14 DAY TRIAL // Unnamed sources cited by The Loop claim the Mac App Store will be opening its virtual doors today, at 12:00 p.m (noon), which falls in line with a previous prediction by the same blog.
Citing these anonymous sources, the blog reported yesterday, Wednesday, that Apple will officially open the Mac App Store at precisely 12:00 p.m Eastern Standard Time, which translates into 9 a.m. for Pacific time.
The Loop correctly predicted that the Mac App Store would arrive in January 2011, before Apple’s official confirmation, when the service was rumored to have an early December launch.
The Mac App Store was announced by Apple in October, during a special event dubbed “Back to the Mac”.
At the time, Apple explained that the service would be the Mac counterpart of its already well-established iOS App Store, which serves hundreds of thousands of applications to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad customers worldwide.
The Mac App Store, as described by the Cupertino giant, aims to simplify the process of downloading, installing, and updating software applications on a desktop or portable Macintosh computer.
The service will feature categories of applications, much like the current iTunes App Store, and will highlight paid and free applications by popularity, sales, and other criteria.
Developers have already become vocal on the matter, some expressing concern that the system will spawn a new category of throw-away apps, others gladly embracing the concept, which allows for easy porting of their existing iOS titles over to desktop platforms.
Whichever the outcome, Apple will allow Mac owners to start using the service via a software update which should emerge sometime today.
Apple’s official report confirming the launch date of the highly-anticipated service specifically said “The Mac App Store is available to Mac OS X Snow Leopard users as a free download through Software Update.”