Today is the 10th birthday of the Mac App Store. The Mac App Store debuted on January 6, 2011, alongside the release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard version 10.6.6.
On that day, Apple announced that the Mac App Store was “open for business.” The company said there were over 1,000 free and paid apps available at its debut.
“With more than 1,000 apps, the Mac App Store is off to a great start,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and former CEO. “We think users are going to love this innovative new way to discover and buy their favorite apps.”
The Mac App Store quickly reached a few milestones during its first year, with one million downloads on its first day and 100 million downloads by December 2011.
The Mac App Store offers apps in Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity, Utilities, and other categories. Users can browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what’s hot, see staff favorites, search categories and look up top charts for paid and free apps, as well as user ratings and reviews.
All Mac App Store apps are reviewed by Apple upon their submittal to the store and must be sandboxed to protect users’ data from being accessed by unauthorized apps. While developers can still distribute their Mac apps directly to users without the sandboxing feature, they must still be notarized by Apple in order to run by default on macOS Catalina and newer, to ensure apps are free of any known malware.
Apple takes a 30% cut of the action on the sale of apps on the Mac App Store, as well as a 30% cut of in-app purchases tied to digital goods and services. However, Apple debuted a new Small Business Program that drops the Cupertino firm’s cut of the action in the App Store for small developers. Beginning January 1, 2021, Apple cut its commission to 15%, down from 30% for developers who earn less than $1 million.
(Via MacRumors)
