Five Years of the Mac App Store ⇥ macstories.net

Graham Spencer, MacStories:

In the years since 2012, about the most newsworthy events that took place relating to the Mac App Store were the announcements from high profile developers that they were removing their apps from the Mac App Store (a few listed below). […]

Apple has let the Mac App Store stagnate and become a second class citizen to the iOS App Store and too many developers are leaving or avoiding the Mac App Store. When important apps leave the Mac App Store, it makes the store as a whole less enticing and customers have one less reason to open the Mac App Store.

High-profile developers like Microsoft, Adobe, and Panic can sell apps themselves and don’t need the App Store. Valve’s Steam store has become synonymous with gaming, and EA’s Origin is doing much of the same. Even lower-profile developers can sell their own apps fairly flexibly with the proliferation of content management systems that support selling stuff. The Mac App Store simply doesn’t compete.

That’s a sad reality, especially when it would be preferable to restrict less experienced users’ GateKeeper access to App Store apps only — that way, it’s analogous to their iPhone or iPad and their system is bound to be secure. But when few high-profile apps are available from the Mac App Store and the Store is cluttered with lots of really crappy apps, it’s hard to recommend it.