Apple Releases OS X 10.6.6 and Mac App Store

A great news few minutes ago from Apple which released OS X 10.6.6 with access to the Mac App Store in Software Update.
About 114 MB is available now free to download for Snow Leopard users. As noted by Macworld, the Mac App Store includes some apps from Apple such as:

• The three key apps in the $49 iLife ’11 suite—iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand—are now available via the Mac App Store for $15 each. The boxed iLife ’11 suite, in contrast, costs $49—slightly more than the three apps a la carte, though the suite also includes iDVD and iWeb, two apps that haven’t been substantially updated in recent years.
• The three apps that make up the $79 iWork ’09 suite—Pages, Keynote, and Numbers—are also available on the Mac App Store, for $20 each, undercutting the $79 price of the boxed suite. It’s an even better deal if you’re only a user of one of the apps—Keynote, for example.
• Aperture and Apple Remote Desktop are also on sale in the Mac App Store, both available at $79.99.

Full changelog and first screenshots of the Mac App Store below.

Update: here are the direct links to the OS X 10.6.6. update.

- Mac OS X v10.6.6 Update

- Mac OS X v10.6.6 Update Combo

- Mac OS X Server v10.6.6 Update

- Mac OS X Server v10.6.6 Update Combo

Cydia Coming to Mac Soon!

Apple has been working hard to try to make the Mac App Store possible. Now, Saurik the creator of Cydia app store for iOS devices has announced that he is going to bring Cydia for the Mac!

According the TUAW, Saurik made this astonishing announcement at 360|MavDev giving an overview of his upcoming Cydia for MAC OS X, Cycript, and Cydia Substrate.

Currently, Cydia Installer has been used by about 10% of all iPhone users, or about 10 million devices. There are well over 30,000 packages available for iOS, and a lot of open source material can be downloaded from Cydia. He refers to Cydia as a store for things that are not apps, but extensions of what iOS devices can do.

Freeman felt that the same type of store would be useful for Mac OS X devices; the result is a Mac Cydia, which will be available "within weeks." With today's news that the Mac App Store will not support in-app purchases, something that is critical to the freemium app model that is so successful in the iOS world, a Mac Cydia might be just the web store for a number of Mac developers.

This is a very huge advance for the jailbreak scene. Not only will there be jailbroken iDevices, now it's being expanded for Mac! This will be out within weeks! Any developers interested in trying to get their app into Cydia for Mac is always free to contact Patrick at saurikit.com

Mac App Store to Open Next Monday Along with iOS 4.3 Launch?

In case you are on of our readers, you may know that Apple is reportedly launching iOS 4.3 next Monday (December 13th). However, an inside source has just told Appletell that Apple is targeting a Monday, December 13th launch of the Mac App Store.

An inside source has just told us that Apple is targeting a Monday, December 13th launch of the Mac App Store. The company apparently told developers to have their software prepared for a launch as early as Monday the 6th of this month, but our contact would be shocked if that happened at this point. Apple has made no official announcements regarding this, and delays could always happen, but there's a push to be launched before Christmas, well ahead of the previously estimated January release.

At the Back to the Mac even on October 20th, Steve Jobs confirmed that the Mac App Store should be launched after 90 days which means late in January 2011 so we can't verify these claims but we do know that Apple has already started asking developers to submit their apps to the Mac App Store and has already seeded a new version of Mac OS X 10.6.6 to Mac App developers. So this may claims that Apple would launch it earlier than what they said. More updates as they come, stay tuned !