Message Board
App Stores, Streaming, and the Cloud?
Robert Virkus11/24/2010 3:43 PM EST
It appears that the way we buy and use our applications is changing at an ever rapid pace. Apple's iPhone app store received all the attention when it started and other models are opening up. I would take a step back and posit that one of the first steps was Steam, the online gaming system developed by Valve.
With Steam you download purchased games that you can play individually on your PC or stream multi-player games online. Games can be played from any computer with a Steam client. You can also register games you purchased elsewhere for playing on their system.
With Apple about to launch their Macintosh app store what will be the rules and regulations for accessing the applications? One person on one computer or something more open?
Microsoft will have their app store for W7 phones. Will they extend that to desktop applications or are they more likely to stay with their subscription-based cloud?
Lots of changes, interesting times.
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hm
11/27/2010 11:24 AM EST
This is very interesting concept of using applications software. Many other vendors of higher end software should derive similar format to enourage more people to try and eventually use their software.
However, alongwith this they should also come out with novel payment methods. First probelm is how younger people pay to them? Many times, they do not have Credit Cards. Also giving CC numbers to all vendors significantly reduces security of CC.
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hm
11/27/2010 11:28 AM EST
Can EEtimes start their own applications store for EE community and offer many different type of EDA tools and other design services?
This may significantly enhance EETimes presence with all EE and related engineering people and vendors.
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Mark Wehrmeister
11/27/2010 2:33 PM EST
The nice thing about the Apple app store is that most the apps are free or very low cost. The investment required to try a new app and possibly discard it is not great so you can try many. With Desktop software the prices would have to be much lower, or perhaps the model changed where you could buy the core application at a low price (or free) and pay individually for add-on features that you want or need. That way, each person could have a custom version of the Desktop app.
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