Oh boy.

Some nice stuff - the new MacBook air machines. Not for me, but nice.

Software updates for iLife are a good thing for people who use those programs, I don't however. It's unfortunate to see a number of applications missing and it's super unfortunate not to see iTunes split into multiple applications yet.

The Mac OS App store. As a developer I feel this is horrible news. It's going to offer some additional form of promotion, however Apple is going to east 30% off the top and that's insanely higher than I'm paying right now. It's going to take away focus from developers' own sites, lower their direct sales, possibly limit or remove in-app automatic updates and compromise security on top of everything. The software protection used on iOS devices has been hacked and cracked to bits and I'm assuming the Mac OS variation Apple will use is gong to be the same or similar enough to get smashed wide open.

I currently have my own licensing system which works really well and which I'd like to use on future products. What a happens to an App if you want to sell it in the app store? Do you maintain two versions of it now? One for direct-sale and one for the App store?

With regards to the OS, I always take everything with a HUGE grain of salt. Any mention of "lots of features" or "more than 300 features" I usually translate down to "less than half a dozen new features you'll actually notice or care about."

It's been quite popular for Apple to announce features in the past and never deliver on those promises. They've done it with the past three major revisions to Mac OS. For Snow Leopard, does anyone remember OpenCL? Yeah, well it's not yet been deployed. QuickTime X? Loses most of the features of the old QuickTime. Resolution independence? Not yet being used... It goes on.

I think the news of the Mac OS app store is really bringing me down...