The Mac App Store is Still Stuck...

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For a long time now I've been hoping the Mac App Store will take off. Maybe it's because I'm a hopeless romantic, or maybe it's because I think bringing the App Store and small-screen apps to the desktop will be (r)evolutionary.

So I took a closer look at the store and which apps are in it. I was a bit surprised by the results.

Fun fact - I asked my Twitter followers which category they thought had the most apps and for the third week in a row, most voters (76.6%) were wrong.

According to data from Explorer, which is now accessible to every Appfigures member, the Mac App Store currently contains a little over 31K apps and games.

Not a lot, I know. But we'll get to that soon.

First, I was curious about categories. I didn't expect games to be the dominant category for the simple reason that Macs aren't known as gaming devices. But I wasn't entirely sure what would be the top result.

Utilities, that's the top result with nearly 5.5K apps currently available for download. Followed by games.

What?!?!?!

There are 5K games in the Mac App Store right now. That's a lot more than I expected! Are they all super popular? Absolutely not. But someone took the time to build them.

Productivity, Education, and Photo & Video complete the top 5 list, all of which make some sense. More than games, for sure.

Knowing the breakdown of what goes into the Mac App Store, I was curious to see how fast the store is growing, and that's when reality hit.

It isn't.

If you're developing for the Mac this might be shocking to you - The Mac App Store sees just 15 new apps every month on average. That's what the App Store, which sees about 1,000 new apps every day, adds in 20 minutes.

I don't think Apple has a plan for the Mac App Store, but I still think there is some potential as soon as Apple starts pushing iOS apps on Apple Silicone. I could be wrong.