- published: 07 Jan 2011
- views: 38300
The Mac App Store is a digital distribution platform for Mac OS X applications. It is developed by Apple Inc.. The platform was announced on October 20, 2010 at Apple's "Back to the Mac" event. Apple began accepting app submissions from registered developers on November 3, 2010 in preparation for its launch.
It was released on January 6, 2011 as part of the free Mac OS X v10.6.6 update for all current Snow Leopard users. After 24 hours of release, Apple announced that there was a total of more than one million downloads.
Similar to the iOS App Store, the Mac App Store is regulated by Apple. Applications must be approved by Apple before becoming available on the store. Disallowed types of applications revealed by Apple include:
Since the opening of the Mac App Store, Apple Inc. has increasingly used it as the primary means of distribution of its own in-house software products at the expense of Apple-branded software applications being sold at Apple Store locations. This position was perceivably increased with the July 2011 release of Mac OS X Lion, which was the first release of Mac OS X not sold in the boxes of DVDs which had been traditionally used to distribute the operating system at the Apple Store.