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Amazon's new Mac Download Store launched Thursday with more than 250 titles, including software related to productivity, finance and games, as noted by The Loop. The new digital storefront even offers applications that are not found in Apple's Mac App Store, including the Office for Mac suite.
"Mac Download store features an install-less download process where the customer gets just the product without any unwanted extras, making for faster and easier purchases," Amazon said, promoting the new service. "Plus, downloads are conveniently backed up in your Games and Software Library where you can download an unlimited number of times for personal use."
In addition to Office, titles available on the Mac Download StoreMac Download Store include QuickBooks, H&R Block, Roxio Toast 10 Titanium, BioShock, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Amazon is also offering a $5 discount on software purchased through the store through June 1 with the code "SAVE5MAC."
The storefront stands in opposition to Apple's own Mac App Store, which is currently available for users of Mac OS X 10.6.6 Snow Leopard and later versions. The Mac App Store will also be an integral part of Apple's forthcoming operating system update, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
Amazon's new storefront is similar to the approach the retailer took with its own "Appstore for Android," which launched in March. Though the Appstore for Android, Amazon sells applications for Android-powered mobile devices, and competes with Google's own official Android Market.
Amazon has been very aggressive against its competitors with low prices, sometimes at a loss to bring in customers and generate interest. This week, Amazon sold Lady Gaga's new album "Born This Way" for just 99 cents in an effort to push its own Cloud Drive music streaming service, and take sales away from Apple's market-leading iTunes Music Store.
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74 Comments
This came out of nowhere. And how did they get Microsoft? I want Apple to have Microsoft.
Amazon on Thursday launched the "Mac Download Store," a new software destination for Mac OS X system that takes on Apple's own App Store by offering unique products, including Office for Mac.
Amazon's new Mac Download Store launched Thursday with more than 250 titles, including software related to productivity, finance and games, as noted by The Loop. The new digital storefront even offers applications that are not found in Apple's Mac App Store, including the Office for Mac suite.
Although the idea of a "Store" I guess is new, Amazon has been doing commercial Macintosh software downloads for a while. I bought Turbotax from them last year and got the electronic version because it saved me $10. I think its a great idea if we get savings out of it!
Its a rebrand more than something new, but just one more example of Amazon creeping into this whole ecosystem that Apple has dominated for so long. They have music, tv, movies, books, audiobooks, an app store and most definitely new tablets and maybe even new phones in the future.
Amazon, quite honestly, has become the first real competitor to Apple that targets the entire ecosystem first, rather than push out hardware with nothing else to back it up. Very interesting =).
This came out of nowhere. And how did they get Microsoft? I want Apple to have Microsoft.
I'd hazard a guess they made a special deal with them and don't get any cut of their sales.
Anyway, great news. This can only be good for consumers.
*goes off to install Amazon app store on his Mac*
Its a rebrand more than something new, but just one more example of Amazon creeping into this whole ecosystem that Apple has dominated for so long. They have music, tv, movies, books, audiobooks, an app store and most definitely new tablets and maybe even new phones in the future.
Amazon, quite honestly, has become the first real competitor to Apple that targets the entire ecosystem first, rather than push out hardware with nothing else to back it up. Very interesting =).
And they have an advantage in that they can be (for the moment) open to all OS's for PC's, where as apple will obviously never have a Windows software DL store.
With the kind of volume that they could generate that way, its hard to imagine them not being able to beat apple in terms of pricing for software.
As far as execution, we will see, but I can't imagine there will be much of a differential there.