A New Kind Of Heist: Six Apps For Free

Those crazy MacHeisters are at it again, and this time the deal is even harder to resist.

The first ever MacHeist Nano won’t cost you a penny. You can download, without charge, fully licensed copies of ShoveBox, WriteRoom, Twitterific, TinyGrab, and Hordes of Orcs. If 500,000 people take part (which I think is a pretty safe bet), they’ll throw in a copy of Mariner Write as well.

Sweet deal? I reckon. All of these are great apps. What’s the catch?

Instead of shelling out cash, you have to answer a simple question posed by the Heisters: even though this bundle is free, how much would you be prepared to pay for it? An answer to that, plus your name and email, and the apps are yours.

What’s really going on here? The Heist machine is gathering names and email addresses. Sure, they say they “We will never email you unless you request it”, but once you’ve signed up and you see the downloads page, you’ll also see an “Email preferences” panel on the right:

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By default, the checkbox saying “Keep me informed about future MacHeist events and deals!” is already checked. So, if you really don’t want to hear from them anymore, you’ll need uncheck it and click Save Preferences.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s worth remembering that nothing is really for free. You’re not paying money for these apps, you’re just paying a little bit of information. For the vast majority of folks, that’s probably worth it.

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