Apple's Mac App Store Hits One Million Downloads in First Day

Apple has announced that its recently released Mac App Store—literally, launched on January 6, 2011—racked up more than one million app downloads within a 24-hour time period. The figure's even more impressive given that the store itself only launched with, "more than 1,000 apps," as opposed to, say, 50,000 or something--that's a lot of multiple app downloading.

"We're amazed at the incredible response the Mac App Store is getting," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, in a press release distributed by the company. "Developers have done a great job bringing apps to the store and users are loving how easy and fun the Mac App Store is."

Evernote, makers of the identically named software that helps one keep track of to-do items, would have to agree with Jobs. According to the company, more than twice as many users have been signing up for its software using the Mac App Store than by previous methods, which includes both desktop and mobile downloads.

Richard Gaywood over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog slogged through 2,004 different apps in an attempt to generate deeper analytics as to what, exactly, makes up the core of Apple's app business. According to him, the predominant category in the Mac App Store is games, eating up around 600—or nearly one-third—of all programs present.

Utility-, productivity-, and entertainment-themed apps number around 200 a piece, but even this can be a bit of a misnomer, reports Gaywood. The Mac App Store might be set up into roughly 35 different categories of apps to download, but a number of apps can be found in multiple category listings. 

As far as pricing goes—another eye-opener for those accustomed to paying $1 or so for apps for their various mobile Apple devices—most apps on the Mac App Store live within the category of apps priced at $5 or under. Less than 100 of the apps Gaywood surveyed are free, and slightly over 300 cost anywhere from $10 to $50.

Only a scant few apps, less than 20, push past $100 within Apple's Mac App Store. And of these, the most expensive application is Distribute—"a single user, purchase, inventory and sales manager built exclusively for Mac OS X," reads the app's description. Picking up one copy of this app will set you back $700.