What do you mean by OpenCL isn't deployed yet? It's been in and supported since 10.6.0, and I've run the demo apps just fine on both my old NVidia 8800 GT and my newer ATI 4870. I don't know if any of my apps make much use of it yet, but like all new APIs, it's going to take time for people to figure out how to use them and best integrate them into their app. They also have to factor in backwards compatibility. With no OpenCL support in 10.5, most app makers weren't rushing to make 10.6 only apps right when Snow Leopard shipped.

QuickTime X did indeed drop a lot of features, but I've found I use it more then I did QuickTime 7 for tasks outside simple video watching. The built in upload to YouTube and quick trimming features, along with screen recording have come in very handy. I'm not going to specifically defend the dropping of other features, but it's not as bad as you make it out to sound, at least from my experience.

Resolution independence, not sure what the story is with that one on the desktop side, but it's tech that Apple has used on the iOS side with the iPhone. There would probably be a bigger push for it on the desktop side if monitors were going up in DPI drastically, but things seem to have stabilized for now.


30% of nothing is nothing (though to answer TonyC's question, you need to pay Apple $99 a year to be a registered developer, so there is a cost. That cost however is for an unlimited amount of apps on the store). But yet a free app still costs Apple money to approve, host, and otherwise support. From what I can find, about 31% of the apps in the store are free. The average selling price (factoring in $0.00 through the 7 $999 apps) is $2.61. I'd go further with the math to estimate how much Apple is pulling in with their 30% cut, but an accurate number isn't available due to not knowing how many apps are being sold/downloaded for free. Also, keep in mind the App Store revenue is lumped in with the general iTunes store and hosting costs, and that includes the much bigger file size movie rentals, podcasts, and other sources of content that all cut into any profit. For now, the iTunes store exists purely to sell hardware. With the potential for more expensive apps in the Mac App store, it is possible Apple may recognize more profit from it then their existing stores.

For me, I'm pretty excited about the store as a consumer. I know you mentioned the licensing as a concern, to me it's a huge benefit. Some developers like yourself offer "family packs" or whatever, but many don't. It will be much more tempting for me to buy an app knowing that I can use it on my home Mac Pro, my MacBook, or my Mac Mini. And the benefits of having one place to browse for a lot of apps will be nice. I do share the control concerns Trevor brought up though. Apple will really need to step up their turnaround time, and become more transparent on the whole process. If it becomes the only way to load apps, then I'll be really concerned, to the point of probably switching platforms.