Apple's Mac OS App Store Opening January 6th!

Opening up on the 6th of January (which, surprisingly is a Thursday) is Apple's new portal for downloading the latest and greatest desktop applications. Come one, come all, come develop for $99/yr and have Apple take away 30% of your revenue. The bigger questions lay ahead in that will current developers actually want to take part in the store or continue the traditional means of sales? I'm not necessarily focusing on the big box software makers that sell at brick and mortar shops but the way independents have thrived. The truth is, I've always just downloaded software right off of the web when installing a Mac OS X application. This accounts for just about 90% of my current applications that I run on my MacBook Pro as well as Adelle's MacBook Air. Granted a lot of the free apps will now reside and get a "store" front hence free marketing, but those that will cost? Why give Apple 30%?! Please post your opinions below.

This "store" will be able to be downloaded for Mac OS X Snow Leopard users only through a free software update. Just be at peace that it was able to evade the huge monster that iTunes now is. Hopefully this is a way for iTunes and the iOS App Store to begin their divorce.

Press Release