new features that sound like they're going to brutalize processing power. With CPU speeds like these, it almost seems like they just didn't want to say the word 'Atom'.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
And for a huge number of consumers, they'll be quite happy with the locked down device with Apple as gatekeeper. They'll have everything they need or want, will pay a bit extra for that, and won't even notice the /. crowd wailing and gnashing its collective teeth over Jobs' "war on openness".
When will /. readers acknowledge that they're not the entire fucking market for computing devices?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
It's not exactly free to do it on your own. For a small shop it's a huge benefit to not have to deal with all that infrastructure and hiring and payment processing. A one or two person team can focus on development and not worry about the other headaches. It will bring me back to developing Mac software.
Linux repositories are a general purpose mechanism; you can point at any "app store" you like with them. Furthermore, they do extensive dependency management and checking.
Apple's App Store gives you one source of applications
To be precise, it gives you one source of applications for whatever mechanism the App Store uses; nothing requires that you get all your apps from there, but you might have to go through the hideously burdensome process of clicking a few links in your browser, maybe typing in your credit card number, and answering a few questions from the installer or dragging an app bundle to /Applications to buy and install an app from the vendor.
and it doesn't seem to do much in the way of dependency management.
How many dependencies between downloadable components do OS X apps have? Linux repositories (and BSD ports/packages collections) have lots of libraries in them, and apps (and other libraries) might depend on them, so dependency checking is useful there. OS X apps, for better or worse, tend to be self-contained - either they only use libraries and frameworks that come with the OS, or they bring along the other libraries and frameworks for the ride.
Apple gets a 30% chunk, but IMHO, it is a good thing to have long term.
Wow, and people talk about the "Microsoft tax".
Getting 70% is a developer fantasy. By the time you find a publisher, and they sell to a distributor, who then sells it to a retail store ... a developer is lucky to get 15% to 20%. Digital distribution is a game changer. For a small developer implementing an online store with support and returns, paying for international payment processing, bandwidth, etc is non-trivial. If that adds up to less than 30% then the difference may easily be justified by the increased traffic and exposure of a high profile site like one provided by Apple. Unless you are a large corporation Apple's deal is not bad at all.
Linux users yesterday: "We have centralized software repositories with quality control testing and easy installation, and it rocks."
Linux users today: "Apple is locking down the Mac!"
There was never a Linux distro that blocked all software installation other than from its official repositories.
In Apple's case, we've all seen iOS.