HOW TO: Use Apple's New Mac App Store

The Mac App Store launched this morning, loaded with over 1,000 apps to play with.

Many are clones from popular iOS apps like Angry Birds, Flight Control, and Osmos.

It seems like developers are using the desktop as an excuse to charge a lot more for these games and apps.

For example, Angry Birds will run you $4.99 right now, but that's a special introductory offer. The normal price is $9.99.

But you do get some good value out of Apple's suite of office Apps: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Those cost $19.99 each. Apple's iWork, which includes these three applications, retails for $79, so you'll still save about $20 by purchasing all three in the App Store.

In order to use the new App Store, you must be running the latest update of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. To update, click the Apple symbol at the top left of your screen and then click Software Update.

When the update is complete, the App Store icon will automatically appear in your dock.

After you update OS X, you'll see the App Store icon in your dock. Click it to launch the app store.

Here's the home screen for the App Store. You can view popular and featured apps.

Before you can start downloading apps, you'll have to sign in with your Apple ID. At the top of your screen click "Store" then "Sign in..." and enter the Apple ID and password you use to download music and apps in iTunes. You can also create a new account by clicking "Create Account"

Now let's see what's popular in the new App Store. Click "Top Charts" to see a ranking of the most-downloaded apps. Here's a shocker: Angry Birds is already #1. We're going to download a free app, so let's click on Twitter.

After clicking Twitter, we're taken to the app's description page. To download, click the "Free" button below the Twitter icon.

Wow! The app downloaded so quickly we couldn't even get a screen grab of the install process in time! The icon automatically appears in your dock. Click it to open.

Here's what the Twitter app looks like when it's running. It's an update to the popular Tweetie client for Mac.

Now go crazy and download all the apps you want! They all appear in your dock, but you can remove them by dragging to the trash at any time. They can be found again in your Applications folder in the Finder.

The App Store is just the beginning for Apple in 2011...

Illustration by Business Insider

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