MacHeist

The third incarnation of the MacHeist bundle has reached its final unlock level, meaning that all applications are now available.

MacHeist has caused much discussion on the web, sparked mainly by the controversy surrounding the first version (in late 2006). The issue many indie developers  ((For example Gus Mueller of Flying Meat Software)) had at the time was the flat payment model (developers were paid a flat rate regardless of the number of licenses sold). This was addressed in version 2, and devs were paid per license. In addition, MacHeist has been donating 25% of each sale to charity. You might say that they could be giving away more, but I think that it is pretty generous (there is no obligation for them to be giving any of their revenue away).

Smoking apples has a good rundown of “Why it’s okay to buy the MacHeist bundle”, the key point for me being that developers are getting an awful lot of licenses sold (in difficult economic times) and a lot of publicity. M Cubed software participated in the Mac Bundle Box promotion a short while ago, and they point out that a large amount of revenue was generated for only a small increase in support load. This is a decision that each developer has taken freely, they are not stupid, they were not tricked into it and they knew what they were getting – a sentiment echoed by John Gruber.

All of this aside, I have put down the $39 for the bundle this morning, prompted mainly by the inclusion of Espresso and Acorn. I suspect that few people buying a bundle like MacHeist will use every app, rather they will purchase it to get a reasonable discount on a few applications. This is certainly the reason I have bought it, and the following are the apps which really swung it for me.

Espresso

EspressoI had been using the trial of Coda for a few weeks, and really liked it. I fully appreciate that $99 is a reasonable price for what is an exceptional piece of software, and if I made a living from web design, I would buy it in a heartbeat. That said, is is a bit pricey for what is essentially a pass-time for me (especially at the current dollar to sterling exchange rate).

I tried Espresso out a few weeks ago, and have found it to be a very good substitute. Like Coda it has a built in FTP client, and adds code folding – which I find very helpful.

Acorn

AcornAs with the web development application, I had been in the market for a simple image editor for a little while. I had tried Acorn and Pixelmator, as well as GIMP.

GIMP is my favourite Windows image editor, but the mac port is just so ugly and difficult to use. I can appreciate that it is an open source project into which people put a lot of time and effort, but it is just a bit clunky on OS X to be a useful day to day application. Acorn by contrast is simple, easy to pick up and has a lovely clean interface which really helps to make features easy to find and use.

My only gripe is the lack of alternative format support – it would be nice to be able to open and edit Photoshop (.psd) or GIMP (.xcf) files ((Acorn does feature a plug-in architecture, and I have already found one to export to .psd – just need to be able to open them as well.))

Times

TimesThis is a different take on a feed reader. Designed to resemble a newspaper layout, Times takes a number of feeds and shows headlines in a print style layout. It makes for a good way to get the day’s news during a break, is beautifully designed and extremely easy to use.

Apps I may Use

In addition to the apps above, I can see myself having some use for Sous Chef, Delicious Library, The Hit List and Phone View although I guess time will tell on these.

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