Apple's Mac App Store will open for business on Thursday, January 6. It will be for Mac OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard") and will be built into next summer's Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

By bringing the Apple App Store experience to Mac OS X, the Mac App Store makes discovering, installing and updating Mac apps easier than ever, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.. The Mac App Store will be available in 90 countries at launch and will feature paid and free apps in categories like Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity and Utilities.

“The App Store revolutionized mobile apps,” says Jobs. “We hope to do the same for PC apps with the Mac App Store by making finding and buying PC apps easy and fun"

The Mac App Store lets you browse new and noteworthy apps (noteworthy, as determined by Apple), find out what’s hot, view staff favorites, search categories and read customer ratings and reviews. Like on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, you can purchase, download and install apps in just one click and start using them immediately.

Purchased apps can run on all of your personal Macs and updates are delivered directly through the Mac App Store so, according to Apple, it’s easy to keep all of your apps up to date. The Mac App Store will be available to Snow Leopard users as a free download through the Software Update component of the Systems Preferences app.

Mac developers set the price for their apps, keep 70% of the sales revenue (Apple gets the other 30%), are not charged for free apps and don't have to pay hosting, marketing or credit card fees. To find out more about developing for the Mac App Store visit developer.apple.com/programs/mac .

-- Dennis Sellers