By NICK BILTON

The Mac App Store officially opened for business on Thursday, with Apple offering customers a new way to instantly purchase and download software for their Mac computers and laptops.

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, first showcased the store in mid-October during the company’s annual developer conference.

Using the Mac store will essentially be a photocopy of using iTunes to painlessly distribute music, video and mobile apps to the iPhone, iPod and iPad. Downloading software is predictably simple; once you click to purchase an application, it is automatically downloaded to your computer. Users who download applications from the store will see them appear in their computer’s “Applications” folder and in the desktop’s dock, where links to applications appear.

Software sold in the Mac store is competitively priced, with popular games like Angry Birds selling for $5, and Apple software, including Pages, iPhoto and iMovie, selling for $15 each. A few apps — mainly for business use — cost more than $100. There are also some free downloads available, including a new desktop Twitter application for the Mac.

Apple said in a company news release that the store opened “for business with more than 1,000 free and paid apps” available for download, with the company enticing more developers to distribute software through the store.

As I’ve noted in the past, the Mac store is surely going to cause some frustrations for larger software companies, including Adobe and Microsoft, who would be forced to give up a share of their revenue with Apple if they sold software through the store. Apple currently takes 30 percent of the cost of the software sold, and the developer receives 70 percent.