[chesspro]

It all depends on how apple carries it out with their Mac App Store.

If they manage to do it in a way similar to steam, they'll be tremendously successful. The only problem is that a lot of people don't view games the same way as apps. I have friends who don't torrent games like MW2 & indie games but they end up pirating office for mac. In fact, I would say over 50-60% of my friends have torrented copies of office. Then again, my friends probably aren't representative of most people. While the majority of people don't bother pirating apps on the iOS, I wonder how much this will change with bigger and more expensive apps on the Mac App Store, like with mac office.

One convenience with something like the App Store is that as long as you sign in, you have access to your apps on your machines. More importantly, it's available online digitally so you can redownload it anytime you want without the worry of losing your dmgs. That alone is a major plus for me and probably will get me to buy more software than I usually do.

And DRM systems are always going to be broken and again, the bigger question is how will Apple execute this?

I still have a sense that people view games on steam vs normal apps differently though. I know a lot of people who don't feel right pirating certain games, but will gladly pirate other apps. I guess we will see when the App Store launches.

[jonhendry]

Mac Office won't be on the App Store, because Microsoft has their own license key systems, their own site license deals, etc.