Apple's example Mac app prices land around $15-20
Reader Shane did a little zoom and enhance on Apple's promo image for the Mac App Store, and divined some potential prices for Apple's official apps. These same apps are the ones that set the pricing bar on the iPad, and so if these are real …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple has been building toward a Mac App Store all year, and the pricing question is live because the mobile precedent cuts both ways: iPhone app prices tanked through 2009 as the store flooded with 99-cent titles, while publishers like Time found that even $5 for an iPad edition drew pushback. The Mac has never had either dynamic — desktop shareware priced itself, and no storefront anchored expectations.
So a reader-enhanced promo image hinting that Apple will charge $15-20 for its own apps matters less for what Apple sells than for the ceiling it implies: the same apps set the de facto price bar on the iPad, and whatever Apple lists first becomes the reference point every third-party Mac developer prices against.
First-order effects
- Apple's own iLife and iWork-class titles become the anchor listings at Mac App Store launch, giving developers a visible top-of-market number rather than a blank slate.
Second-order effects
- If $15-20 holds, independent Mac developers gain cover to hold premium prices instead of matching the 99-cent floor that consumed the iPhone store — but any publisher who undercuts Apple risks being read as a lesser product.
Third-order effects
- Apple moves from hardware maker to price-setter for the entire Mac software market: one storefront's default tiers could do to desktop shareware pricing what the App Store did to mobile, concentrating distribution power in Cupertino.
The trend: App stores are turning platform owners into de facto price regulators, with Apple's first-party listings setting the anchor tiers each new storefront inherits from its predecessor.