I don't think the Mac App Store will change the market of professional apps much at least in its first year...
Apple's current guidelines for Mac App Store prohibit apps to install kernel extensions or system frameworks, or directly talk to the hardware/kernel; however most current professional apps require such at least for copy protection, especially those apps requiring certain hardware drivers such as ProTools....

True, and you will not see Adobe suite on there.
Another problem with the Mac app store is there is still the 70/30 split in revenue, meaning the software makers will lose out rather than if they sold it themselves.

for small apps who want to get noticed, or apple's own apps its perfectly fine.

It's going to be interesting note what apps of Apple's actually get on there. For example you will never see Final Cut but you do see Aperture. I would have thought the iWork suite was too much, but it is there.

I have already found one example of an app that is posted on there that I don't like the App Store version as well as the traditional download version...TextWrangler. The traditional download version lets you save a file to a folder even if you don't have permission to it by applying admin rights. The App Store version doesn't allow that. Same goes for the command line tools I think.

I think that the Mac App Store will be useful when all people need s a simple application and they don't know how to go out and by it themselves. Today many beginners don't install software on their own if it didn't came with their computer or can be bought from a nearby store.



It's not exactly cheap to sell software on your own. You need to deal with payment, credit cards, PayPal, all of which involves fees. You also need stable and secure web hosting, a regular share hosting plan may not make it.

It's true that most developers pay less than 30 percent for each sale, but given that the Mac App Store removes the time needed to set up all the involved components many of them will likely find it attractive anyway.

Does anyone know whether Apple or the dev pays for bandwidth/hosting when an app is sold through either the Mac or iOS App Stores?