I ran into Cheetah3D soon after the Mac App store was released – it was one of the first apps I bought. I was fascinated by the $99.00 price for a 3D application that, based on some cursory research, provided the perfect toolset for someone wanting to dabble in 3D – i.e. a perfect app for a prosumer not wanting to break the bank on Maya and other high-end 3D apps. So I bought it. And it was awesome! It’s the right balance of easy to use baked in with good professional features. The Cheetah3D forums are also a great resource.

Anyway Cheetah3D 6 is an awesome upgrade – bullet physics being a big new feature. If you’re on a Mac, looking to dabble in 3D and don’t need the “complexity” of a high-end 3D app – I highly recommend Cheetah3D.

2011 has been, generally, a good year, though I do miss my old teammates from the CHAMPS training team.

Here’s hoping 2012 is even better – and I extend that wish to the world at large.

Here’s a quick list of pros and cons, followed up with my “huh…this could change everything” realization.

Pros:
- Purchases are amazingly easy and generally painless.
- instant gratification (click, purchase, download, and go)
- easy to keep apps up to date
- curated experience means good exposure to new/useful apps while (so far) keeping malware out
- App Stores – not just the Mac App store – provide economic impetus to develop for the Apple ecosystem, meaning more cool apps for Mac OS/iOS

Mixed:
- walled garden – it’s nice and pretty, but sometimes you want to break out…

Cons:
- the store is difficult to search
- for a “curated” experience, the store still has a lot of “this passed review?” kind of apps
- broadband is a necessity, particularly for larger apps

And now for the “this can change everything” realization. So most software licenses basically tie the software to a machine, device, and sometimes even by CPU. Under the App Store, once you purchase software, it is licensed to your App store user account. This means you buy software once and can use it anywhere (after logging into the App store and installing the app under your App store user account). It’s basically a floating license (I’m looking at you, Luxology Modo). This makes perfect sense to me – the machine doesn’t matter – it’s not licensing the software. The user though…they matter a lot, they’re the ones licensing the software. I eagerly await for this licensing model to become the norm because it has the potential to change everything.