The Mac App Store in 2025: Still simple. Still broken.

On January 6th, 2011, Apple unveiled the Mac App Store to the general public. Released with the Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6.6 update, the Mac App Store had an impressive 1000 free and paid apps on launch day.

Fourteen years later, the Mac App Store is still chugging along. While it’s convenient in some ways, particularly for new Mac users, I find the experience frustrating. So much so that I no longer consider the Mac App Store as a viable option when I’m on the search for new Mac apps.

Let’s get this out of the way: Purchasing and installing apps from the Mac App Store is still easy and painless for single user licenses. This is what Apple gets right. Apple also does a good job with its curated lists, such as “Best New Apps and Updates”, “Essential Safari Extensions”, and more.

But finding and filtering apps outside of Apple’s curated lists is a different story. In short: it’s not very useful.

To demonstrate, I entered “Typing Practice” within the Search field. A list of typing applications is shown. A closer look at the Search filter reveals that the results are sorted based on Relevance.

Now, let’s sort the Filter by Popularity. My expectation is that the list will start with the most popular typing practice application, but instead, the new results show “Form for Google Forms”. Below is another example, with the Search term “Email”.

Sorting by Ratings shows me useful results, but sorting by Release Date does not.

Including an accompanying release date next to each app would help me in deciding whether or not I want to take a chance on it.

When selecting an app within the Mac App Store, one can immediately see its rating, age, chart listing within its category, and size of the app. This is fine. But I think it would be even more helpful if users could easily see the version number and release date in this area as well. To be fair, if one scrolls down past the “Ratings & Reviews” section, one can usually find an application’s Version History. But I’ve encountered a few apps missing this section altogether. Consistency would be nice.

Another problem with the App Store is the sheer volume of old, outdated applications, many of which are between 4 to 8 years old. This makes the shopping experience more “seedy strip mall” than “upscale boutique mall”.

In my opinion, it would be helpful for Apple to provide a color-coded visual indicator for each app to show how “fresh” it is. A green color designate that the app in question was updated within the past year. Similarly, a yellow color would denote that an app is between 1 to 2 years old, while an orange color could indicate that an app is older than 2 years.

The Mac App Store also suffers from plenty of fake and knock-offs Mac apps. Some of these apps use familiar icons to their legitimate counterparts, but contain malicious code or other nefarious elements. I understand that some fake apps can slip through the cracks, but it’s still a problem. If not checked, it can really sour users on the Mac App Store shopping experience.

Apple leverages machine learning for Siri, Focus Modes, and the Photos app. Why it hasn’t turned its machine learning gaze towards the Mac App Store is beyond baffling to me.

The issues I’ve cited above are not new. They’ve existed for more than a few years, and it’s getting worse. The degraded experience means that I prioritize finding Mac apps on the web first, before I even consider the Mac App Store.

Based what I’ve seen over the past fourteen years, I’m not holding out any hope that any of my concerns will be addressed. Though it would be a pleasant surprise if care and attention were given to Apple’s “one-stop-shop”. Those are my biggest gripes with the Mac App Store. What are some of yours?