Phil Libin’s guest post on TechCrunch is an eye-opener. The day the Mac App Store launched, the Mac leapt from bringing in about three per cent of new Evernote users to 52 per cent, and although this figure slid over the following days, it’s still high.

Libin thinks this proves desktop software remains viable, but that user experience is key, as is discoverability. One thing Apple got very right with iOS was in placing the App Store front and centre and encouraging users to buy software. The same’s now true on the Mac. One can only hope someone at Microsoft is paying attention, because a Windows equivalent would be fantastic (and potentially cut down on malware/virus issues if the store was properly curated).

Libin also reckons the experience has cemented his thoughts regarding users gravitating towards the best user experiences, justifying the company’s native-apps approach:

If Evernote’s desktop clients were written in Adobe AIR, I’d be worried right now. The immediate popularity of the Mac App Store, and the iPhone App Store before it, reinforces my belief that in a world of infinite software choice, people gravitate towards the products with the best overall user experience. It’s very hard for something developed in a cross-platform, lowest-common-denominator technology to provide as nice an experience as a similar native app.

As the CEO of a software company, I wish this weren’t true. I’d love to build one version of our App that could work everywhere. Instead, we develop separate native versions for Windows, Mac, Desktop Web, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, HP WebOS and (coming soon) Windows Phone 7. We do it because the results are better and, frankly, that’s all-important. We could probably save 70% of our development budget by switching to a single, cross-platform client, but we would probably lose 80% of our users. And we’d be shut out of most app stores and go back to worrying about distribution.

It’s something of a running joke in the tech press how often highly paid and influential analysts update their predictions for iPad sales. TechCrunch’s article by Erick Schonfeld from a couple of days back neatly sums things up:

The iPad sold three times as much as the average tech blogger predictions, and five times as much as the average Wall Street analyst prediction. Think about that the next time you see a prediction for anything in tech. The newer it is, the less anybody knows.

To be fair, Brian Marshall did OK guessing at seven million, but just 1.1 million, Doug Reid of Thomas Weisel and Yair Reiner of Oppenheimer? Really? Even if the iPad hadn’t become a breakout hit and shaken up the industry, it would have sold more than that number to Apple fans alone.

A year ago: Acer dismisses a tablet (PCWorld), arguing that its netbooks and notebooks won’t be affected by the iPad.

Today: Acer is to start selling tablets by summer (Computerworld), and Taiwan sales manager Lu Bing-hsian says:

They are aimed at phasing out netbooks. That’s the direction of the market.

Interesting times in mobile gaming. Although plenty of people continue to dismiss iOS and similar devices going forward, the industry is gradually shifting. The big news today is on MVC, where Capcom Interactive’s president and COO Midori Yuasa had this to say:

The casual gamer that used to play on the PC and the hardcore gamer that used to play on a dedicated gaming portable now plays on their smartphone.

The iPhone and larger smartphone markets are extremely important to Capcom as, like no device before, smartphones have the potential to become a universal game platform.

This is the fight Nintendo’s now in with the 3DS, and it’s very different to battling just another gaming console.

Apple’s media advisory just went out, with Steve Jobs telling Apple staff that he’s taking another “medical leave of absence” so he can focus on his health. Today, there’s no US stockmarket trading. Tomorrow, AAPL will fall off a cliff and people go OH MY GOD NO STEVE JOBS APPLE IS DOOMED, ignoring the facts that:

• Apple didn’t keel over last time Jobs took months off to deal with health problems;
• Apple has very capable people to take over the general running of the company (and, arguably, to offer both innovation and vision);
• Apple essentially is Steve Jobs now.

That last point bears explanation. I’m not saying Apple is Steve Jobs in the sense that if he is out of the picture, Apple ceases to function. I’m saying Apple is Steve Jobs in the sense that his way of thinking is now so deeply infused into the company that the company can continue to ‘be Steve’ even when he’s not there.

Hopefully, Jobs is merely taking a leave of absence to concentrate on getting fitter (day-to-day running of Apple is probably quite stressful and not ideal for long-term recuperation from a major operation) and there’s no recurrence of the cancer he had. Hopefully, he can and will get well soon. Hopefully, the tech press and traders won’t go batshit monkey ballistic over this news, spewing disinformation and bullshit everywhere. Sadly, I think the last of those is a very long shot indeed.

UPDATE: BBC News reports:

Apple shares traded in Frankfurt are down 7% on the news.

Don’t expect Apple to catch up with Exxon in 2011, then.