At a recent event, Apple announced the Mac App store, taking their white-hot concept of “App Store” to the Personal Computer. Gizmodo penned a rather alarmist interpretation of this announcement, but Ryan Block from GDGT asks a better question: Will the Mac App Store have enough to sell?
[E]ven if the desktop software business is ripe for disruption or revival (and I’m not sure that it is), the space is nothing like mobile apps prior to 2008, where distribution was the primary problem. The real issue with the desktop software market is that (unless you’re talking about productivity software) there just isn’t all that much consumers need to buy anymore. The boxed software business didn’t die because of app stores, it died because of an overabundance of great programs that are free, open, or otherwise subsidized that are available through other web or internet services. To put it another way: lately, how often have your parents bought software for their computer (that wasn’t Microsoft Office)?