The most surprising news coming out of today's media event was the revelation that Apple would be launching a Mac App Store for Mac OS X. From the short preview that was given, the Mac App Store appears to be structured similarly to the popular iOS App Store. App sales and upgrades are all managed through the App Store, itself. Like the iOS App Store, Apple splits revenues with the developers in the same 70/30 ratio.
Given the massive success of the iOS App Store, Mac developers are understandably interested, but may run into hurdles with Apple's approval process. Andrew Welch of AmbrosiaSW told Informationweek that many of his company's existing apps would not be allowed in:
"Ambrosia is certainly interested in the idea of a centralized Mac application store," he said in an e-mail. "However the restrictions imposed by Apple on the applications may make it impossible for a number of our applications to be submitted."
Presumably, these apps would include their system utilities such as WireTap, Snapz Pro X and Soundboard.
We've heard that Mac App Store Apps are restricted from installing kernel extensions (kexts) that are frequently used to provide system level functions in these utilities. Apps, as well, must be self contained and avoid use of undocumented APIs.
Developers, of course, aren't required to distribute Mac apps through Apple's App Store. Developers can still distribute their software on their own, but the centralized access and publicity of the App Store model has been well proven on iOS. The Mac App Store also raises additional questions whether or not the so-called "race to the bottom" in prices will be duplicated on the Mac software side as well, and whether or not it will encourage simpler, more casual apps.
Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Wednesday April 24, 2024 2:05 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
