Apple has issued a press release announcing January 6th will be the date the Mac App Store officially opens for business.
Developers have been submitting Mac Apps for review since early November, a process that will be familiar to iOS developers by now as the two developer programs are quite similar.
Because a new build of Mac OS X may be required to run the Mac App Store, Apple could also release Mac OS X 10.6.6 on the same day or a few days earlier. According to developers, Mac OS X 10.6.6 is a very small upgrade primarily intended to support the Mac App Store; delta upgrades from 10.6.5 to 10.6.6 have reportedly been as small as 3-4MB in size.
The Mac App Store will be available through Software Update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard users only. Read more
Apple posts “navigation software” job opportunity
Apple has posted 4 similar job opportunities over at jobs.apple.com with the following 3 things listed as “Valuable knowledge” that would be helpful for the position:
The job title is listed as “iOS Software Engineer”, and the pitch for the job includes the phrase “build the world’s best hosted platforms at massive scale”.
Given the job description, it’s likely that Apple is planning to add navigation functionality to the iOS Maps application, or perhaps release a new Navigation App which would offer live turn by turn directions read aloud, along with the “point of view” 3D map that GPS owners are accustomed to. Read more