VR-Zone

Apple has announced their Mac App Store is now open for business with more than 1,000 free and paid apps. It brings the App Store experience to the Mac users such that they can search for new apps, buy them using their iTunes account, download and install them in just one step. The Mac App Store is available for Snow Leopard users through software update as part of Mac OS X v10.6.6.

Apps are sorted in various categories including Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity and Utilities. Users can browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what’s hot, see favorites, search categories and look up top charts for paid and free apps, as well as user ratings and reviews.

Entirely new apps, as well as current Mac favorites, are available from developers such as Autodesk, Ancestry.com and Boinx. iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand apps from Apple’s popular iLife ‘11 suite are available individually in the Mac App Store for US$14.99 each, and Pages, Keynote and Numbers apps from iWork are available for US$19.99 each. Aperture 3, Apple’s powerful photo editing and management software, is available for US$79.99.

Popular games like Angry Birds (US$4.99) and Peggle (US$9.99) are also available on the Mac App Store.

Update: According to Apple Insider, just hours of the official launch of the Mac App store, software pirates have found a way to illegally install and run paid apps. It seems that by replacing the receipt and signature files in some of the paid app packages,  with the receipt from a free app, lets the app to run normally in some cases. However, that doesn't apply to every app, but those that don't follow Apple's App validation advice.

Source: Apple Insider