I just bought the MacHeist and see that’s worth it… even if there’s only a few that I use out of the bundle. I have installed Clips and LOVE IT, I can continously copy items and then with a keystroke [Control + Spacebar] I can see all the clippings and easily paste it to a document.

MacJournal too is a gem since I have a Blue Snowball microphone I can easily make audio journals in addition to making daily text entries.

RipIt it too is something I’ve been eyeing and it’s great that it was included. Well worth it alone since you can easily.. well.. rip.. DVDs onto your computer although I’ve primarily backed up my movies using HandBrake.

Then there are a few others that I didn’t care so much to be on the bundle but overall, if you know the value of at least 2 programs, these Heists are a steal.

I think most developers would be thrilled if the customers approached them directly and wanted to pay a discounted price outside of the bundle (unless this is a violation of their contract with the bundle). The reason being that most developers participate in these extreme discount offers in order to gain exposure, more than to generate profit (the cost of having to work support for the massive influx of new customers often isn’t or just barley is paid for by their split of the bundle).

Many developers are hoping to make their profits when the next major +1.0 paid revision comes along and hopefully generates some upgrade revenue. And this is a good thing btw. We want indie mac developers to be making a good living developing for the mac because we have a richer set of software options overall because of it. As a hardcore Apple cultist, one of the things I enjoy most is getting to support an indie Mac developer by buying their cool/innovative products because I know it makes the whole platform better.

“clips is trash” < might sound heavy. but what i see is hundreds of mbs at activity monitor after a few hours of usage. and that s absolute personal opinion. i paid for the thing, so i hope that it runs better for me and guys at macheist forums in the future.

If the price of the 2 apps you buy from the dev(s) is more than the price of the bundle, why would you buy them? Not only would I get the apps I do want at a lower price than I would normally pay, I get the others as a bonus!

The dev(s) presumably is/are getting paid either way, or they donated it by their choice.

How is it wasting my time if I can buy two at one place instead of going two places?

This is like saying go down the street to buy the same product at retailer X because its more expensive than retailer Y, then going to retailer Z to pay for more for the other. Now who is wasting time/money/attention? Who in their right mind would do that?

There is no waste, these are digital downloads we are talking about. You dont even have to d/l the ones you dont want!

The only way it would be wasteful is if you didnt use any of the apps. I am sorry I dont see anything persuasive about his rant.

You may not need all of the apps, but they all are still great. And there is pretty much always some kind of twitter bonus. And hey, they raise A LOT of money for charity, so in my book its a $20 well spent.

I would think Patrick’s argument pretty obvious really. That said, we don’t really need lots of things but we buy them anyways. Calling us out over it seems a little over the top.

Many time’s I’ve gotten a kick out of playing with Macheist apps, even though I had no real use for them. That said, I have at least one app from every heist in use.

It fun, you get some cool apps, and lots goes to charity. MacHeist IMO is awesome.

You know I think if the developers where getting a crappy deal they wouldn’t particulate by including their apps in the bundle in the first place. And secondly I think that bundles like this promote little known developers and give them a large customer base to sell version updates to. Take Rapidweaver for instance as web designer I have many text editors and web design tools; I would have never paid full price for Rapidweaver but now that I own it I find that for the right job it is a very useful tool and will purchase plugins and themes for the app.
I think Patrick’s argument is lame at best. It amounts to calling for people to go directly to the farm rather then the grocery store to buy produce. It really amounts to unloading a bulk # of licenses at a discount. Sure the farmer might be able to make more per cow selling them one at a time but he will get a large sum all at once if he sells them all to a “middle man” which is essential all machiest is.

Need RapidWeaver.
Saved a whole bunch of my cash.
So simple really.

I bought the bundle mostly for RipIt, which is $20 alone. The other apps I wouldn’t have bought if they weren’t included, but I’ve actually enjoyed Tweetie and intend to learn RapidWeaver.

I think the reason why some developers complain is that some developers feel these bundles undermine the value of mac software as a whole in the minds of the public, and it makes it difficult for them to charge reasonable prices when their competitors are undercutting them by 95% or more.

Look at iPhone pricing and how bad the race to the bottom has been for that platform. Many developers are stopping iPhone development because it isn’t viable, while for the consumer it can often be hard to find quality software to do what you want because there’s so much noise. Also you may not hear about some of the really cool apps out there (and are therefore missing out on cool stuff) because of all of the crap out there.

I’m not saying bundles are bad, just that there are some reasonable arguments against them. My biggest concern is having lots of high-quality software available on the Mac, and for that to happen, you need successful indie developer community.

I think the macheist bundles are a great thing. I don’t have a lot of money to spend on software, so I tend to jump at these IF they contain something I want to use. The others are a nice bonus, and I spend time investigating each of them to see if I might be able to put them to good use. As a result of this research, I usually end up coveting another three or for apps. I think those bonus buys and the word of mouth from all the new users are what make the bundle worth something to most of the participating developers.

The bit for charity is a “cherry on top”, but I don’t think should be the basis for support for the bundle.

I bought the first two chapters of the Monkey Island series on my Wii for ten dollars apiece. If I’d finished buying the series on my Wii, I’d have paid thirty dollars more. So I got them via the MacHeist bundle for my Mac at a discount of ten dollars, plus a boatload of other apps that I’m having fun messing with, and both Clips and RipIt have already entered into regular use. I’d say it was an absolute steal this time around.

@BaldSpot take a look at apple’s 3rd party downloads site for lots of great software: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/

Funny that anyone even feels they needed to write about this. It’s a personal decision.

I buy the bundles when they make sense to me. Today I bought the MacUpdate promo because the cost of the whole bundle is less than the cost of one of the products I wanted (Parallels). I imagine most people won’t buy the bundle unless it saves them money. Did I waste money on the other apps because it was a bundle? No. I saved $20 and got the other apps for free. I may discover something I never knew existed in the bargain.

Back in the day, if an album had at least three good songs on it, you bought it. Same rule applies.