Will ‘Big’ Software be ready for App Stores and Inexpensive Solutions?

In my previous post, I mentioned the many ways our information may be kept off our our local computers. Saving on space and making it accessible through a variety of tools. Also, I ran through the thought of lite version of software on your notebook/mobile devices with more robust software being online.

There was a surprise result of the iPhone in the hands of the ‘end users’. The need for inexpensive mobile solutions to do research and create/edit files. There has long been mobile software for the Newton and Palm devices but the software options where and still are, through a variety of sources and not very well quality controlled.

In our Newton days, we used to show our solutions to a couple key Apple programmers to see if they felt we had done anything hacky. It wasn’t required, but we were concerned about our software being around a long time and not broken in a future OS update. Oh, and our clients feeling it all ‘just worked’ was important to.

With Apple’s iTunes App Store for the iPhone, Touch and iPad, we live in a world of lite and affordable software. People spend a lot of money, a few dollars at a time, to get a solution to their problems or needs. Google and Mozilla are on their heels with their own ‘app stores’.

Recently, it was announced that the App Store will be able to distribute desktop software as well. A lot of teams are scrambling to makes sure their software will be on the early list of options when the service goes live. It will mean a single spot to go for all of your software needs. While there is already many sites that list out software for your particular device, they do not control anything more than how the software is listed. They do nothing about checking to make sure that app follows any rules, passing the risk of crashes and conflicts onto the purchaser.

Continue reading Will ‘Big’ Software be ready for App Stores and Inexpensive Solutions?