So if you're new to Mac you may not know about the Mac App Store or may not have used it
much yet.
You can usually find the Mac App Store in the Dock by default.
It's got a little symbol here.
It looks like an A for app.
You go into it and it's basically just a store where you can buy software although a lot
of software is free.
So you can navigate it using the items at the top.
The first item is Featured and it's going to show new apps, apps that have been just
recently been updated, apps that are popular, and apps that Apple has reviewed and liked.
There's also Top Charts where you can go and see the top paid, the top free, and the top
grossing apps.
The difference between top paid and top grossing is that a lot of apps have in-app purchases.
Grossing is kind of combining the initial price with any in-app purchases.
You can also dig into Categories.
It shows you the top three in every category.
Or you can dig down into the category itself.
Notice on the right there's all sorts of special sections like Apps for Writers, Apps for Developers,
Making Music.
These will change periodically.
You'll also find charts here for the section that you're in.
So the top paid productivity apps are listed here.
There's a section for Purchased to see the ones you've purchased.
If they are installed currently you can open them up.
One thing to know is when you buy an app in the Mac App Store you've basically bought
a license to use it whether or not you have it installed.
So you can uninstall a piece of software and just go to this purchase section and it will
say Download and you can download it again.
So a piece of software that you may only use occasionally you may not want to actually
have on your Mac all the time.
Simply redownload it and reinstall it the next time that you need it.
There's also a section for Updates which will check for updates for all of the software,
including some pieces that aren't actually from the app store like here, for instance,
iTunes.
You'll see notes here telling you what has changed.
So when you get an update to a piece of software you may want to go to the Update section and
read about what has changed.
Sometimes there's important notes here that will help you get around in the new version
very quickly.
Now when you go and select a piece of software you can read a lot about it.
There's a description, there's What's New in the most recent version here as well.
You can find information here on the right.
If there's any in app purchases they'll be listed here.
You can find ratings and reviews.
Of course reviews are written by regular everyday users like you and me so sometimes the quality
of the review varies.
You should probably read several of them to just get an idea and kind of discard the best
ones and the worst ones to get an idea.
Then you have the ability to Open the software if you have it installed.
If it's something you haven't purchased then you'll get the price there and you can then
purchase it and it will use your iTunes account for the purchase.
Why should you purchase from the Mac App Store?
Well, there's a couple of reasons.
First there's security.
Any developer that has an app in the Mac App Store is part of the Apple Developer Program
so there's accountability.
Also Apple has reviewed, to some extent, the apps that are there.
It's not a complete review but there's certain things that need to be done in order for the
app to be accepted in the App Store.
Also, of course, if anything were to go wrong with an app Apple would pull it from the App
Store where that's not true on the web where an app that is causing trouble can just remain
up there.
Another advantage to using the Mac App Store is that you can use the app that you've purchased
on multiple machines.
So if you have say a MacBook and an iMac and they're both yours and you're using the same
Apple ID on both you can download the software you've purchased on both those machines.
No need to purchase two licenses for that piece of software.
One other reason you may want to use the App Store for most of your app purchases is it's
just a single payment system.
So you're not buying apps from all sorts of different developers, all sorts of different
payment systems.
You're just using your iTunes account to do it.