Apple is deadly serious with its App-driven vision for life in the clouds, with a new patent application describing its new way to share and buy apps from the cloud. Published today and spotted by Patently Apple the application reveals the concepts behind the Apple vision, whch essentially allows users to share apps on their phones — say you were impressed the first time you saw Angry Birds, for example. “Aaron wants to share an application stored on his iPhone (or “sharing device” 202) with Brent’s iPhone (or “receiving device” 204). Aaron’s iPhone displays a list of applications which are available to share with Brent. Aaron selects, via a suitable user input such as speech, touch gestures, stylus input, keypad input, etc., at least one application to share with Brent’s iPhone.” The two iPhone users can share apps on a peer-to-peer basis this way, and if payment is required the receivee can pay later. The patent even describes ways in which the giver could receive incentives for sharing apps — money, coupons, whatever… Extend these concepts to Mac apps via the Mac App Store and you’re probably about to experience a software sales explosion.
