MacHeist Bundle

[bwana]

From the site

A week of celebrations.

Enjoying your Macintosh experience? There may be one ingredient you've been missing out on: the many amazing products created by the Mac community's extremely active independent software development community.

That's why we're declaring this The Week of the Independent Mac Developer, and in an effort to spread the word about these hidden gems, we've put together a collection of some of the best darn software available on the Mac for a steeply discounted $49.

The applications are:

• Delicious Library
• FotoMagico
• ShapeShifter
• DevonThink Personal
• Disco
• RapidWeaver
• iClip4
• One Pangea Game
• NewsFire
• TextMate

25% goes to your choice of a number of charities.

Personally I can recommend Delicious Library and several of the others look pretty cool too - especially DEVONthink Personal - so I'm thinking about getting the bundle.

Any opinions?

 

[BobJones]

I'm only really interested in Delicous Library and Rapidweaver, but I've already got Rapidweaver.
What they don't mention is that all of the apps are broken... you won't be getting upgrade rights etc. So its a bit of a waste, particularly since most of them are due for revisions soon. Delicious Library is getting a re-write that will be released with Leopard.

Also theres been a lot of discussion about the economics. Start by reading Gruber, he links to a couple of others. Its interesting to read the moaning from the macheist crew.

Have you been following macappaday? I've found that they've got mostly crap. Of course there is always maczot.

 

[bwana]

Thanks for the head's up - I didnt realise they were all hobbled.

EDIT - I cant see where it says the bundled apps are 'broken' - The only reference I see on Gruber's page is

One odd touch is that the free apps awarded as prizes during the weekly heists were mostly one-off special builds, without the normal license or serial number checking, which cannot be updated to future versions.

but that refers to the MacHeist's weekly prizes. Did I miss it?

EDIT2 - there is some information on the MacHeist site

For - iClip4 they say

Bundle customers will receive exclusive early beta access to and registration info for the upcoming iClip 4, a massive upgrade that makes iClip an even more natural (and beautiful) addition to OS X. iClip 4 is expected to be released at Macworld Expo in January.

and for TextMate

Your TextMate license will be guaranteed free updates through version 1.x, and MacroMates will offer a steeply discounted upgrade path (of at least 60% off) to the upcoming, Leopard only version 2. (This license differs from a normally purchased $49 license, which includes a free 2.0 upgrade.)

 

[BobJones]

As far as I understand all of the apps in the bundle are special builds that will require a new full license to be bought with the next major release - your exceptions noted.

Its been one of the core issues in the controversy surrounding Macheist - that developers are giving up revenue now in the hope of earning upgrade revenue later.

Let me know if you bought the bundle and I'm wrong. [edit] turns out that I'm not - read here.

I'm rapidly losing interest in this "giveaway" model of shareware marketing if it means I've gotta fork out full price for upgrades. Esp so if the dev having participated in the promo now decides to introduce or hike upgrade fees for existing customers when the migration to Leopard comes around.

 

[bwana]

I already acknowledged the limited update for TextMate but as far as I have see none of the others were limited in a similar way.

 

[BobJones]

I already acknowledged the limited update for TextMate but as far as I have see none of the others were limited in a similar way.

I've picked this up (limitations) from a couple of the many blog posts and comments. ATM I'm going by the following comment in the post I link to:

I can see that most of the apps come with strings attached

One of the reasons I eventually didn't go for the bundle was because I couldn't easily find out if it was for "full" licenses or not.

Have you seen Macsanta?