Alongside macOS Mojave, Apple is previewing an all-new Mac App Store featuring a new look and rich editorial content that will make it easier than ever to find great Mac apps. Like the iOS App Store, which was redesigned last year, the new Mac App Store celebrates apps, games and developers with an all-new Discover tab featuring compelling stories, in-depth interviews, helpful tips, collections of must-have apps and more. Users can also explore new Create, Work, Play and Develop tabs to find the perfect app for a specific project or purpose — from music, video and photography apps to business utilities and games.
“Since its launch in 2011, the Mac App Store has become the single largest catalog of Mac apps and today remains the safest and best place to get Mac apps for users around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in a statement. “We are excited to usher in a new era for the Mac App Store with a beautiful new look, unique editorial content and emphasis on human curation that complements the ways people are using their Macs today.”
Great New Apps
The Mac App Store already offers the largest catalog of Mac apps and even more great apps are joining. Apps coming soon include Office from Microsoft, Lightroom CC from Adobe, BBEdit from Bare Bones, Transmit from Panic, Live Studio from Snap Inc. and Houseparty, among others.
“Office 365 provides the best of both worlds for Mac users — a productivity experience that is unmistakably Office, but specifically designed for the Mac,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president at Microsoft, in a statement. “We’re excited to provide our joint customers with easy access to downloads and updates by bringing Office to the newly redesigned Mac App Store.”
“Adobe is looking forward to bringing Lightroom CC, our industry-leading photography service, to the Mac App Store in the next year,” said Bryan Lamkin, executive vice president and general manager of Digital Media at Adobe, in a statement. “We’re also excited to join the Mac App Store with its new redesign that not only makes it easy for users to find apps like Lightroom CC, but also further showcases the great work of creators and developers.”
“We are very excited about the improvements to curation and discovery that Apple will be bringing to the Mac App Store,” said Rich Siegel, founder and CEO of Bare Bones Software, in a statement. “Having just marked BBEdit’s 25th anniversary as a leading Mac product, we continue to look ahead, and we believe that a robust Mac App Store is part of a bright future for this great platform.”
“Houseparty for Mac makes lightweight group video chat accessible to more users than ever before,” said Ben Rubin, co-founder and CEO of Houseparty, in a statement. “We started connecting people meaningfully with our mobile app on the iOS App Store, and now we’re excited to bring Houseparty to Mac users too via the newly redesigned Mac App Store.”
“We’re happy to be bringing Transmit back to the Mac App Store,” said Cabel Sasser, co-founder of Panic Inc, in a statement. “Apple is listening to developers like us and putting a lot of effort into making the Mac App Store better for everyone. We’re excited to see what the future holds.”
Discover
With the new Discover tab, each week users can find in-depth editorial about the best Mac Apps through stories and collections and see what’s most popular with top charts. For the first time, helpful videos that autoplay will provide users with dynamic app previews so they can see an app in action before downloading it.
Create, Work, Play and Develop
Create, Work, Play and Develop tabs provide helpful recommendations and expertise about apps within each of these themes. These tabs will also help users make the most of apps they might already have with tips and tutorials that even the most expert users will find useful.
Availability
The new Mac App Store will be available with macOS Mojave this fall. The developer preview of macOS Mojave is available to Apple Developer Program members at developer.apple.com starting today, and a public beta program will be available to Mac users in late June at beta.apple.com. For more information, visit apple.com/macos/mojave.
Source: Apple Inc.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, the new Mac App Store is more usable and many more developers will bring their apps to Apple’s storefront.
🍾 🎊 🎉
Do we know if the Mac App Store will be accessible to those of us who can’t upgrade to Mojave? (I suppose it may not matter if the software it sells all requires the new OS.)
Bigger worry: How much longer are those of us who are EOL’d at High Sierra going to be able to use the iTunes Store?
My post was meant as a sarcastic comment txuser …
Also im not sure i follow your concern with high sierra and itunes store ?
Can u clarify?
Thanx
The Mac App Store and iTunes are apps running on a local Mac under whatever operating system that computer is running. They interface with server-side software running at the Apple data centers. The apps are typically upgraded along with the operating system, but often not upgraded for older operating systems.
The server-side software is also being constantly upgraded (among other things, to support new features in the apps). That is generally invisible to the end user. At some point, however, the changes on the server side will prevent some old versions of the apps from communicating reliably with the servers. Historically, Apple will not allow unreliable communications, because it might affect the integrity of their databases. Instead, they will simply cut those old versions off entirely from access to the servers.
My question was whether High Sierra users are going to be cut off immediately, cut off when Apple stops maintaining High Sierra in a couple of years, or allowed to linger longer?
Free previews?
Finally. Unfortunately, first impression is not great. Making it a dark background and embedding videos are two of the least important improvements that one could want. The screenshot above looks more than anything like a black version of a Windows application.
How about: intelligent filtering with an advanced filter pane. Permanent user options (like parental controls) to turn off certain titles, developers, or categories of applications. Significantly improved application categories. (Discover/Create/Work/Play/ etc are ridiculously dumbed down and it shouldn’t take multiple clickes to unbury a comprehensive category list). Much more information on the developer. Easy paid software updates controlled by the software developer. Free trial periods for the buyer.
Apple as usual announces something and then leaves the users hanging. https://www.apple.com/macos/mojave is not live, no indication when you can visit the Apple site to learn more specifics. Welcome to the new Cooked Apple.
That link is not live because it’s currently at https://www.apple.com/macos/mojave-preview/ just like the link to ios12 is https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-12-preview/ because they haven’t been released to the public yet.
I agree about increasing filtering, but hat’s nothing to do with Tim Cook though. I’ve been wanting greater control of iTunes since Jobs first launched it.
The important problem with the Mac App Store isn’t (yet) the discovery or organization of apps. It’s that so FEW apps are available. Office is a good win…