Mac Basics: The Mac App Store

The Mac App Store is the primary way to add Apple and third-party apps to your Mac. Some apps are free and others you need to pay for, sometimes with in-app purchases or subscriptions. There are many good reasons to prefer using the App Store instead of download apps from websites.
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Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to use the Mac App Store.
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The Mac App Store is the primary way that you get both Apple and third party apps on your Mac. It's a regular app. You could launch it anyway you like. You should find it in the Dock as well as your Applications folder. When you launch it it basically is a store that you could browse to see what apps are available. There are several different sections you could see here on the left and a Search field. So you can do to Discover to see what's new or what Apple's featuring currently. You could go to other categories like Create for creative tools or Work for productivity tools, Develop for developer tools and Play for games. You could also go to Categories and find other categories as well. So, for instance, if you wanted to look just at business apps you could go to the Business section. Every section has some featured apps but also a list of the top free apps and the top paid apps. 
Searching for apps though is the main way you would go to look for an app. So you would just type your search term. For instance to look for word processors you would search for word processor and come up with all the different results. You're going to come up with a variety of things. Here's Pages, an app from Apple, and here's Microsoft Word, probably the most popular word processor in the world. You'll also find lots of other word processor apps by a variety of different companies. Now sometimes apps are free and you'll see a button that says Get. Other times apps cost money and you'll see the price listed there of your local currency. If you already have an app installed then you'll just see Open rather than Get or a price. Also notice that sometimes you'll see Get, meaning the app is free, but you'll see In App Purchases under that meaning there are additional things you can purchase in the app. It doesn't necessarily mean that the app doesn't work until you make those purchases. You may have basic functionality but for more advanced functionality you may have to pay. Or you could have all the functionality you need in the free version but maybe there's some extras that others may want that you have to pay to get. In addition sometimes you'll find apps that are subscription based meaning that you have to pay a regular monthly or annual fee to use the app. Sometimes apps have a subscription but it's outside the app store. For instance Microsoft Word you could download here for free but to use it you need a Microsoft account which means you pay Microsoft an annual fee to be able to use their Office Suite. Without a Microsoft ID and a paid subscription this word app is little more than a demo. 
Now you may have noticed there's a Play section to get Games but also the Arcade section as well. The difference is that Arcade is a subscription service kind of like Apple Music but for games. If you subscribe to the service and pay a monthly amount then you can get any of the games that are in the Arcade section without paying anything additional. You just download the one you want to play and play it. But even with an Apple Arcade subscription anything under Play is going to be a game that you have to purchase. 
Now let's go and look at the information for an app. So, I can click to select an app and then I could see a lot of information about it. There are usually preview screens and sometimes a video. You can scroll down and read a description. Usually there's a More button here and you could read some detailed information. A link to the developer's website and their support page. Then usually there are user reviews under that. Some reviews are featured and you get a general rating. Then you could click See All to see more reviews. Keep in mind these are user reviews not a professional review. So you're going to get a variety here especially for smaller lesser used apps. You're going to have some people that leave reviews that aren't really very useful. Then under that there's more information. Sometimes there's information about the most recent version so you can see version history and how recent this version is and what's new in it. You could also see the new app privacy section which tells you what information the app accesses. For a lot of apps, of course, they need to access information in order to work at all. This is a To Do List app so of course it's actually going to access user content. Without user content the app really doesn't do anything. Then you'll see some finer details at the bottom. For instance compatibility, file size, and languages supported. Notice that if you're in an app that has in app purchases, the in app purchases section here can be expanded and you could see exactly what those are. That gives you a good idea as to whether you can use the app without those purchases or how much the app will really cost you to get all the features. 
Now one of the best things about the Mac App Store is that when you make a purchase with your Apple ID you can download that app on any Mac that you have. So if you have a desktop Mac and also a laptop Mac and you're using the same Apple ID for both, as you should, then you need to just make the purchase once and you could download that app in both places. In addition the purchase is always yours. So you could download an app and use it and then uninstall it but then reinstall it later because you've already made that purchase. You don't have to pay a second time. Which means that if an app takes up a lot of space on your drive but you rarely use it you could actually uninstall it and only install it again if you need to use. it. Also at the bottom of app information you'll see a section says Supports and it may say Family Sharing. If you're using Family Sharing, so you have your account and say your spouse also has one and maybe your kids are also all in the same Family Sharing group, then purchasing the app means that everybody in the Family Sharing Group can download and use that app.
There are two other really good reasons to use the Mac App Store. One, of course, is security. In order for an app to be submitted to the App Store the developer has to be registered with Apple and pay a fee. So it's unlikely that a bad actor is going to try to get into that system. Then Apple does run checks on the apps to make sure there are no obvious flaws or that it's malware. But even past that if an app does turn out to be malicious in some way Apple can remove it from the App Store and chances are they would have done that before you even ever saw the app. So there's a lot of accountability here which makes it a much safer place to buy an app than just off of a website somewhere. Another good reason is you have a single payment system. So instead of buying apps from individual developers and giving each one your credit card number to buy the app you simply have your payment information with Apple and every time you make a purchase in the Mac App Store it's just using that account. The Mac App Store will also perform updates on the apps in an universal way. So as an update appears for any of the apps that you've gotten through the Mac App Store you'll get those. Whereas if you get apps individually from different developers each one will probably have its own update system. 
In the App Store if you go to Preferences you can turn on Automatic Update which means updates will happen usually overnight and you'll always have the most recent version of the app which is best for not only getting the latest features but for security reasons as well. You could also check to Automatically Download App purchased on other devices. So if you have a desktop Mac and a laptop Mac and you want to make sure that when you buy a new app on one it automatically is added to the other you can check that. If you'd rather have separate apps available on the different devices then leave that unchecked. You could always go and download the app separately. Remember once you've purchased the app with your Apple ID you can get it on any device using that Apple ID. So if you buy an app, say for $20 on one Mac then go to the other Mac it won't say it's $20, it will just have a Get button and you can get that app. If you decide to not have automatic updates you can go to the Update section here and you'll see a list of apps that are available for update and you can trigger each update. Also if you click on your user ID at the bottom left corner you'll see your account and you'll see the purchases that you've made. If an app is currently installed you'll see an Open button. If it's not installed, but you've purchased it, you'll see this little cloud download button and you could download that app for free. You can also click on this button with the three dots and you could Hide the purchase. So if there's an app that you don't think you'll ever want to use again you can hide it here so it won't clutter up the list. 
Now if you happen to have a new Mac that's using Apple Silicon, like the new M1 Macs or anything beyond that, then you also have the ability to use the Mac App Store to download iOS and iPad apps. So you just switch over to that and then you can Search for iOS and iPad apps. You should also be able to get any apps that you've purchased using the same Apple ID at no additional cost. But note that not all iOS developers need to make their apps available on the Mac. Some of them may not work properly or may not make sense to have on the Mac because it's a fundamentally different device than an iPhone or an iPad.
You also use the Mac App Store to get Safari extensions. In Safari if you go to Safari and then Safari Extensions it actually takes you to the Mac App Store and to a special section not listed on the left called Safari Extensions. 
So that's a look at the Mac App Store. For most Mac users I recommend that whenever you need an app go to the Mac App Store and look there. Getting an app from the Mac App Store is more secure and it's also more convenient from a payment and update standpoint. It helps you avoid possibly downloading something that could be harmful to your Mac. But more advanced users may get some apps from the Mac App Store but at other times may get apps directly from developer websites.
Mac Basics: The Mac App Store

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