The Mac App Store is like the iPhone/iPod App store found in iTunes in that it tries to deliver filtered content (checked by Apple) to your Mac OS X machine. This comes as an easy to navigate iTunes store style approach. Helpful and categorised. It is also the first time that the iLife apps are available for download and upgrade for a SINGLE app. iPhoto 11 for example can be paid for and downloaded. Not only do they download, they install and place themselves on the dock for easy reference.
There are thoughts about how this downloading of apps so easily for consumers will effect the boxed retailers. Society has been moving from physical to digital for a long time now so I guess this was going to happen sooner or later. But will we want to download multiple GBs for a game? Maybe not, perhaps a DVD will still be the best at the moment. However a time will come when streaming GB files over the internet will happen, cheaply and effectively. Then who will want to front up to a store to receive poor customer service?
On another note, I updated my iMac to 10.6.6 and connectivity to my Epson V700 Photo scanner corrupted. These are the steps I did to improve the situation:
- Downloaded the current (2009) driver from the Epson site for 10.6. I probably already ahd this, but a reinstall of a driver is a worthy way forward. No luck though.
- I then decided to right-click (command-click) the list of printers and scanners in the Print & Fax section of System Preferences. Being brought up on Windows, I thought a restart at this point with a fresh list would be good. So I did.
- On restart went to the P&F section again, and my USB Scanner was listed there again. Great - good work OS X!
- Opened Image Capture and lo and behold my scanner was now in the list again, AND Image Capture didn't crash. I was able to scan again! Yippee!
So write me a line and let me know what you think of the idea of the App Store, and if my note on the Epson helped you out. Enjoy!
